Znet needs your help!
Znet | 30.09.2004 00:38 | Free Spaces | Indymedia | Social Struggles | World
We need to increase our revenues immediately to stave off growing costs that threaten our existence. Accomplishing that goal includes taking special steps such as posting this on our homepage
Znet needs your help!
by Znet Wednesday September 29, 2004 at 04:58 PM
We need to increase our revenues immediately to stave off growing costs that threaten our existence. Accomplishing that goal includes taking special steps such as posting this on our homepage
Since we have never had access to corporate or even patron donors (our politics preclude this), we depend on you, our online users, to help us with our current financial emergency.
If you are among those who think we should have a future, like those who are quoted in the two surrounding columns of text, please choose one of the following ways to help us out.
(1) Send us a one time donation by credit card.
Click Here to donate one-time by credit card - you can select from different amounts, etc.
(2) Send us a one-time donation by check.
Please send any check donations for this campaign to:
Z Fund Raising Program
18 Millfield St.
Woods Hole, MA 02543
(3) Become a periodic contributor as a Z Sustainer.
Z has been providing an ad-free forum for progressive writers and activists for over 17 years. Please help us through this emergency by giving generously.
Here's thanking you
in advance for your support!
Michael Albert, Daniel Morduchowicz, Lydia Sargent, Andy Dunn, and Eric Sargent
http://www.zmag.org/weluser.htm
************************************
A Personal Message
From Noam Chomsky
We live in an era of media concentration, vast efforts on many fronts (political, economic, military, ideological) to insulate state and private power from critical discussion or even popular awareness, and to reduce citizens to isolated atomized creatures restricted to satisfying personal 'created wants.' This massive and coordinated campaign has been partially successful, but only in a limited way.
The range and scope and dedication of popular activism has also increased, all over the world, reaching a level of international solidarity and mutual support that has never been seen before. The basic conflicts are very old, but they have taken quite dramatic and significant new forms, and the stakes are far higher than ever before. It is, regrettably, no exaggeration to say that the survival of the species is at risk -- and many others with it. We all know why.
The popular movements are the hope for a decent future. They of course have to have access to information and modes of interaction. In addition to alternative print and video, to a very large extent they have relied on the internet, which allows people to escape from the constraints of the doctrinal systems, to explore and investigate and discuss crucial issues with one another, to plan and organize.
Z and ZNet have played a crucial role in serving all of these functions. I see that every day. I travel and speak constantly, in the U.S. and abroad, and spend many hours a day just responding to inquiries and comments. I constantly discover that the people and organizations I come in contact with are relying very substantially on Z projects for information, discussion, and opportunities for interaction and organizing, to an extent that is quite remarkable. It also is an invaluable resource for me personally, in all of these respects, and also in my case for providing a forum for intense and very constructive discussion, the only one I regularly participate in. And for posting articles, interviews, commentaries, etc., of mine. I know that many others have very much the same experience.
It is of inestimable importance, in my judgment, that Z and ZNet continue to flourish and expand, not to mention their growing video efforts and incomparable media school, arguably the most exciting and instructive I have ever encountered. Again, I do not think it is possible to exaggerate the stakes. I hope that all of us who are committed to resisting and reversing the powerful currents of reaction and oppression and violence, and showing that another world is indeed possible, will contribute as best we can to ensure that the remarkable achievements of Z and ZNet will be carried forward.
Noam Chomsky
U.S.
More About Z's Financial Situation
Some people have asked about the reasons for the change in Z's financial picture.
With operations like ours -- a giant site, a monthly magazine, a school, and a video production and distribution operation -- a huge number of factors are always in play, but, the main features can be communicated here.
Almost all costs steadily and slowly rise for us just as they do for everyone else -- bandwidth, printing, mailing, shipping, replacing equipment, rent, even utilities, as well as diverse costs regarding ZMI like food for attendees, etc.
A second broad component of increasing costs has more to do with expansion. After doing the work described above for 15 years with two full-time and one part-time employee, we have added two more employees to help out.
On the revenue side, while costs of producing Z Magazine have increased, we have not raised the subscription price in over ten years. At the same time, the costs of doing the mailings to maintain our subscriber base have become prohibitive so our circulation figures have remained the same for the last three years. Likewise, donation revenues have risen only very little due to difficult economic times.
The effect of all the above is that we are now losing roughly, on average about $7,000 a month, a rate of loss we cannot sustain long.
So that's the problem that we must overcome.
To be safe, we feel we need to improve Z's overall cashflow situation by at least $10,000 and perhaps as much as $12,000 a month.
We feel we can cut about $3,000 a month with a change in printer and with various other cost cutting efforts in-house, all without sacrificing product and this is all underway.
We hope to raise the total donations received from our current Sustainer community by about $4,000 a month via increased donation levels, a project that is now underway.
We also think we can increase video surpluses, though this will entail some initial expenditures beyond early returns, and thus a period of debits.
At any rate, to round things out, beyond all the above we are hoping to generate at least $3,000 a month and ideally as much as $5,000 a month or more new revenues via this broad appeal to ZNet users.
To do that will require roughly 1,000 new sustainers, or quite a few thousand one-time donors, or both.
So it is now up to you!
Over the course of a month a reasonable estimate is that roughly a half million people, perhaps more, use ZNet. For survival,will one in five hundred of those people to help? For major growth, will one in five help?
