NPQ is over halfway to its goal of $250,000! Thanks to you, we’ve raised $134,732! But that means we have $115,268 left to go by the end of August. To the rest of our wonderful readers, jump in the pool with us!

Consider this testament from a donor:

“In the daily deluge of emails, I always open NPQ first because I know I will get timely, thoughtful news and analysis about the important issues facing the nonprofit sector. NPQ is a credible, high-quality and urgently needed resource that informs our work as nonprofit practitioners. I encourage all of us to chip in to keep this unique resource going strong. It’s time to put our money where our hearts, minds and mouths are by supporting NPQ today.”

Mariana Moore, NPQ donor

Who Is Giving and How Much?

We have received hundreds of donations at last count ranging in size from $2,000 to $10 dollars but most, incredibly were for $100 or more. We are humbled by every single dollar of every single one of all of these contributions.

Give Now and Catch the Wave

If you haven’t given to NPQ yet, do it now while it will be matched!

Answer to a Donor Question: So What Does NPQ Need $250,000 For?

Some of you have asked us why we need $250K so urgently and what the money will be used for. The short answer is that NPQ is a publisher, and a nonprofit one at that. All of publishing is actively experimenting with their revenue models. This is all well and good if you are well capitalized, but if you are not . . . well, sometimes you can end up running thinner than thin.

Interestingly, NPQ is publishing more content, and being read daily by more of your peers, than ever before. Our audience is growing by leaps and bounds. Our advertising will double in 2012 from what it was in 2011. But a few other categories of revenue have done less well than expected. This is unsurprising—we had to take some risks in what is largely an untested business model industrywide.

In the end though, our plan has always called for NPQ to rely increasingly on support from its community as it grows. So, although we wish that we had not come to you in such urgent need, going to you for your contributions is a core part of our revenue strategy. In coming to our readers we join others in publishing—as well as in television and radio—who understand that a healthy chunk of reader support spread among the community is the best possible type of revenue to ensure editorial independence and fearlessness.

But we are not relying solely on you. While we raise this much-needed short-term revenue, we’re working on capital funding that will allow us to complete what has been a major transformation both of our publishing and our business.

As for what the money will be used for, it will allow NPQ to continue publishing every day through the end of the year while we work on building a stable budget capable of sustaining what is increasingly a world-class, albeit not currently well-heeled, publishing effort

We’re planning on being around for a long time! Here’s a short summary of our strategy.

NPQ’s 2012–2015 Business Plan Is Based on Four Principles

  • Attract a wider market of civically engaged actors with content that is useful and relevant to the evolving environment and their evolving practice within it—and is both credible and cutting-edge;
  • Create a model in which most of the income is derived from those who make use of and contribute to the content, making the publication a creature of its market’s needs;
  • Build revenue streams that are renewable and pooled from many sources but derived from just one primary and one secondary transaction type, keeping the core business infrastructure small; and
  • Base the collaborative publishing model on a small editorial staff that is responsible for recruiting, guiding, and editing multiple editorial partners, from lay journalists to media and investigative partners, keeping the editorial masthead relatively small.

Thank you for your support, your challenging questions, and for reading!

Sincerely,

Kristin Barrali, Publisher, and Ruth McCambridge, Editor in Chief