Contribution crisis ?

[nico]

Dear friends. I know how much a lot of you are fond of antiwar websites and without them it would be an arduous task of getting the message across. So I wouldn't dare or ever intend to dicredit them in any way.

However I have recently noticed this new trend in aquiring donor contributions from 2 very well known websites "Counterpunch.com" & Antiwar.com. They are currently trying to raise 70.000$ to keep their sites running.

My question is,
1- Why 70.000 $ ? Is running a website that costly?
2- Why they both ask for the same amount and exactly at the same time?

You can still check this out for yourself if you go to the mentined links now.

If someone has any info regarding cost issues or other technicalities please share it with us. Honestly I am getting wiered feeling about the whole thing. I hope I am not over-reacting.

[luke]

70k certainly sounds a lot - but depends on what that moneys actually going on, it can't just be to cover server costs!

[faceless]

I'm guessing the site owners want to make a wage. There's just no way that either site needs $70000 - you could do with putting the links in though...

www.counterpunch.com
www.antiwar.com

edit: just looking at antiwar (for the very first time) they're saying they need $70000 every three months. That's just outlandish.

[nico]

Well the only thing they say, is to cover the costs. If I were a donor I sure would want more details than that. If the site owners want to make a wage, they should be honest about it and just say it.

[Mandy]

I feel that I have to defend both sites.

http://www.antiwar.com/index9876.html
"On the first eight days of our drive, 912 of you gave a total of $49,237" that is $54 per person (approx £26). Assuming a person makes 1 contribution per year, that does not seem bad. Looking at where they spend the money, even assuming it is raised every 3 month, that is $280,000 per year, or approx £136,600. Looking at the large number of contributors (and ignoring all other costs, including hosting, radio broadcasting etc), then the amount per year per contributor is probably below the minimum wage.

Indeed, good luck to them if they are offering something which people think is valuable enough to make a contribution, when they could leech it for free. At least it means the offer something which their readers want, and are not being influenced by corporate advertising.

p.s. Faceless : I must be missisng the section about every three months.

[faceless]

I think they're playing on people's sentimentality and that they are directly profitting from the war...

I'm not sure what your p.s. means Mandy.

[nico]

Mandy, if you go to Antiwar.com and not antiwar.com/index9876.html, you'll see that they say "this quarter's fundraiser" so probabely they'll need more soon.

[Mandy]

Thanks Nico. That's what I meant when I asked faceless where did he see it mention about the 3 months. I do agree that for this level of collections, they they should have been clearer where is the money going. For example, Wikipedia publishes full breakdowns, and that is truely huge/global.

[Mandy]

http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff11202007.html says the $70,000 is Annual.

[nekokate]

Why doesn't someone ask them?

[nico]

Good idea. Will you be kind enough to do that for us!
Thank you.

[faceless]

Can I just make it clear for anyone who's bothered - any extra donations that I receive for this site go towards me going out drinking. Pretending that server costs are so expensive is just crass.