Dear readers,
Our fundraising campaign has now closed and although we didn’t reach our target of $175,000, we got damn close, raising $151,458! There has been an amazing surge in donations over the last two days and — golly — even over the last two hours.
And in a last minute development, we have been offered an interest-free loan to make up the shortfall. It’s been nail-biting stuff.
We’re very grateful but this arrangement is not ideal: it means we’ll be working hard in 2011 to make that money back and then some.
We need to take some time to consider what this will mean for NM and crunch the numbers before we decide whether we can take up the offer. We’re still very keen to hear from a major donor to help us through.
The fundraising campaign has now closed for all new donations, and your money will continue to be held by Fundbreak for the next two days.
In that time we will take another look at our budget to see if we can afford to relaunch in 2011 with the money raised and a 15 per cent loan. We’ll make an announcement on the site on Friday to let you know the verdict. If NM does fold, all money will be returned directly to donors.
We know you’ll all have a lot of questions about this but right now, we’ve got work to do and decisions to make. We’ll have the answers for you on Friday arvo.
Regardless of what happens, we would like to take this chance to say a huge thank you to all readers who have supported us financially. We have been overwhelmed by the response to our campaign. Although we didn’t quite make our target, we are still the most successful crowd-funded project in Australia — and we couldn’t have done it without you.
Thanks are due to everyone who has helped us with this campaign. The readers who have tireslessly spread the word about NM and drummed up support for the site are in our debt.
For those of you who pledged money while our payment facility was down late last week, the Fundbreak campaign will remain open to you until 5pm on Friday to receive your pledged donations. This money has already been added to our total, so please do follow through with your pledge. We’ll be needing all the help we can get!
Watch this space for more news on Friday.