15 Reasons You Should Donate to Mother Jones

Hello dear readers! Yes, it’s fundraising time, and we encourage you to donate a few dollars to the Mother Jones Investigative Fund to support independent, investigative journalism.

Unlike NPR, we can’t hold your commute hostage to our pleas for money. But what we can do is remind you of some compelling reasons to part with a few of your hard-earned bucks. Ready?

1) Because we still do great longform journalism. Like Mac McClelland’s undercover exposé into the warehouse wage slaves behind your online purchases.

2) Because half of all our magazine pieces in 2011 had a female byline–way more than most news/political magazines.

 

3) Because our income inequality charts are so good that Occupy Wall Street protestors put them on signs, Stephen Colbert built a segment around them, and Slate said they deserved a Pulitzer.

4) Because our reporters braved tear gas and arrest rather than back off covering the Occupy movement.

5) Because from pig brains to pink slime, we’re not afraid to gross you out.

6) Because we were instrumental in bringing the photography of Vivian Maier to light.

 

 

7) Because we explained and reported the heck out of the Trayvon Martin killing

8) Because we stopped the GOP from redefining rape.

9) Because we made an “are you a slut?” flowchart and support a woman’s right to choose to knit her congressman a vagina:

10) Because we allow smart celebrities to speak their mind.

Source: motherjones.com via Mother on Pinterest

11) Because you deserve to know about the nukes speeding by your house.

12) Because our yearlong investigation of the FBI’s domestic informant program was so good, it’s been picked up by all the big papers (though not always with credit).

13) Because remember the whole exploding Ford Pinto thing? Yeah, that was us.

14) Because we pay our interns, and don’t pit them against one another in a weekly acid-saber-fight cage match where only the triumphant one is allowed food.

15) Because we’ll help you know the difference between Newt and Schrute.


BONUS: Still not sure? Okay, fine: We invented the po’ boymaybe.

 Delicious oyster po' boy.: fdasA delicious oyster po’ boy. Joyce Marrero/ShutterstockWe couldn’t have done a single one of these stories without your support. We’re a nonprofit, and the support of readers is what keeps us alive. If you’ve appreciated any of these stories, please donate $5 or $10 to the Mother Jones Investigative Fund right now. We’ve almost reached our goal, and your gift could be the one that gets us all the way there. Plus, next time you see a great story on Mother Jones, you’ll know you played an important part in making it happen. Please give today via credit card or PayPal. Thanks!

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

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