New Matilda needs your help to stay alive!

New Matilda has been a lively independent presence on the Australian media landscape since 2004. We offer smart analysis and investigative journalism that looks beyond the press releases and the PR guff. We set our own editorial agenda and offer our readers the kind of sharp content that is in short supply online. It’s a big job, and we can’t do it for nix. So we’re turning to our readers to stay in business.

In order to stay afloat, the minimum figure we need to raise is $175,000, although we'd like to raise more. That seems like a lot, doesn't it?  Or perhaps not. It's worth keeping in mind that we need less than 2200 readers to become regular supporters to meet this target.   

There are a number of different levels of support you can offer New Matilda - starting with a $50 Concession donation all the way up to a $1000 Big Love donation. The standard rate to become a New Matilda supporter is $80 and really keen supporters can give $150. Organisations can hop into bed with NM too: it costs $300 to do so. And of course, a New Matilda supporter package makes a great Christmas present! Just email us at [email protected] the details of the person you are buying the subscription for and we will post them a festive card plus a New Matilda poster and tote bag (while stocks last).

Not only will all supporters receive our undying thanks, there are giveaways in store for those who sign up early. We’ll be looking for new ways to reward our supporters through 2011.

You can pay via PayPal or with a credit card on this facility. Your donation will be processed and held by FundBreak until the end of the campaign. It’s a pledge system and if we don’t meet our budget target, your donation will be refunded in full. You will need to create a Fundbreak login (this is not the same as your New Matilda login), or if you already have a Facebook login you can opt to sign in with that. Once you’ve signed up, your email address will be sent to us. If you’re already registered as a NM user, we’ll upgrade you to supporter status. If you’re not, you’ll be added to our email digest list.

If you’d like to donate a larger sum, drop us a line at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you!

Our business model will operate more like a public radio station than a subscriber service. That is, we’re not going to paywall our content. Financial supporters will have the same access to content as first-time visitors and non-paying readers. We’re proud of our writers and we want their work to be read as widely as possible.

So the big question is, what do you get for giving us your hard-earned cash? Quality media. It doesn’t come cheap.

We’ve set a budget target of $175,000. This figure represents the bare minimum that we need to run the business. This is an all or nothing fundraising drive and if we don’t reach this target, we’ll cease publishing at the end of December.

Where will all this cash go? After all, it doesn’t cost anything to set up a blog, does it? This will cover wages for two part-time staff members, fees for writers, administrative overheads, insurance - regular business expenses. It will be a bare bones operation but we’re confident that we can bring you regular content that meets our high editorial standards.

To implement our big ideas for the site, however, we’ll need something more like $300,000. Where will the difference lie? The short answer is better content - and more of it. The extra cash will allow core editorial staff to work full-time on New Matilda and expand the scope of our coverage.

We’ll be able employ more journalists to work with us on time-intensive investigative projects. We’ll be able to undertake some exciting new data analysis and visualisation projects. And we’ll be able to implement a beautiful site redesign that never saw the light of day. That’s just for starters.

If you haven’t read about our relaunch, there’s more information here and here.  While you’re there, have a look around the site.

We’ve been gratified by the offers of support we’ve already received. We’ll be humbled and delighted if we can meet our fundraising target. In return, we’ll do everything we can to make New Matilda worth every cent you give us.

Thanks in advance for your support!