We got such a great response on this.

That's a good thing, and a bad thing.   [Mother Jones]( MoJo Reader, I guess we shouldn't be surprised that [Monika's email](, sent late in the day Monday, struck a chord with so many people. It was sad hearing that we were losing such a long-standing source of journalistic awesomeness, the Texas Observer, a magazine cut from the same cloth as Mother Jones. And we're so heartened, since then, to have seen readers and fans spring into action around a [crowdfunding campaign]( and help stave off what seemed an inevitable closure, at least for now. Readers showing up and saving the day again—that's awesome! It is also a hugely instructive moment. The Observer’s troubles show, plain as day, how hard it is for independent, investigative reporting to stay afloat right now—and why a broad base of [support from readers matters so incredibly much](. But it also gets right to the heart of another big theme of "[It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal](," that anchors our current fundraising push, and is something we're trying to crack. How can we best communicate urgency when we need to ask you to [support our work]( without crying wolf? How can we describe why it's so important that we raise $300,000 in these next few weeks without making it sound like we're about to fall off a cliff, or worse, joining the cacophony of [ridiculous]( and insulting fundraising tactics? Because here's the thing: Nothing drives fundraising like a crisis. A natural disaster, a national tragedy, looming legislation, or disastrous court decisions—people open their wallets during emergencies and it is 100 percent a great thing. And like we just saw, when you’re about to go under, people open their wallets—but when you’re about to go under, it’s often too late. So in the fundraising world, this has a sort of perverse effect: The temptation and what feels like the industry standard online is to crank the volume up to 11 all the time, to capture and keep those “crisis donors.” And when the new normal feels like crisis after crisis, eventually even the most committed folks get inured to the urgency. Crisis also drives news cycles, and that explains why following the news can sometimes feel so exhausting. Politicians, pundits, and propagandists need to grab people’s attention, and media companies need ratings and advertising impressions. That creates a vicious feedback loop where everyone postures for ever-shorter internet outrage cycles. And there’s only so much crisis any of us can take. Is our budget reality a crisis for Mother Jones? It undeniably feels that way more often than it used to. But it’s also the new normal. So back to that question: What’s the best way to communicate urgency without crying wolf? The data and facts seem like the right place to start: - 74 percent of our budget comes from donations big and small this year. Nothing else could keep us going. There is no backup, no secret benefactor. Without a wide base of support from readers, we won’t be here for long. It’s that simple. - When we say “we can’t afford to come up short” or "we need more help than normal" it’s the honest-to-goodness truth. We’ve already cut our budget to keep up with the various challenges, which is why it’s so important that we not fall short for the rest of our fiscal year. None of this is just fundraising rhetoric. - Our biggest expense and biggest priority to protect is paying the journalists and publishing professionals on our staff. There is no fat or frills to cut, so the most likely effect if we come up short on our fundraising goals is pulling back on big reporting projects we have planned. - We don’t have to tell you about skyrocketing expenses and how just keeping pace with inflation (and corporate greed run amok) is so damn hard these days, whether personal or professional. It’s almost like we have an economy that [works best]( for the ultra-wealthy. - For a decade-plus, advertising reliably made up between 11 and 15 percent of our budget. Now it’s 6. At one point, Facebook showed our reporting to users as many as 83 million times in one year. Now it’s just under 5 million. [Paper]( and postage for our magazine and mailings has gone up 30 percent. Insurance and lawyers to defend against [attacks on the truth]( and powerful interests who [take issue]( with what we investigate used to be $85,000 per year, now it’s $250,000 - But we do have to tell you that coming up with that $300,000 in [online donations]( we need in the next couple weeks is incredibly intimidating. As of today, we're eight-plus days into our three-week fundraising push and we've raised about $80,000—that’s more than a third of the way through our campaign, with well less than a third of what we need in hand. - And this all means we need to start raising significantly more [in donations]( from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in (or stopped doing so several years ago) because you figured others always will. That list probably doesn't land as hard as reading about a [newsroom being shuttered](, but our hope is that a level-headed look at the facts of being in the news business and our finances might just be able to [generate donations to prevent that kind of disaster from happening](. The bottom line: It is always legitimately urgent that we hit our online fundraising goals. You can [learn more about that here](, and we hope you'll consider [pitching in with a donation today]( if you can right now. We've already cut expenses and reaching our $300,000 online goal is critical to finishing our year break-even in the coming months. So we still need to raise about $220,000 by the time we stop asking you here in less than two-weeks. It’s a tall order—and more than we hoped we’d need to bank on right now—but we can 100 percent get there if more readers than normal [decide to pitch in today](. Thanks for reading, and for everything you do to make Mother Jones what it is. Monika Bauerlein CEO Brian Hiatt Online Membership Director [Donate](   [Mother Jones]( [Donate]( [Donate Monthly]( [Subscribe]( This message was sent to {EMAIL}. To change the messages you receive from us, you can [edit your email preferences]( or [unsubscribe from all mailings.]( For advertising opportunities see our online [media kit.]( Were you forwarded this email? [Sign up for Mother Jones' newsletters today.]( [www.MotherJones.com]( PO Box 8539, Big Sandy, TX 75755