No cute headlines or manipulative BS for this one.

Just the facts about why this matters.   [Mother Jones]( MoJo Reader, This is a pivotal moment, and there are so many ways we could go about kicking off our year-end fundraising campaign and explaining why [your donations]( are so important right now. But a big reason you read Mother Jones is because our reporting is loyal to the facts, and so facts it’s going to be. December is make-or-break for our fundraising. We have an ambitious $350,000 goal that we have to hit this month. And thanks to an incredibly generous pledge from a donor who knew financial headwinds were on the horizon, [all online donations will be matched dollar for dollar]( until we hit that number. If you can afford to pitch in, [please make a year-end donation today](. It will be doubled and go twice as far. If you can't afford to, you can give us a different type of gift: [Sharing what makes Mother Jones worth reading to you]( and helping us refine our pitch. We're trying a community-driven, matter-of-fact approach in asking you to [support our work this month](, because our fall fundraising campaign came up about $100,000 short, which is tough for an already lean organization like MoJo. And when we asked you how we can better go about raising [the money]( it takes to keep Mother Jones charging hard, we learned so much. You told us to better explain what this is all about. Why is Mother Jones different from the other news outlets you see? How do donations from readers help us do our hard-hitting journalism? You also told us the sheer volume of overwrought fundraising requests from campaigns, especially during the midterms, was overwhelming. So in "[No Cute Headlines or Manipulative BS](," we stripped everything down to its core and tried to explain why [your donations to Mother Jones are so important right now](. We're also going to keep these emails short and focused on the task at hand, because growing our donor base is of critical importance, and we hope a simplified approach will make it easier to digest. Here's a quick summary of [our explainer]( as we kick off this pivotal time for our fundraising: We write about our budget (74 percent comes from [donations big and small]( this year) and skyrocketing expenses (paper, postage, good lawyers—all way up). We explain what being founded as a nonprofit 46 years ago means for our journalism (pretty much everything), and what our namesake, Mary Harris "Mother" Jones, has to do with it. We share our editorial priorities (democracy, democracy, and democracy) and what your fellow readers have told us makes our reporting valuable to them ("Other news organizations feed the mind. MoJo supports the heart and soul…"). And we ask you, our community of readers, to [weigh in]( on how we can best explain what makes this journalism unique, and valuable, because messages from readers were some of the most effective emails we sent of late. The fundamental truth of it all is this: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never fund the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. And advertising revenue, market forces, or profit-driven ownership groups will never make time-intensive, in-depth reporting viable. Not a day goes by right now without a news organization announcing layoffs or even shutting down. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you. If you can afford to right now, this is an important time to join your fellow readers who support our work and make [a year-end gift, when your donation will be doubled and go twice as far](. Because another fundamental truth is: We simply cannot afford to come up short again. We have a considerable gap to make up, and it's essential we hit our $350,000 goal. January is when we'll need to start deciding whether we can keep doing the work we're doing, or have to pull back so we can finish our fiscal year, in June, square. As dire as it sounds, writing "[No Cute Headlines or Manipulative BS](" with my colleague Brian, who works mostly behind the scenes and is responsible for the online fundraising line-item in our budget, has been a rewarding, refreshing exercise in laying out how this all works because of what you told us a few months ago. And we sure hope it works to earn [the support of more readers right now](. It’s been a challenging several years for all of us, and we can’t express how grateful we are for you and the entire Mother Jones community. Processing the news with you all, hearing from you, learning about what MoJo means to you, just having an outlet to write about the world, is such a gift. Whether or not you can afford to [pitch in]( this month, we're so glad you're with us for all the hard work ahead. Thanks for reading, and for everything you do to make Mother Jones what it is. [Monika] Monika Bauerlein, CEO Mother Jones [Donate]( P.S. Our dream scenario is growing our base of nearly 6,000 readers who [support our work with monthly donations](, so we rely less on make-or-break campaigns like we are this month.   [Mother Jones]( [Donate]( [Donate Monthly]( [Subscribe]( This message was sent to {EMAIL}. To change the messages you receive from us, you can [edit your email preferences]( or [unsubscribe from all mailings.]( For advertising opportunities see our online [media kit.]( Were you forwarded this email? [Sign up for Mother Jones' newsletters today.]( [www.MotherJones.com]( PO Box 8539, Big Sandy, TX 75755