We Have Met Our Funding Goal

Back in November, the editors gave some thought as to what it would take to build Liberal Currents up into something bigger, to take it beyond where we were managing with incremental growth.

We set a goal of $500,000, knowing it was ambitious, because hitting that goal would truly be transformational. It would give us a shot to make a concrete difference in our troubled media ecosystem.

When we hit $200,000 on January 20th—40% of our goal—we were already very excited. I began working on the publication full-time for the first time, and we began to make plans for how to get Samantha Hancox-Li on as well.

Since then, we've focused less on fundraising than on shoring up the fundamentals of the business, but donations did trickle in, alongside new subscriptions. By last week, we had reached close to 45% of our goal.

Then some very generous individuals reached out and offered to take us the rest of the way.

I am excited to announce that we have met our goal.

Despite the magnitude of what they gave, our final donors in this campaign are not of "the donor class" any more than the 1,300 GoFundMe donors are, or the hundreds of new subscribers who have joined us. They have the means to make a big donation to something they believe will make a material difference, but not the means to do so repeatedly. Like all of us, they are furious, outraged at what is going on in this country right now, but also recognize that we need a positive vision for the path ahead.

When we started Liberal Currents in 2017, we said we wanted to be a home for mere liberals. Looking at everyone who has supported us during the course of our fundraiser—whether financially or by saying a kind word about us—it's been quite obvious to me that what ties us all together is that we are, by and large, merely ordinary liberals.

Some ordinary liberals have ended up doing well in their careers. That is true of our biggest donors, and it is true of the donor who approached me on the first day of the campaign, offering to match $35,000 in donations. Thanks to him—someone I did not know and had never had contact with before the fundraiser—we were able to raise $105,000 in just two days, an incredible feat for our community. He, too, just wanted to give what he could to something he believed in during one of our country's darkest chapters.

Thank you, all of you who have supported and are supporting us. We will work our hardest to be worthy of your trust.