Editorial

Help Keep New Matilda Alive

By New Matilda

October 25, 2010

IF YOU WANT TO SIGN UP AS A NEW MATILDA SUPPORTER, visit newmatilda.fundbreak.com.au, click SUPPORT PROJECT and follow the easy steps.

You can use your credit card or PayPal.

You will need to create a Fundbreak login, or if you already have a Facebook login you can opt to sign in with that. Your Fundbreak login is not the same as your New Matilda login.

Thanks for your support!

For more information on our fundraising campaign, read on… 

Dear readers,

As you know, New Matilda needs your help to stay alive in 2011. In collaboration with Fundbreak, we’ve set up a facility to raise the money we need by 15 December. 

The minimum figure we need to raise is $175,000, although we’d like to raise more. If that seems like a lot it’s worth keeping in mind that we need less than 2200 readers to become regular supporters to meet this target. 

There are a number of different levels of support you can offer New Matilda — starting with a $50 Concession donation all the way up to a $1000 Big Love donation. The standard rate to become a New Matilda supporter is $80 and really keen supporters can give $150.

Organisations can hop into bed with NM too: it costs $300 to do so. And of course, a New Matilda supporter package makes a great Christmas present! Just email us the details of the person you are buying the subscription for and we will post them a festive card plus a New Matilda poster and tote bag (while stocks last).

Not only will all supporters receive our undying thanks, there are giveaways in store for those who sign up early. We’ll be looking for new ways to reward our supporters through 2011.

You can pay via PayPal or with a credit card on this facility. Your donation will be processed and held by FundBreak until the end of the campaign. It’s a pledge system and if we don’t meet our budget target, your donation will be refunded in full. If you’d like to donate a larger sum, drop us a line at enquiriesATnewmatilda.com. We’d love to hear from you!

And if you are the kind of person who gets bamboozled by online donation forms, we are also very happy to receive cheques. Our details and postal address can be found here.

New Matilda’s business model will operate more like a public radio station than a subscriber service. That is, we’re not going to paywall our content. Financial supporters will have the same access to content as first-time visitors and non-paying readers. We’re proud of our writers and we want their work to be read as widely as possible.

So what do you get for giving us your hard-earned cash? The answer is quality media. It doesn’t come cheap. We believe New Matilda is worth paying for and we simply can’t produce it for nix. We’re optimistic that our audience recognises the value of the site. Our thanks are due to all of you who have encouraged us along the way.

We’ve set a budget target of $175,000. This figure represents the bare minimum that we need to run the business for a year. This is an all or nothing fundraising drive and if we don’t reach this target, we’ll cease publishing at the end of December.

Where will all this cash go? After all, it doesn’t cost anything to set up a blog, does it? This will cover wages for two part-time staff members, fees for writers, administrative overheads, insurance — regular business expenses. It will be a bare bones operation but we’re confident that we can bring you regular content that meets our high editorial standards.

To implement our big ideas for the site, however, we’ll need something more like $300,000. Where will the difference lie? The short answer is better content — and more of it. The extra cash will allow core editorial staff to work full-time on New Matilda and expand the scope of our coverage.

We’ll be able employ more journalists to work with us on time-intensive investigative projects. We’ll be able to undertake some exciting new data analysis and visualisation projects. And we’ll be able to implement a beautiful site redesign that never saw the light of day. That’s just for starters.

If you’re a first time visitor to the site, have a look around! You can read more about our relaunch here and here.

We’ve been gratified by your offers of support and we’ll be humbled and delighted if we can meet our fundraising target. In return, we’ll do everything we can to make New Matilda worth every cent you give us.

Thanks in advance for your support!