Wow, Met Our First Goal Quickly, On to Our Second!

This is Naked Capitalism fundraising week. 172 donors have already invested in our efforts to combat corruption and predatory conduct, particularly in financial realm. Please join us and participate via our Tip Jar, which shows how to give via check, credit card, debit card, or PayPal. Read about why we’re doing this fundraiser and what we’ve accomplished in the last year.

Thanks to our loyal readers for such fast and generous responses! We’ve already gotten nearly 200 donations in the first 19 hours (out of our fundraiser target of 1000 donors), and blew past our first goal, which was $15,200 to provide for more technology investments in the site, better loading speed, and faster resolution of other site issues. But this is only our first goal, so if you haven’t had time to contribute yet, we hope you’ll go to our Tip Jar pronto, which show you how to give by check, debit or credit card or PayPal.

We’ve hit our target quickly, and are moving faster than at the same time last year. Lambert is not up yet, and he is the master of our fundraising thermometer. So we have the high class problem of having it seriously out of date relative to where we stand now. He will get it more current when he comes on the grid.

Our second goal is $14,500 for travel, and as of 10:00 AM, we already have $1,545 towards that target. Note that we get lots of invites to conferences, and right now we turn down nearly all but also because it would result in fewer posts (the usual problem of only so many hours in the day) and so we need to provide for blog coverage by paying our writers to do more than their usual duty. As one astute reader said our our current 1.3 person coverage.

And of course, there is also the actual travel cost. Even going to Washington DC on a day trip and having a few meetings (as in cabbing around a bit) is close to a $500 item. And for most trips, the blog coverage cost exceeds the actual transportation/lodging costs. So as much as we’d love to go to conferences, see readers outside NYC for meetups, and go visit a CalPERS board meeting and ask a few questions, all of those are bigger ticket items than you might imagine.

Last year, your generous donations enabled us to go to INET annual conference in Paris, which was really valuable not just in terms of seeing presentations, but in renewing contacts with economists and writers, as well as making new ones.

In addition, we have some people whose travel expenses we’d like to fund. Last year, we paid for Lambert to come to New York twice, once to attend a meetup, the other a conference. We have other people who contribute to the site whose travel we’d like to sponsor.

So those of you who have contributed already, thanks again for your generous support, and we look forward to those NC fans who have just found out about the fundraiser to donate through the Tip Jar to help make the site more successful.