This is Naked Capitalism fundraising week. 792 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 your speedy and generous responses, we’ve met our first three targets: funding for more site improvements in the user experience and in our defense; travel and site coverage expenses for meetups and conferences; and bonuses to site writers like Lambert, Jerri-Lynn Scofield, and Dave Dayen. And we are more than two-third of the way towards our original goal of 1100 contributors for this fundraiser. We’re raising the donor target to 1250.
We are grateful to have gotten not only some big contributions but also a large number of smaller donations. Those are often particularly meaningful, since those donors often tell us they are on limited budgets but want to do what they can to support this community. Please give now at our Tip Jar if you haven’t had a chance to do so yet, by check, credit or debit card.
And remember, if you aren’t in a position to chip in financially, you can help by sharing what you’ve learned here with the people you know.
We are on our way to meeting our fourth target, support for extra manpower so we can keep the make our 365 day a year, just about 24/7 coverage more sustainable. If Yves the publisher and Yves the employee were two different people, Yves the employee would have gone on strike a long time ago.
A typical working year for a full time person is assumed to be 225-250 work days. That is still very stingy by world standards, since 250 days amounts to every weekend off plus two weeks of vacation, with no allowance for national holidays (Christmas, New Year, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving). Even with last year being Yves’ first two week vacation where she had full site coverage, she still wound up doing the equivalent of a few days of work with Lambert and site monitoring. And even with the very helpful support you’ve provided in the past to help make the site less dependent on Yves alone, she gets only the equivalent of three days off a month, rather than anything approximating normal downtime. So even allowing for budgeted downtime, Yves has been working at a burnout-inducing level for far too many years.
And sick days? Fuggedaboudit. Even when she got food poisoning last year, with having the good fortune of getting emergency help from Lambert, Yves still had to find a way to do a half day of work so as not to fall short on the site’s normal posting schedule.
This is obviously not a sustainable situation and also goes a long way toward explaining why Yves is too often less polite in the comments section than she was in the less time-pressured early days of this site.
We joke that we run the site with 1.3 people, which is a less pointed way of flagging that we provide a remarkable level of output and the consistency of coverage with very thin resources. The amount we are seeking for this target, $21,000, is only 10% over our current meager level for weekend, holiday, and “shit happens” support. We hope you’ll recognize how essential this is and donate generously to keep Yves in fighting fettle and have other talented writers like Lambert and Jerri-Lynn Scofield contribute more regularly.
There are multiple ways to give. The first is here on the blog, the Tip Jar, which takes you to PayPal. There you can use a debit card, a credit card or a PayPal account (the charge will be in the name of Aurora Advisors).
You can also send a check (or multiple post dated checks, if you want to spread out payments) in the name of Aurora Advisors Incorporated to
Aurora Advisors Incorporated
903 Park Avenue, 8th Floor
New York, NY 10075
Please also send an e-mail to yves@nakedcapitalism.com with the headline “Check is in the mail” (and just the $ en route in the message) so we can count your contribution in the total number of donations.
Our sick days, weekend and vacation coverage target is $21,000, and we are already over $940 towards that goal. Thanks SO much for your generous support!
2 comments
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This site is too good not to support it. I contributed $50 dollars. I wish I could do more. Give what you can. When a person is fighting against the odds, we don’t know what small voice get’s through the noise of the battle. Don’t be missing when that small space happens for your voice. Support in the best way you can.
When Yves was commenting above on the commitment involved,I remembered this from another site.
Old ranch owner John farmed a small ranch in Montana. The Montana Wage and Hour Department claimed he was not paying proper wages to his workers and sent an agent out to interview him.
‘I need a list of your employees and how much you pay them,’ demanded the agent.
‘Well,’ replied old John, ‘There’s my ranch hand who’s been with me for 3 years. I pay him $600 a week plus free room and board. The cook has been here for 18 months, and I pay her $500 a week plus free room and board. Then there’s the half-wit who works about 18 hours every day and does about 90% of all the work around here. He makes about $10 per week, pays his own room and board and I buy him a bottle of bourbon every Saturday night.’
‘That’s the guy I want to talk to, the half-wit,’ says the agent.
‘That would be me,’ replied old rancher John.
In case anyone of low humour thinks I’m putting Yves down, it’s far from it. Her commitment is out front. I never thought that there would be a site with the depth of knowledge that Yves and her team has to back it up.
Yves says that if you cannot give more to the site then contribute by spreading the word. I would add contribute by doing something like Yves does; don’t just talk, join and organise at local level. Organising to get a new seat for a park shows you care, as well as talk.
Take care,
Conor
Thank you, Conor, for this. Local action IS important. In my town, a very small group of citizens mobilized when it appeared that our city government was going to privatize our municipal water system. We were successful in stopping that particular instance of corporatorization, and in order to monitor the city’s transition to a better solution, some of us have been attending City Council working sessions regularly. Now, we’re taking a hard look at our city charter to consider proposing changes that could make it better serve residents in the 21st century. If we conclude that such changes are needed, that will mean putting them on the ballot for a vote.
So, yes, indeed, there’s a great deal that can be done at the local level. And one thing certainly can lead to another.
GO Naked Capitalism!