My talk with our CFO.

What happens if we come up short?   [Mother Jones]( MoJo Reader, I was giving our chief financial officer, Madeleine, an update on our hugely important fundraising drive the other day, and as we were talking, I realized it was a conversation worth bringing you all up to speed on. But before the illustrative Q&A with her, the brass-tacks: Our fiscal year ends a week from today, on June 30, and we still need to raise about $190,000 in [online donations]( to finish our budget at break-even, or as close as we possibly can. We've already cut $1 million in expenses, and we simply can't afford to come up short. It truly is crunch time for us, and we urgently need you to [support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed donation if you can right now](. Whether you can pitch in [$5 or $500](, it all matters and allows our team to do the type of in-depth reporting the moment demands, that you don't find in many other places. Bottom line: It's [tough]( right [now](. And there is nothing else, other than [support from our readers](, that can keep us going strong. There is no backup. No largesse. No secret benefactor. And with just a week left, we're just now barely over halfway to our $390,000 June goal. The $190,000 question on Madeleine’s mind, is, no surprise, "Brian, are we going to make it?" I honestly don't know. We usually see a spike in giving as a deadline draws near, but $190,000 in only a week is a bigger spike than normal, so it's going to be even more of a nail-biter than normal, and that's why we've been saying all along that we need more help than normal. And I do know this: We need to see a strong response to this email. If it doesn’t nudge a good many of you to [click these links and pitch in](, it will feel highly implausible to get close enough for comfort by this time next week. Yikes. [Please, please please please, help us keep going strong with a donation if you can right now](. So, what happens if we come up well short? That's what I wanted you to hear straight from Madeleine about—here's a read-out of our illuminating conversation. How are you? It must be tough with just a week left and a good amount of money you're banking on still yet to materialize. It's stressful, for sure. There's so much uncertainty. But it could be worse, because almost every other news organization out there is reducing staff and at times even going out of business or being stripped for parts. I feel a lot of responsibility to keep Mother Jones on a stable financial path not only for the benefit of our staff and their families—which is hugely important to me—but also because of the important work we do, work that’s needed now more than ever. So despite the challenges, I'm staying optimistic and as motivated as ever to make it all work. We all are. What's the hardest part of managing our finances? We have little reserves to fall back on during tough times—and it’s been "tough times" for a long time in the news business. We strongly believe in investing in our mission, our reporting, instead of stashing money away in bank accounts, because that's what our donors want us to do: journalism. That means we’re always managing at the margins, scrambling to make sure the money we spend in a given year balances out with what we can bring in by the end of that year, and we really feel the impact when the economy turns, inflation skyrockets, or after years of support institutional funders decide to focus their efforts on something else. With limited resources, it’s a constant juggling of both cash as well as priorities. [Lend a hand, help Madeleine juggle it all, and pitch in](. What are some of the most painful cuts we've had to make this year to ratchet things down and be able to realistically, hopefully, break-even by next Friday? Pausing our staff hiring is number one. Like you and Monika [wrote about](, we have important and impactful positions open that we are unable to fill given the financial uncertainty. Professional development budgets have had to be reduced, and that hurts too. As does limiting travel unless absolutely critical for a reporting project, or it's likely to pay off in sales or donor support of some kind that come out of it. Now that we can have important meetings in-person again after the pandemic, it's such a bummer we can't often do that. What are some of the more picayune cuts that show how frugal we've been in looking under every rock for savings? Two come to mind: We send all vendor payments out digitally instead of in envelopes and have converted almost all our accounting files to digital—you wouldn't think it, but it took a lot of work for our finance team to do this. It’s worth it because it will save money and paper year after year. And we increased our computer replacement timeline by two years unless an upgrade is absolutely critical. Related to that, we've also been unable to invest in more robust tech tools our staff would love to have at their disposal. How about the most surprising expense that has skyrocketed? Hands-down, the paper we print our magazine on—it's gone up 50 percent. Our former production manager, Claudia, wrote a whole post about it this time last year, and it's only gone up since then. It'soddly fascinating](, even if infuriating, and includes a scene from when we found out that 70,000 pounds of frozen paper were stuck on a train between the mill in the Pacific Northwest and the printer in Wisconsin. It really shows the unglamorous and hugely challenging behind-the-scenes work it takes to keep our operation going. What happens if we come up well short in the next week? That's such a hard one. 72 percent of our budget are fixed costs—personnel, offices, and things that don't have any wiggle room. And even the 28 percent that's "discretionary" isn't really discretionary for us, like the costs of paper and postage for our magazine or the mailings we send out…those things are essential for bringing in readers and money. If we come up short, but pretty close, we can roll that into next year's budget and cross our fingers we can make it up. If we came up shorter than seems possible for that, we can take on debt—but given the rough state of journalism and that I saw first-hand how hard it is to get out of debt when I joined MoJo, in 2002, that's not something we'd do lightly. [Help us get there, or "pretty close," with a donation today](. What would make managing a newsroom like MoJo's finances easier? What would be transformative? In the realm of things that are possible, so no buckets of cash falling into our lap, a few things would help so much. First, growing the base of some 6,000 [monthly sustaining donors would be huge](. Right now, we bring in about $74,000 a month in these monthly gifts and the predictability of that revenue is divine given the uncertainty of everything else. Folks whoinclude]([Mother Jones]([in their wills and estate plans]( is profoundly helpful too, since it's often unexpected and can be quite sizable—and the research shows most "legacy donors" are not wealthy folks who give a lot in their lifetimes, but can make a huge impact with their legacy. And of course, a reserve fund or endowment of sorts would make it less make-or-break to hit these aggressive fundraising targets every year when the industry is in a downturn. We had one of those started not long ago…and then a billionaire megadonorsued us]( and we had to use it to (successfully) defend ourselves and the truth. Anything else you'd like to share with readers? Just immense gratitude from myself and all of us who crunch the numbers around here. It's easy to lose sight of the people behind those dollars and cents in our spreadsheets, and it's touching to pause and realize that people from all walks of life are behind it all. We get a lot of notes from folks who can't afford to donate, but tell us they'll go without something else in their budget for a month so they can pitch in $10, $15, $20 during these high-stakes campaigns. That's incredible. It really is the people—our team here, and our readers—that keep me at Mother Jones when there are faaaaaaaaar easier jobs, or semi-retirement, I've pondered over the years. [Donate](   [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