Paste Hits Halfway Point in Campaign To Raise $300,000
May 21, 2009 | 8:25 amFresh Loaf has a press release from Paste Magazine announcing that it has reached the halfway point in a campaign to raise $300,000 to keep the music magazine afloat.
So far we have raised $148,000! That was the minimum that we needed to keep us going into the summer; we never expected to hit this goal so quickly. Thank you! We have the most amazing readers in the world, and we now know—in a very real way—that we hold this thing called Paste in trust for you and will work diligently to honor that.
We still have a ways to go. Most of our debt will be paid out of revenues when the economy starts to rebound and advertisers return, but we need $300,000 to take care of bills that spiraled up during the ad slump. We’re halfway to that goal and more confident than ever that Paste will make it.
As a way of saying thanks for donating, Paste is giving charitible readers access to over 120 tracks in the Paste Station Download Vault…and the list of artists seems to just keep growing! Click here to donate.
“As a way of saying thanks for donating, Paste is giving charitible readers access to over 120 tracks in the Paste Station Download Vault…and the list of artists seems to just keep growing! Click here to donate.”
This, to me, is the big difference between what Paste is doing and what Wordsmith’s did. Giving money to Wordsmith’s was like throwing money down a hole. I went and bought a couple of full price books from them during that time, but that was as far as I was willing to go in terms of support.
Here you’re actually getting some pretty awesome stuff for your donation (in addition to the ever-growing collection of pretty damn awesome musical rarities, you’re also entered into daily contests for cool prizes). So even if they failed tomorrow, I’d at least feel like I got something for my donation. Though I certainly hope they DON’T fail tomorrow, and it sure doesn’t look like they will.
And before someone chimes in with “THAT MONEY COULD HAVE GONE TO A HOMELESS DIABETIC BIPOLAR ENVIRONMENTALLY SUSTAINABLE AIDS CANCER RESEARCH WOMEN’S SHELTER!!!” please know that I donate to those causes as well.
this story has gone national and is in the life section of usatoday
Interesting that both Wordsmiths and Paste made national news with their donation strategy. Is it really that unique? I guess so.
Wonder if Wordsmiths campaign influenced Paste’s decision to try this…
I’m with you, Lump. What Paste is doing reflects the true nature of interdependency because it involves the product (artists) as well. I didn’t see any publishers or authors getting on board for the Wordsmiths bailout.
Artists are donating material and readers are donating money because Paste offers something unique that can’t be easily replaced and, in the hopes of not sounding too dramatic, both sides need it. That’s a beautiful thing.
I totally agree that the dynamics are much more positive if there is something given for the donation. I am much more apt to give to someone willing to ‘work for food’ vs ‘can ya spare a dime.’
http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2009-05-21-paste-donations_N.htm
That’s amazing – should do the trick.
Any idea what happened to Zachary Steele, owner of Wordsmith? Is he out promoting his book? Just curious. Found out that the gift card I gave for Christmas was not used by the recipient and now, of course, no good. Like Clark Howard says “No gift Cards”. BTW, I did donate to Wordsmith and feel a little burned.