Hi hello fellow gays and queers, lesbians and bisexuals; it is Tuesday and look where we are! $53,713 of the way to our goal. That’s 45% in six days. So far, 85% of the gifts made to this fundraiser have been $50 or less. 66% were $25 or less. HECK, 21% — that is twenty-one-freaking percent — are $5 or under!
When you give $5, $25, $50, you do make a difference. This is an amazing community and I have definitely cried once already today because of it.
Here’s a chart showing how we got to nearly $50,000 with your support! And I believe we can get past $50,000 together, I believe we can get to our goal together. I really do.
Of course: as I’ve said before somewhere: we are operating off of public radio rules here! So that means that until we meet our goal, we’re gonna keep popping up, socialing, telling you stories and offering you hand-sewn masks with scissoring patterns on them. If you can help us get there, we ask you to give whatever you can. Even a dollar helps!
We know that right now many of you are facing unprecedented economic uncertainty and aren’t able to give, or can’t give as much as you wish you could. If you’ve given all you can (THANK YOU) or can’t afford to give right now but you still wanna help out, what can you do? Some things!
If you were able to give:
- Tell people on social media you’ve donated. Scream it off the rooftops. Accost straights on the internet and tell them to pitch in! Tell your ex you’ll give their pan back if they just give to Autostraddle.
- Ask even just one friend to match your gift! This can be a straight friend, this can be a coworker or relative or anyone really. I’ll do the math for ya: if everybody who has already donated said to a pal: “Hey, I gave $25 to Autostraddle. Will you also do this same thing and join me in my unearthly level of cool?” we’d hit near $100k and be most of the way to our goal. It just takes 1 person each!
Whether or not you were able to give:
- Share our posts about the fundraiser on social media. The more eyeballs the better!
- What’s your favorite Autostraddle article ever of all time? Will you find it and share it and tell people that this is why we matter to you?
- Forward our emails when we send ‘em! Bonus points if you come up with some chain mail rules for this exercise. Is that illegal? I hope not! Don’t actually turn our emails into chain letters if it is!
- Ask others to donate to us in honor of anti-LGBTQ politicians and TERF-y and SWERF-y celebs. If they even know about us, I guarantee they hate us. Let’s keep that party going!
Listen: We love you. Thank you for all this so far. Onward and upward and into the gay future together we go.
*Updated 8:20 a.m. PST 8/11/20
Thanks for pointing out the new masks—they weren’t up yet last time I’d checked.
Thank you so so much for your support and for saying this!
Lol duplicated my comment below but thank you for checking out the masks!
Those scissor masks are fantastic! And I appreciated that there was a plain one for the low-key (boring?) person in the relationship (me) and a bright one for my beautiful and bold partner.
I rejoined A+ this week because
– I have seen the changes Autostraddle has been making to hire and center more marginalized people and content
– I do not want anyone to have to pay to access Autostraddle
– I visit Autostraddle every day and the content improves my quality of life and feeling of connection to queer community
Welcome back!!! And thank you, sincerely. It means a lot.
Thank you so so much for your support and for saying this!
When I get more funds I’ll re-up A+, but till then I donated the change that was left on a gift card I had received for my birthday. Any little bit helps right?
I donated and bought some stickers, looking forward to decorating my incredibly boring notebook with them!
I also want to say that I love the graphics and color scheme for this fundraiser, everything looks so fresh and bright. (thank you, Sarah?!)
I love Autostraddle and I’ve been agonising about whether or not I should donate to this fundraiser.
This time last year, just after I made a donation, I stumbled across this buried beneath several other articles:
https://www.autostraddle.com/an-autostraddle-and-a-camp-apology-and-action-plan/
– Firstly,this apology/explaination was really, really hard to find. Requests for the post to be pinned or highlighted in some way were ignored.
Secondly, a lot of people were NOT happy with the content of the apology. POC who complained in the comments were not addressed directly, for reasons I can’t understand. White readers who complained were told to “stop being performative” by the moderator
-(to be fair to the moderator, it sounded like they were under astronomical amounts of stress and pressure, and this was not an easy comment section to moderate. I don’t think their response was useful, but who could have been useful in such a crappy situation? Not me. But even so, it wasn’t great).
After a couple of days of waiting for the post to be pinned, for the apology to be clarified, nothing happened. Honestly, it broke my heart a little. I’m a POC, and I’ve been let down by all sorts of organisations that have promised to include me. I’ve forgiven a lot of them,too, if they look like they’re really changing.
So on a more positive note, it looks like Autostraddle is moving in an new direction. I’m honestly, truly, wholeheartedly looking forward to trusting and supporting this website again- but not yet. I’m rooting for you.