UPDATE 10/24, 6:00AM: We’ve had a good response to the Harry Shearer Challenge (see details below), so we want to thank everyone for their donations on Sunday. As of this time, we still have 13 $100 matching opportunities open, so please step up by going to our donation page. And if $100 is a stretch for you, don’t let that keep you from making a donation if you’ve been planning to but haven’t had time yet. Every contribution helps us meet our goals.
Harry Shearer, who has graciously featured us on his weekly radio program Le Show from time to time, has issued a challenge for this fundraiser. He will match the next 30 donations of $100. Make his generous offer a speedy success by going to our donation page now!
You can make your contribution here, via check, debit or credit card, or PayPal. If you give by check, be sure to let us know by e-mailing us at yves@nakedcapitalism.com with “Harry Shearer Challenge” in the subject line.
Thanks to Harry for his generosity, and I hope readers will respond in kind. And if $100 is a stretch for you, don’t let that stop you from making a donation if you’ve been planning to but haven’t had time yet. Every contribution helps us meet our goals. So I hope you’ll take him up on this fundraiser challenge in whatever way you can!
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If he’s putting up $3,000 of his money, why not match the next $3,000 of contributions, regardless of amount? Saying that only $100 contributions will be matched says that only large contributions matter. But if he matches the next $3k, then even people who donate $5 can feel like they’re contributing.
You might get more small contributors — and therefore higher numbers of overall contributors, now and in the future — that way.
In fact, what might be really wild: someone with means matching *only* contributions below a certain amount, say $20 or something. I’ve never seen that done.
I do understand that you actually need to raise actual money. Having ideas is great. Having good ideas is better. But none of it means anything if you don’t have the means to implement any of it. Maybe there’s a reason that, in fundraisers (not just at NC), only large contributions are matched. Maybe to do so would result in there being no NC. I don’t know, as I’ve never been on the other side of a fundraiser.
Just a thought, though. But hypothetically, if it worked and more people got used to the idea of giving small amounts of money to NC (or whomever), one might be able to raise more money in the long run that way. Bernie *did* raise 225 million dollars in less than twelve months primarily through small contributions. So it would seem as if it must not only be possible but, in the long run, perhaps even more lucrative?
This is a good thought. I leave it to Yves, Lambert et la as to whether it works for NC.
But what a great way to value the little people – thanks, Eric!
I agree. Eric’s suggestion has merit.
Bingo! Good question. And yeah, Bernie is a great example. Thanks.
Is this thing still going on? I just found my checkbook!
After a week. I couldn’t find it anywhere. Not on the table, not the dresseer, not the drawer, not the floor.
Oh man. I would have sent a check last week, but I couldn’t find the checkbook. Paypal won’t work for me, because I can’t “prove my identity”. Two years ago they wanted me to send them an electric bill or a cable bill or a drivers license. Anything that could prove I’m me. What a pain in the ass. Are they serious? I know I’m me, and my credit card works almost everywhere I want it to.
But not if they process the Payment. For two years I’ve ignored them. For two years. I feel as if that’s a type of victory. Have I been inconvenience? No. Not al all in fact. The more I look around and see things, the more I like cash. Even the subway, even there I use cash. And if a machin can’t take cash, I walk to another station and use cash.
I’m a 20th century guy. That’s just it and I don’t care about using a plastic debit card or a credit card or some ludicrous form of payment that only works if you’re on the internet. Cash. That’s what I use.
I’d send Yves some cash but there’s a small chance it would get lost in the mail & I’d never know. If I send a check, at least I know.
So I’ll send a check for 200 dollars. This Harry dude must be a moneyman. Either that or he doesn’t like fine gentleman’s clothing, since for the kind of money he’s willing to lay down you can get some very very nice shoes from John Lobb.
What I discovered today was absolutely amazing and the lost checkbook, which never bothered me very much — and I only looked for it lazily and in fitfull bursts of marginally obligatory reconnaisances of “all the usual places — and even less when I found this:
On YouTube you can find the Eagles 1977 concert at Washington’s Capital Center. It’s incredible. All the songs you know in your soul, they’re all there like it was last night. Whoa, that’s amazing. Songs like Take it Eassy, which I think was written by Jackson Brown. And One of these Nights, one of these crazy old nights, we’re ggonna find out pretty mama, what turns on your lights. They were magic. The Eagles. They were so good they’re still an astonishment. Every one of them could sing really well. Even Joe Walsh, who’d you’d think would be a bonehead. But no. Not at all.
At any rate, I hope the check arrives in the mail, because Paypal is out of the question. This year and next year. And the next year And even then, after that, I’ll still be using cash. If it’s good enough for the 20th century, it’s good enough ffor me. I’m a 20th century guy and that’s about it.
Hey, not to worry. I also sent a check.
Thank you, Twentieth Century Man!
The trouble with looking in all the usual places is that that’s never where the missing item has got to. Then if you’re rash you start a systematic search in all the logical places, and when that fails you get a little frenzied and start on the not-so-logical…. And that’s almost never how you find the item: it just turns up sometime or other. (I think the things go on vacation somewhere and come home when they feel like it.)
A 20th Century Man? Not a 21st Century Schizoid Man? ;) (that’d make a good them song for this year’s pres election race.)
+1 on cash
on the presidential race:
“The fate of all mankind I see
Is in the hands of fools.
Confusion will be my epitaph.
As I crawl a cracked and broken path
If we make it we can all sit back
and laugh.
But I fear tomorrow I’ll be crying,
Yes I fear tomorrow I’ll be crying.”
Harry was a voice on the SIMPSON’S – recently rated #1 TV show ever. His grandchildren will be cashing residual checks.
Never having run a fundraiser, but having been asked to donate here and there over the years, I believe that the purpose of setting a substantial value as a threshold for matching contributions is to encourage people who were sort of near to giving an amount to bump it up. Hypothetically, if one were on the verge of giving five dollars a month, or sixty dollars a year, maybe one would be tempted to go up to one hundred by the incentive of the Shearer challenge. It makes sense. A small amount is something; a large amount is more. They say that money won’t get you love in this world; but it does get half a pound of blow, and two fifteen year old girls, and an air conditioned limousine on a hot September night – and that may not be love, but it’s alright – to quote a satirical song by Randy Newman, who may or may not be a personal friend of Harry Shearer. May the Creative Forces of the Universe smile in our general direction.
Can we just make the $100 contribution and trust that it will get noticed, or do we have to announce that we donated in order to get matched? Anyway, I’m in for a hundred. Pay up, Shearer.
I’m listening to Le Show as I donate. Thanks, Harry!
I’m in with an amount that’s right for me.
Thank you to Yves and the NC team!
Finally donated. I’ll go without carrot juice for a day or two, but it’s worth it to help some friends, isn’t it?
Donated for the match! Thanks for everything Yves, Lambert, and crew. And Harry!