Thanks for stepping up to help Tone Madison. Here’s what’s ahead.

What we’re doing to keep our publication sustainable, and where you come in.

Thanks to you, Tone Madison‘s readers, we raised $10,000 in one week, giving us a much-needed boost as we navigate a short-term budget gap. We got really worried over here at Tone, but we should have known that our readers had our backs. 

From the bottom of our hearts, thank you. 

I wanted to give you more transparency about what we’re doing, following this fundraiser. We’re still going to have our usual end-of-the-year fundraiser to set us up for next year—and we’ll need your support to take advantage of a crucial matching fund during our NewsMatch campaign in November and December—but I wanted to assure you that we are doing a lot of work to get Tone Madison to a more stable place. Here’s what else we are doing behind the scenes to make Tone Madison sustainable in the long run:

• Working with our partners at Indiegraf to implement the plans we already have in place to increase reader donations and bring in more sponsors. We’ve already made good progress growing these revenues, just not quite as fast as we’d hoped.
• Keeping a close eye on our freelance budgets and payroll.
• Reviewing our already lean, lean, lean overhead costs and reducing them further where it makes sense.
• Seeking out more grant funding—if you know of any good grant opportunities, please pass that info on to us! 
• As we did last year, we’ll be taking a winter break in late December and early January. This gives our staff a much-needed chance to rest and recharge, and it saves us on costs.
• Building up a matching fund from a group of loyal readers who can afford to make larger donations—if you’d like to be a part of that and help us grow it, please reach out to me directly. During our year-end campaign, we want to triple the impact of those gifts.
• Maybe we’ll make another fucked-up shirt. That brought in a surprising amount of money last time. 
• We participated in a LION Publishers sustainability audit recently, and will be using the recommendations and funding from that to get better at raising funds and reaching our audience.

Thanks so much for your support. We can’t do this without you.