Last Day, Last Chance for Our Fundraiser

Thanks to the many readers who have so generously responded to our appeal, we’ve beaten our target of 750 donors and are now at just over 825. Since we had over 200 of you contribute yesterday, we’d like to see if we can reach the new target of 1000 by midnight PST.

So far, your investments have paid for improvements we’ll be acting on in the upcoming months: upgrades to site speed and service, a travel budget, meaningful “thank yous” to the regular guest bloggers, vacation support to keep the site vibrant while I get some R&R, a grab bag of smaller site enhancements, like a mobile version of the site and audio equipment for podcasts, and using more support staff for specific tasks so I can spend less time on administration and more on site content. We have already given the go-ahead for a server upgrade, and one reader is trying to find a way to make compressing the antidote du jour photos easy for me to do every day (this will also evidently improves site performance a lot). One reader has a draft version of a mobile site I hope to be able to show you later today (he’s tweaking some recalcitrant bits).

The goal here is to build a culture where we pay for truth, instead of being lied to for free. Guest posters Matt Stoller and Mark Ames have described why we are engaged in this effort: because elite financiers have sought to create an information monopoly in the media and inside the Beltway, and Naked Capitalism has become one of a small number of sites that cuts through their propaganda. Even Congressman Brad Miller chimed in on Facebook.

Here’s what some of you have to say:

Naked Capitalism is one of the best financial information websites of our time and I really, really like the on line format (especially the animal pictures). I do not know how you find the time to research, write and publish your website and still manage to perform your video interviews.

Although I am just a lay person, I am one of those who check in with your site first thing in the morning…The sparkling analysis gets me going.

Kudos to you for a terrific website.

We’ve also had MANY offers of help. I’ll be replying (and hopefully churning out thank you notes) over the next few weeks. I particularly liked this one:

I am a master gardener based in London who has been an avid reader of your blog since the week-end of the 12th/13th October 2008 when all that slight unpleasantness with the financial sector came to light, so to speak.

I am a great believer in continuing to learn throughout life and have made it my business to attempt to understand WTF went on. In this you have been an irreplaceable resource.

I am not a particularly wealthy man and, (you may find this strange), own neither a debit card nor a credit card. However I am widely regarded as one of the foremost English gardeners in private practice in London. I am also the gardening expert and consultant for BBC London radio where you can hear me on a fortnightly basis from February through to November.

Apart from my private practice in London I have designed and consulted in North Carolina, California, Maryland (from where I am writing this email), France, Spain, England, Scotland and Wales.

I know that you are something of a gardener yourself and therefore I wish to offer my services on a pro bono basis to you or anybody else who has supported your invaluable work. If there is any way that you lot can benefit from my acquired knowledge – it is at your disposal. By email if by no other means.

I will next be on the East Coast next spring and very probably in California at some point next year.

I have garden landscapers, tree surgeons, fruit and vegetable experts and plant experts, (all who have trained under me) who may also be able to help.

I have, at times, despaired of your country over the last few years; however reading you and your blog has done more than anything else to restore my faith in the great republic that I feared had been lost to me.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is an old family friend and I am sure will vouch* for the genuine nature of this offer.

I am also considered a very entertaining performance poet and will happily take part in any fund-raising gig that is doable.

*This does not imply that I share any of his positions ideologically speaking!

Sadly, I have no garden. I suggested a mini charity auction: a certain amount of your time for anyplace in a certain geographical range. He is game! The reply:

Great idea! – very amenable within the constraints of travel – raising money for your organization would be a priority in my calendar

A small confidence-building consultation up to full monty project management could be considered as items to be bid for

Timing (seasonal) is everything – I have a week spare in December – Jan, Feb good(ish) – my Spring is not yet fully blocked out

If some readers have gardens they’d like brought to the next level (or have friends who might be interested), please chime up in comments.

I’m deeply grateful for how many of you have contributed in the various ways you can. And this is the last chance for this 2011 fundraiser. So donate now to Naked Capitalism. If you can’t afford much, give what you can. If you can afford more, give more. If you can give a lot, give a lot. This isn’t just giving, it’s a statement that you are want a different debate, a different society, and a different culture. It’s time to join us as we make sure this site can do an even better job of debunking the lies that prop up a diseased power structure and promoting a more just social order.