March 16, 2019

A Pittsburgh Jewish Group Is Raising Money for New Zealand’s Muslim Community

“Unfortunately we are all too familiar with the devastating effect a mass shooting has on a faith community.”

Mourners pay their respects at a makeshift memorial near the Masjid Al Noor mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, Saturday, March 16, 2019.Vincent Yu/AP

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When a gunman killed 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh last October, Muslim groups quickly launched a crowdfunding campaign to help shooting victims, raising more than $200,000 in just four days. Now, Time reports, the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh is responding in kind by raising funds to support the Muslim community in New Zealand affected by the massacre that killed 49 and left dozens more wounded on Friday.

“Unfortunately we are all too familiar with the devastating effect a mass shooting has on a faith community,” Meryl Ainsman, chair of the board of the Jewish Federation, said in a statement released Friday. “We are filled with grief over this senseless act of hate. May those who were injured heal quickly and fully, and may the memories of the victims forever be a blessing.”

According to the statement, those who wish to donate can give online at the Jewish Federation’s website, or send checks to 2000 Technology Drive, Pittsburgh, PA 15219.

Other fundraising efforts, being vetted by Impact Your World, according to CNN, are also underway. They include New Zealand Council of Victim Support Groups, which has a crowdfunding campaign, and the Muslim crowdfunding site LaunchGood—which helped raise money for Tree of Life victims—has set up a fund for the families.

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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 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.

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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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