Thank you for Saving The Xylom!
We are ending our “Save The Xylom” fundraiser a week early and pivoting our campaign to raise $7,500 in monthly recurring donations
Dear Reader,
Y’all went above and beyond – since we put out the Bat-Signal on Monday, we have received over $12,000 in online and offline donations from nearly 200 individuals. We’ve never seen so many contributions in an entire month, much less in a week. Thank you!
Your generosity will keep our lights on through the summer, enabling The Xylom to investigate:
The efficacy and equity of New York’s household energy efficiency upgrade program, the first in the nation to be funded by the now-threatened Inflation Reduction Act (supported by the CUNY Newmark J-Corps);
How “podcast bros” are throwing Nepal's thousand-year psychedelic “mad honey” practice into a tailspin, while endangering American public health (supported by The Ferriss – UC Berkeley Psychedelic Journalism Fellowship);
Why rooftop solar panels aren’t taking off in Hong Kong, one of the most developed and cosmopolitan cities in the world (supported by the Earth Journalism Network); and
The stakes and consequences of oil spills off the Indian coast (supported by the Pulitzer Center).
Now comes the hard part: making sure we never have to do an emergency fundraiser again.
The funds we secured for the four reporting projects above are restricted, which means they cannot be used to pay for the salaries of our editors, fact-checkers, and engagement staff who make our reporting trustworthy and accessible.
To address this, we are setting a goal of having at least 60% of our revenue from our readers. This rebuilds our rainy day fund after we spent it all in June – we foresee more challenging times ahead for the American press.
To make this work, we are sunsetting our presence on the Open Collective platform, where we’ve been for the last three years. We’ll move to FundRazr instead: it provides a more streamlined and transparent experience, with fewer fees and no middlemen. (You can also now donate with PayPal!)
If even 15% of our readers and social media followers gave just $2 a month, we would get to financial sustainability without additional support from grants.
You showed up and showed out for us once; can we count on you to help us go above and beyond?
Thank you so much!
With gratitude,
Alex Ip
Publisher and Editor,
The Xylom
P.S. Please forward this email or share your support on social media. Every dollar counts!