I realize that, at the end of a year when nearly everyone has faced economic hard times, all sorts of worthy organizations are asking for your help. Well, we are too. Global Voices is launching an online giving campaign today. We’re asking folks to lend their support to all our activities – the grants we give to blogging groups in developing nations through Rising Voices, the work we do on free speech advocacy, the translation and reporting we do everyday, on breaking stories like the Mumbai attacks or less serious issues, like Shoegate.
Like public radio in the US, we’re supported by a combination of support from foundations, corporations and individual donors. We know that 2009 is going to be a very hard year for media organizations and foundations, and we’re hoping our readers can lend a hand. Like independent media organizations around the world, we’re supported by a great deal of volunteer labor, but we do have costs associated with server space, our editorial staff and administration of a project that involves more than 200 people around the world – we’re hoping you can help us support and draw attention to work bloggers around the world are doing and keep the world talking.
Global Voices is a Stichting, a non-profit foundation, under Dutch law. For US donors, we’re accepting donations through the Media Development Loan Fund, a US nonprofit that supports an amazing range of independent media projects – your donation will be to MDLF, who will pass the funds on to our Dutch organization. If you don’t care about tax deductions, you can give to us via PayPal or check through our website.
Did I mention that we’ve got cute badges? We’ve got cute badges.
Thanks for listening. I’ll keep folks posted on the campaign here and on Twitter.