FYI: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Ami Dar <[email protected]> Date: Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 4:54 PM Subject: I need your help to save Idealist.org To: SPATIALLINK
Dear SPATIALLINK, You know how sometimes in life you go through a bad moment, and when your friends hear about it later, they say, "Why didn't you say something? Why didn't you ask? We would have helped." That's where Idealist is now, and I am writing to ask for your help. Very briefly, here's what happened. Over the past ten years, most of our funding has come from the small fees we charge organizations for posting their jobs on Idealist. By September 2008, after years of steady growth, these little drops were covering 70% of our budget. Then, in October of that year, the financial crisis exploded, many organizations understandably froze their hiring, and from one week to the next our earned income was cut almost in half. That was 16 months ago, and since then we've survived on faith and fumes, by cutting expenses, and by getting a few large gifts from new and old friends. But now we are about to hit a wall, and this is why I am reaching out to you. If over the past 15 years Idealist has helped you or a friend find a job, an internship or a volunteer opportunity; connect with a person, an idea or a resource; or just feel inspired for a moment, now we need your help. I wouldn't be asking, and not like this, if this were not a critical time. There are two ways you can help. First, if you can, please make a donation at: http://www.idealist.org/donate Some people in this community are not in a position to contribute right now, so if you are, please give as generously as you can. Thank you! Second, please spread the word about this appeal by sharing this message with friends and colleagues who may have benefited from Idealist over the years. Since 1995 Idealist has touched hundreds of thousands of lives. If in the next week or two we can reach everyone who'd give us a hand if they knew we are in trouble, I believe we'll come out of this crisis even stronger than before. I believe this because while this has been a tough stretch, I've never been more optimistic about the future. The content on Idealist has never been richer, our traffic is surging, we are building a whole new Idealist.org that will be released later this year, and the potential for connecting people, ideas, and resources around the world has never been more urgent or more exciting. Your contribution will allow us to maintain all our services (summarized below), and it will also give us some time to diversify our funding. Being able to breathe, recover, and plan ahead for a few months will be an incredible blessing. Thanks so much for your support. Idealist has always been a community-driven site, and we can’t do this work without you. Thank you! Ami Dar Executive Director http://www.idealist.org/donate You received this email because you are signed up on Idealist. If you’d like to update your Idealist profile, please go to http://www.idealist.org and login using this email address: SPATIALLINK To simply opt out of announcements such as this one, please click on this link: http://www.idealist.org/en/opt-out/SPATIALLINK * * * * * * Here is some of the work your donation will help support: Every day, Idealist helps connect 70,000 people with 90,000 organizations around the world, in English, Spanish, and French. In addition to our work online, every year we also organize a series of events across North America, including 10 Nonprofit Career Fairs, 20 Graduate School Fairs, and 5 Global Volunteering Fairs. To make all this happen, and to provide the best possible service to our users, we have several teams working in New York, Portland, and Buenos Aires to: * Maintain the current Idealist.org, Idealistas.org, and Idealiste.org, and make sure they run smoothly (we do all our programming, design, and translations ourselves), while also building a totally new Idealist.org that will be launched later this year. * Review every new organization that joins Idealist to try to ensure the highest possible quality in our content and listings. * Reply to every call and email we get (tens of thousands every year). * Organize, promote, and staff all the events mentioned above (the average fair brings together 1,000 people with 100 organizations or universities). * Write and publish new resources to help our members, such as the Idealist Guides to Nonprofit Careers and the International Volunteerism Resource Center (you can see the whole list on the right-hand side of our home page). If any of these services have touched you, please help support them at: http://www.idealist.org/donate Thank you! _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://geowanking.org/mailman/listinfo/geowanking_geowanking.org
