A special memo from Daily Kos President Will Rockafellow

Friend, if you've been reading our emails then you know this year is a tough one for Daily Kos. As someone who is part of our community, I want to be honest with you about where things stand. [We have set a goal to raise $625,000 in August. We still need to raise $77,362 to reach that goal. Can you support our work with a donation of $5? Here's why your donation is vital at this time:]( [DONATE]( Daily Kos relies on three streams of revenue to cover our expenses: community fundraising, advertising, and list building, in which Democratic and progressive campaigns build their own small dollar fundraising lists. Over the past few years or so we have seen two of these three streams, advertising and list building, disrupted. This has caused our revenue to lag behind projections. As a result, earlier this year, we made deep financial cuts and other changes in hopes of putting us on a sustainable footing. Finally, after months of work we are starting to see the impacts of those changes. Since March, revenue from those lagging streams has increased each month. Unfortunately, those same two revenue streams have underperformed in July and August. This was unexpected and we are working to better understand why this happened and address those issues. The good news is that we have been able to keep our expenses below our projections, helping to mitigate our shortfall. What has been remarkable this year, is the amount of support we have received from our readers and activists. Daily Kos doesn't have a billionaire backer or part of some mega-corporation that can bail us out when things get rough. We have tens of thousands of grassroots donors giving what they can to support our work. The truth is that we prefer it this way. Our largest source of revenue are those grassroots donations. It makes us accountable to our readers and activists, rather than to big corporate advertisers or a small number of wealthy contributors. In other words, we literally cannot continue producing the quality of work you have come to expect from us without your support. [Donations of just a few dollars fuels the work Daily Kos does day in and day out. That's why I am asking, Friend, if you can support progressive, independent news you can do something about by making a donation of $5 to Daily Kos?]( [DONATE]( Keep fighting! Will Rockafellow President, Daily Kos If you wish to donate by mail instead, please send a check to Daily Kos, PO Box 70036, Oakland, CA, 94612. Contributions to Daily Kos are not tax deductible. Sent via [ActionNetwork.org](. To update your email address, change your name or address, or to stop receiving emails from Daily Kos, please [click here](.