Dear reader,
I’m completely flabbergasted, and I don’t know what to do!
As you know, last week we launched a very critical fundraising campaign. The idea is simple enough. If 3500 of our readers donate ANY amount by July 2, one of our generous supporters has promised to donate an extra $75,000!
We desperately need that money to expand our pro-life and pro-family reporting. And yet, here we are, already halfway into the campaign, and donations are only trickling in!
This is a complete mystery to me! After all, if you look at the numbers, it seems like hitting our goal should be easy!
Consider this:
- Just yesterday, 157,184 people visited LifeSiteNews, where they accessed 208,206 pages.
- Since our fundraising campaign began June 18, 9 days ago, 745,775 people have visited LifeSiteNews and they accessed 1,050,182 of our pages.
- On top of that, the LifeSiteNews We Can End Abortion Facebook page (240,000 likes) achieved a reach of 1,062,778 for the past week (that means over 1 million people saw our posts on Facebook) and the LifeSiteNews.com Facebook page’s (41,122 likes) weekly total reach was 230,756.
- We also operate a We Can Defend Marriage Facebook page (29,000 likes) and a new Catholics Restoring Culture page (8,000 likes)
Sorry if all those numbers made your eyes glaze over. But here’s what’s so odd:
Despite the many hundreds of thousands who have visited our site since the beginning of this campaign, so far only 1,455 have donated!
And that’s not for lack of trying! Our campaign has been highly visible and well-promoted, featuring a first-class campaign video that explains our current situation. Meanwhile, the positive feedback from many of our readers has been non-stop!
Here is what one rather blunt reader had to say about this:
“I find it strange that out of millions of viewers that you can only get 1,100 plus donations. If everyone would just donate one dollar. Maybe that would be a better approach. Thank you for all your wondrous work. I personally believe that it will take DIRECT DIVINE INTERVENTION to solve the problem. You do have my feeble prayers.”
Over and over again I speak with readers who, because of the impressiveness of LifeSiteNews.com and the quality work of our journalists, assume we are funded by some big organization or wealthy donors. We aren't.
When I tell them that we are almost entirely funded by average readers, and that we barely get by from month to month, they are amazed.
The Internet is a hard venue on which to raise funds, unless you are a Barack Obama with all the most cutting edge data collection tools and countless marketing gurus behind you who know how to bring in multi-millions.
First of all, we MUST reach that goal of 3500 donors. Only then will we receive the much-needed $75,000 promised by a supporter.
That supporter was concerned that while our readership has exploded, our donor support base has not kept up – not even close! But without more people supporting our organization, we simply won’t be able to sustain the growth. Our already overworked staff can’t handle any more. We need to expand!
Secondly, although we have not stated it as a published goal for this campaign, we need to raise a minimum of $150,000 (excluding the potential extra $75,000 promised if we reach the number of donors goal). Currently, we are $84,000 short of the needed funds.
What will it take to convince those of you who have not yet donated to do so right now?
This service is unlike anything you will find anywhere else. Thousands have confirmed that already by supporting our work with a generous donation.
I hope this letter has convinced many people who have never thought of donating to LifeSiteNews, to make a donation of ANY AMOUNT. Today. Right Now!
Please, click here to make a secure online donation using our very easy donation form. $5, $10, $25, $50, $100, $250, $1,000, $5,000 – whatever you can afford!
For our U.S. readers, we want to emphasize that your donation is tax-deductible.
You can also make a donation by phone or mail. Instructions can be found by clicking here.
What we do with those donations is amazing. There is literally NO ONE ELSE who is doing what LifeSiteNews.com is doing to defend the Culture of Life and Family through truthful, professional, timely, and comprehensive news reporting.
It is a win-win for you, the LifeSiteNews team, and especially for the cause of restoring a culture of life and family.
For life, family and the TRUTH,
Steve Jalsevac
Co-Founder
LifeSiteNews.com
P.S. As always, we ask all of you to pray for the success of this campaign and to pray for the LifeSiteNews team as they continue to undertake their challenging role of tackling some of the most difficult news stories that most others will not or cannot cover.