Fundraising appeals from the nonprofit magazine Mother Jones don’t read like fundraising appeals. They can run thousands of words, eschewing the genre’s typically short, punchy prose. They frequently detail the organization’s financing with candor that might make fundraising experts cringe. And they occasionally encourage the magazine’s supporters to read and donate to nonprofit news ventures that could be considered competitors.
Fewer than half of American households give to charity, down from two-thirds in the early 2000s. Misdirected fundraising might be part of the problem. Nonprofits can help turn things around — if they work to forge stronger connections with supporters. Read more:
The goal? To show donors, regardless of how much they give, that they are part of something meaningful and important — investigative journalism that’s a check on political and financial power. “We want to have the same conversation with every donor, whether they’re giving $5 or $50,000,” says CEO Monika Bauerlein. “We want to engage with them in a high-quality thought partnership.”
This partnership has spurred the magazine’s growth, leaders say. Online revenue from first-time members — who typically make small gifts — has nearly doubled in the past six years to $1.2 million.
Journalist Turned Fundraiser
The evolution of Mother Jones’s fundraising dates to 2015, when Bauerlein, the longtime editor of the magazine with Clara Jeffery, became CEO. The veteran investigative writer had no fundraising experience; she brought to the job her skills and sensibilities as a journalist “because that’s all I’ve got,” she says.
At the time, the magazine’s appeals were fairly conventional. One read: “URGENT: Please donate $5 to nonprofit Mother Jones. (That’s like the cost of buying coffee for one of our reporters.)”
But Bauerlein, Jeffery, and their team concluded that they needed to communicate to donors in the same voice as the magazine. “A lot of fundraising messages are signed by executive directors or program staff, but they’re not necessarily written in the voice of those people,” Bauerlein says. “Fundraising is an art and a science, and there’s an incredible amount of expertise that goes into it. But we found that by melding that expertise and art and science with an authentic voice from the core of the mission, we were able to connect with our community better.”
The first significant test of this approach came when Mother Jones asked supporters to help make the organization financially whole after an expensive legal battle. Billionaire Frank VanderSloot had filed a defamation suit and other legal actions over a 2012 article and tweet from Jeffery that depicted him as “gay-bashing.” Though questioning what she called the magazine’s “non-objective bias” in the story, a judge threw out the suit in 2015. Still, the fight cost Mother Jones $650,000 in legal fees that insurance didn’t cover.
In the appeal to readers, Bauerlein and Jeffery talked candidly about the choice they faced — retract the article or face a legal battle against an opponent with money to burn. Ultimately, they said, the mission of the then-36-year-old magazine required that they stand their ground so that readers would trust the magazine as “someone [who] will stand up and go after the truth.”
The appeal brought in $350,000 and gave the magazine confidence in its new relationship with donors. The message, says then-publisher Steve Katz, moved the organization away from transactional language “to a more strategic discussion that treated donors as if they were really in the room and adults having a really meaningful conversation.”
Later the magazine embedded an appeal for monthly donors in a case study of the high price of investigative journalism. Bauerlein and Jeffery told supporters that it cost $350,000 to produce an award-winning, 35,000-word exposé of chaos and violence at a corporate-run prison, along with complementary stories and a half-dozen videos. Digital ads brought in a few thousand dollars to pay for that, and support from foundations added more, they wrote. But without reader contributions — 70 percent of all Mother Jones revenue at the time — the story would never have been written.
“Reliable, monthly contributions represent our best shot — and, we believe, your best shot — at ensuring a stable foundation for the watchdog reporting our democracy desperately needs. If you join in, you’ll be part of a big experiment that others can emulate. … So let’s see if we can do this thing.”
Within a year, the number of monthly contributors had jumped more than 160 percent, with online revenue from those donors climbing from $321,000 to $702,000.
Lifting Up Competitors
This spring, the magazine shifted donor communications in another small but symbolic way. With help from Justice Funders, which supports philanthropy focused on social justice, the magazine discarded its form gift-acknowledgment letter — a “Mother Jones-centric” message that “regurgitated the mission statement,” according to Cathy Asmus, then the magazine’s membership initiatives manager. Instead, Katz penned a lengthy note expressing gratitude but also inviting donors to “take a look” at four journalism outlets led by people of color and serving communities of color: Futuro Media Group, Sahan Journal, YR Media and MLK50: Justice Through Journalism.
Before the appeal, Katz had approached the four organizations. “I wanted to make sure we were not taking advantage of anybody and not overpromising,” he says.
To donors, he said: “Their work, like ours, is built upon passionate commitment to their communities and readers, the willingness to risk everything to get at the truth, and authentic editorial independence and transparency,” he said. We all, he added, are “part of a common movement.”
The letter didn’t generate a flood of donations to Mother Jones or the four organizations. But donors clicked through to explore the other news outlets, and some wrote to Mother Jones thanking the magazine and saying they were going to donate to the groups.
Others wrote that the effort confirmed that Mother Jones shared their values. A few recommended other groups to highlight in future letters. Says Asmus: “I hope that they felt included and that they could contribute to us in ways beyond dollars and cents — that they were helping us and helping our brain trust.”
