Katherine Mangu-Ward
You people are unbelievable. When we were 147 donors and $84,000 short of our ambitious fundraising goals with only 31 hours remaining in Reason's annual Webathon, you brought out the woodchippers. Let's update our historical Webathon tables to give you the full numerical flavor:
2008: 152 donors, $13,000 (rounding to nearest thousand).
2009: 625 donors, $56,000
2010: 505 donors, $47,000
2011: 522 donors, $69,000
2012: 341 donors, $49,000
2013: 636 donors, $163,000
2014: 1,178 donors, $224,000
2015: 1,682 donors, $246,000*
Are you kidding me?
That's roughly 2.5 percent of the Reason Foundation's annual revenue, people. We will treat this not just as cash, but as a mandate and motivational fuel—to bring more logic and less legends to the next national freakout, to fight off constant attempts by both major political parties to dismantle civil liberties, to make the world safe for libertarianism, give intellectual ammo to judges who prune back leviathan's power, hold candidate/nominee/president Hillary Clinton's feet to the fire, smack around the anti-constitutional authoritarian Donald Trump, have even more sport with The New York Times, create more culture, champion free speech (yes, even for commenters), and to legalize the bejesus out of weed. And so very much more.
Your contributions make our organization much more resilient in the face of any future funding or external shock. You allow us to be stable (well, financially stable, anyway), in a media/think-tank/opinion-mag world of constant, direction-shifting instability. And you give us a good goddamned spring in our step as we go forth in the world as happy warriors for ideas that constantly challenge, befuddle, and threaten the statist status quo.
For that, we are eternally thankful. OK, maybe not eternally, but at least until this time next year! Take it away, Andrew Gold!
* Originally read 1,680 donors and $244,000.
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