Yipee! Met Our Second Target Quickly! On to the Third: Continuing Expanded News Coverage and Maybe Meetups

This is Naked Capitalism fundraising week. 496 donors have already invested in our efforts to combat corruption and predatory conduct, particularly in the financial realm. Please join us and participate via our donation page, 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 early bird readers for their prompt and generous donations! We hit our first goal in twelve hours. We hit our second in a bit over a day. Because Lambert, the Master of the Fundraiser Thermometers, is off the grid, our thermometer is behind where you have gotten us. He will refresh it when he comes back on duty.

We’ve already closing in on 500 donations towards fundraiser target of 1100 donors and are getting messages of support like this one from Brian A:

You guys are amazing. The breadth of your interests and range of your resources is actually thrilling!

And François:

Many many thanks to you, the team, and the commentariat for hands down the best news site on the internet.

Reading you daily has the health benefits of a superior Longjing and the subtle taste of a Grand Vin de Bourgogne (or vice versa), a heavenly match as addictive as crack cocaine.
Just wish I could have given more.

And Mark T:

You are basically my only remaining source of reliably objective news and analysis.

And Alex C, who also confirms the Streisand Effect works:

Naked Capitalism has become my number-one web destination.
I find it super-valuable! And I found it thanks to PropOrNot.

And Susan R:

I can’t imagine a day without Naked Capitalism. Thank you everyone for all you do.

Even more important, we blew past our first two goals, The first was $21,000 to provide for more technology investments in the site. We’ve had to invest heavily here in recent years due to a more hostile external environment. So good for you for helping us support mundane but absolutely critical budget items. This is our foundation for all the content we provide. The second was $18,500 for supporting the comments section. Again. you speedy donations showed how much you value those robust and information-rich discussions, just as we value the keen-eyed reactions to our posts.

But these are only our initial targets. If you haven’t had time to contribute yet, we hope you’ll go to our Tip Jar pronto, which shows you how to give by check, debit or credit card or PayPal.

Our next goal $21,500 for continuing our expanded Links section, and if we return to something dimly resembling the old normal by next summer, some meetups too. Reaaders very much enjoyed the opportunity to meet and mingle with the like-minded, but travel and site coverage when writers are absent do not come for free!

As of 10 PM EST, we already have $635 towards that target.

As we explained in our kickoff post, we expanded our Links section from the pre-Covid maximum of 45 links to now 55 to 60. This may not seem like much, but it represents a day-in, day-out commitment of additional staffing, as in an ongoing increase of manning of the site, which means more budget needs. So it takes more effort to provide your morning guide to what’s happening. As Jenny put it:

My husband introduced me to Naked Capitalism in late 2015 or early 2016 when he first started learning about MMT, and we start nearly every day drinking coffee in bed & discussing the posts. We sometimes joke that if our morning conversation were a podcast. it might as well be called “I Couldn’t Agree With You More!” But NC is much, much more than a bubble or echo-chamber — it helps deepen & shape our understandings as we talk through topics familiar and new. We find range, depth, and plenty to disagree with in both the posts and the comments, and we deeply appreciate the amount of work that is put into creating & curating the site.

I thought I really ought to move up from a token $50 annual contribution to a sum that more accurately reflects the daily value we receive from what is freely given to your readers.

If we wind up stuck in the new normal (as in no meetups) and don’t use all the funds donated for this goal, we’ll use any surplus to fund more original reporting.

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 donating through the Tip Jar to help make the site more successful.