Mothers News Fundraiser- Where does the money go?

hi, we got a few queries regarding our current fundraiser about “where does the money go”, and since people love to ask about money and the newspaper, i thought i’d take some time out and address this.

the basic business model of the Mothers News is that we give it out for free and charge for ads. for the past two years this has worked out really great- we are able to pay our printing and mailing costs, make promotional materials (stickers), pay rent on the Mothers News office, and pay the Managing Editor (me) enough to buy food and (some) books. we also pay our Providence newsie JMO $50 to drive the paper around. while there have been tight times, and certainly no one has become monetarily rich, i definitely have NO COMPLAINTS. the paper is really a dream, it’s my only job, i do whatever i want, we have an amazing readership, an incredible bunch of contributors, and wonderful things (known and most likely also unknown) have happened as a result of the paper, no complaints.

Anyway, in the past few months the stresses of editing the paper began to accumulate, and it became necessary to hire someone else to help out. so that’s what we did. of course we were already operating extremely close to the wire, so we needed another income stream to pay them, hence the fundraiser. so: the initial $5000 goal of the fundraiser will pay for one year of administrative assistance. i should repeat- this is a necessary expenditure. making the paper is a lot of work, and while it’s not too much for one person to do, it is too much for one person to do forever. in the interest of continuing the paper, we needed to hire on. and given that, we need to pay that person. the $5000 will make sure that this person is always paid (at the current budget that’s $11 an hour, 8 hours a week). for the time being, my own salary will remain dependent on hustle (selling ads).

any money raised after the initial $5000 will mostly go towards the following objectives:

• new(ish) laptop computer – the first couple months of the paper were made on an EeePC 701 (current retail $25), plugged into an external monitor. after that we were gifted an older mac tower from our friends at the Participatory Culture Foundation. we would like to get a newish laptop in the $300 range. I should also say that we are currently accepting donations of newish, basically not-fucked-up laptops (email MN@mothersnews.net). this would be extremely helpful.
• savings – as a business-like entity, it seems prudent to try and sock away $300. i feel like there were a lot of situations in the past two years where if we had had $300 we could’ve done something that would recoup the money and then some. damn we were kicking ourselves for not having a swingable $300 (or less) a bunch of times! this is for things like investing in merchandise, travel expenses to trade shows and performances, printing projects other than the paper, stuff like that. also just a general safety net, haven’t had one of those in a long time!
• distribution – it costs us $131 to send monthly bundles of Mothers News to a new city for a full year. so after the laptop thing and the savings thing, every extra $131 we raise could send the paper to a new city.

i guess that’s it? if things really go far out then we start talking about hiring more people, which would be incredible. if you want to talk more about money, call me up, and we’ll talk about money!

MOTHERS NEWS YEAR 3

admin | June 1, 2012
Tags: money, Mothers News, Real Talk, year 3 update
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