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For four years, the National Rifle Association ran deficits and drained its cash pool. Now, as it faces angry creditors and a woeful credit rating, leaked internal documents make it clear the pro-gun group wasted much of its money on costly, controversial membership drives, which now threaten the group’s existence.

For a long time, top brass were kept in the dark about just where the money was going. On Jan. 20, 1994, then-finance committee chairman Max Goodwin complained in a letter to the board of directors: “[W]e have been set up for failure. We can approve the budget, but then have no control over management when the budget is grossly exceeded.” NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre, wrote Goodwin, “has been put in a position for which he lacks necessary skills.”

Then, in a May 6, 1994 memo to the group’s treasurer, NRA President Thomas Washington wrote: “We really need to have some better figures for the finance committee,” followed by the admission: “Many questions are coming up that I simply am unable to answer.”

In the memo, Washington asked to see “whatever contract we have with PM Consulting,” the public relations firm responsible for the NRA’s direct mail campaign.

Eventually, Washington saw a spreadsheet prepared for the 1994 board of directors’ meeting that shows the campaign carried a $29 million price tag–a 134 percent jump from 1991 to 1993 , and nearly 20 percent of the NRA’s budget.

Insiders claim that PM Consulting’s Brad O’Leary received $50,000 a month and a series of bonuses that would make a major league ballplayer blush. (O’Leary was responsible for the letter that characterized Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents as “jack-booted government thugs,” and prompted George Bush to resign from the NRA.)

But since NRA officials–and most of the public–learned of the organization’s financial straits, the gravy train has, apparently, ended. O’Leary says he’s no longer on such a large retainer, and he’s had to lay off three of 10 people who worked on the NRA account. And while the organization continues its strident direct mail (a recent letter by LaPierre threatened to “clean Bill Clinton’s clock”), board members have confided that they fear the campaign, which ballooned membership to 3.5 million, could alienate members just when their dollars are needed most.

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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 canā€™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 wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

And we need readers to show up for us big timeā€”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.

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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 canā€™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 wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

And we need readers to show up for us big timeā€”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.

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