Your reactions will govern the outcome.
www.zmag.org/weluser.htm
by Znet Wednesday September 29, 2004 at 04:58 PM
We need to increase our revenues immediately to stave off growing costs that threaten our existence. Accomplishing that goal includes taking special steps such as posting this on our homepage
Since we have never had access to corporate or even patron donors (our politics preclude this), we depend on you, our online users, to help us with our current financial emergency.
If you are among those who think we should have a future, like those who are quoted in the two surrounding columns of text, please choose one of the following ways to help us out.
(1) Send us a one time donation by credit card.
Click Here to donate one-time by credit card - you can select from different amounts, etc.
(2) Send us a one-time donation by check.
Please send any check donations for this campaign to:
Z Fund Raising Program
18 Millfield St.
Woods Hole, MA 02543
(3) Become a periodic contributor as a Z Sustainer.
Z has been providing an ad-free forum for progressive writers and activists for over 17 years. Please help us through this emergency by giving generously.
Here's thanking you
in advance for your support!
Michael Albert, Daniel Morduchowicz, Lydia Sargent, Andy Dunn, and Eric Sargent
http://www.zmag.org/weluser.htm ************************************
A Personal Message
From Noam Chomsky
We live in an era of media concentration, vast efforts on many fronts (political, economic, military, ideological) to insulate state and private power from critical discussion or even popular awareness, and to reduce citizens to isolated atomized creatures restricted to satisfying personal 'created wants.' This massive and coordinated campaign has been partially successful, but only in a limited way.
The range and scope and dedication of popular activism has also increased, all over the world, reaching a level of international solidarity and mutual support that has never been seen before. The basic conflicts are very old, but they have taken quite dramatic and significant new forms, and the stakes are far higher than ever before. It is, regrettably, no exaggeration to say that the survival of the species is at risk -- and many others with it. We all know why.
The popular movements are the hope for a decent future. They of course have to have access to information and modes of interaction. In addition to alternative print and video, to a very large extent they have relied on the internet, which allows people to escape from the constraints of the doctrinal systems, to explore and investigate and discuss crucial issues with one another, to plan and organize.
Z and ZNet have played a crucial role in serving all of these functions. I see that every day. I travel and speak constantly, in the U.S. and abroad, and spend many hours a day just responding to inquiries and comments. I constantly discover that the people and organizations I come in contact with are relying very substantially on Z projects for information, discussion, and opportunities for interaction and organizing, to an extent that is quite remarkable. It also is an invaluable resource for me personally, in all of these respects, and also in my case for providing a forum for intense and very constructive discussion, the only one I regularly participate in. And for posting articles, interviews, commentaries, etc., of mine. I know that many others have very much the same experience.
It is of inestimable importance, in my judgment, that Z and ZNet continue to flourish and expand, not to mention their growing video efforts and incomparable media school, arguably the most exciting and instructive I have ever encountered. Again, I do not think it is possible to exaggerate the stakes. I hope that all of us who are committed to resisting and reversing the powerful currents of reaction and oppression and violence, and showing that another world is indeed possible, will contribute as best we can to ensure that the remarkable achievements of Z and ZNet will be carried forward.
Noam Chomsky
U.S.
More About Z's Financial Situation
Some people have asked about the reasons for the change in Z's financial picture.
With operations like ours -- a giant site, a monthly magazine, a school, and a video production and distribution operation -- a huge number of factors are always in play, but, the main features can be communicated here.
Almost all costs steadily and slowly rise for us just as they do for everyone else -- bandwidth, printing, mailing, shipping, replacing equipment, rent, even utilities, as well as diverse costs regarding ZMI like food for attendees, etc.
A second broad component of increasing costs has more to do with expansion. After doing the work described above for 15 years with two full-time and one part-time employee, we have added two more employees to help out.
On the revenue side, while costs of producing Z Magazine have increased, we have not raised the subscription price in over ten years. At the same time, the costs of doing the mailings to maintain our subscriber base have become prohibitive so our circulation figures have remained the same for the last three years. Likewise, donation revenues have risen only very little due to difficult economic times.
The effect of all the above is that we are now losing roughly, on average about $7,000 a month, a rate of loss we cannot sustain long.
So that's the problem that we must overcome.
To be safe, we feel we need to improve Z's overall cashflow situation by at least $10,000 and perhaps as much as $12,000 a month.
We feel we can cut about $3,000 a month with a change in printer and with various other cost cutting efforts in-house, all without sacrificing product and this is all underway.
We hope to raise the total donations received from our current Sustainer community by about $4,000 a month via increased donation levels, a project that is now underway.
We also think we can increase video surpluses, though this will entail some initial expenditures beyond early returns, and thus a period of debits.
At any rate, to round things out, beyond all the above we are hoping to generate at least $3,000 a month and ideally as much as $5,000 a month or more new revenues via this broad appeal to ZNet users.
To do that will require roughly 1,000 new sustainers, or quite a few thousand one-time donors, or both.
So it is now up to you!
Over the course of a month a reasonable estimate is that roughly a half million people, perhaps more, use ZNet. For survival,will one in five hundred of those people to help? For major growth, will one in five help?
Your reactions will govern the outcome.
www.zmag.org/weluser.htm
Znet
Homepage:
http://www.zmag.org/weluser.htm