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C4SS Fundraiser Continues

At Center for a Stateless Society, our fundraiser for the period from ca. October 20 through the end of January continues. Director Brad Spangler just issued a payment bringing us up to date through the end of October -- welcome to all of us who write content or provide skilled support of various kinds for the Center. That means we're in the process of collecting funds so that all of us will get paid for the work we did in November.

If you're of a mind to contribute, you can simply click the donation widget on any page of the C4SS website.

And thanks to all of you whose support has kept us going!

Update: Brad has just issued another payment taking us halfway through November. We're on the move again! Please help us keep up the momentum.

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First Quarter C4SS 2011 Fundraiser: Help!

Brad Spangler announces a fundraiser to cover the operating expenses of Center for a Stateless Society (C4SS) from late October 2010 through January 2011. The target is $8000 by March 31, which includes $500 for the remainder of October and $2500 per month for the period through the end of January.

As Director Brad Spangler points out, almost all of this goes toward paying the writers as well as the folks engaged in various support activities.

Under the heading of "support," we can include -- for example -- Thomas Knapp, who's compiled an email distribution list of thousands of newspapers grouped by country and by region of the United States. He distributes all of C4SS's material every week and handles dealings with a whole buttload of op-ed editors, and has managed to regularly get C4SS material into a growing number of print outlets. I strongly suspect this entails a lot more than the twenty hours a week he's budgeted for, at barely minimum wage.

For my part, I've asked Brad to reduce the request for January by $50 in order to accommodate a cutback in my research paper to two a year rather than four. And starting today, I'll be cutting back my commentay by two pieces a week.

I've cut back in part because I find it difficult to come up with fresh ideas for three op-ed pieces a week.

But I've also been ruminating in recent months on the fact that our fundraisers have consistently fallen short of their goals, month after month, and we keep falling further and further behind in paying for operations. We're three months behind in payments to our writers and support staff, and at the rate it's been going we'll keep falling further behind every month.

If contributors make it clear, month after month, that they don't think it's worthwhile to contribute the full amount of funding our operations, it seems to me that the only solution is to adjust our output downward to what people are willing to contribute.

To quote Brad,

The matter of whether or not to support us really boils down to a simple question: Do you think our folks deserve to get paid for what they do?

...Tomorrow is Groundhog’s Day and we have people who haven’t been paid yet for work they did before Halloween of last year.

You can contribute by clicking on the fundraising widget on any page at http://c4ss.org/

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