All for history, and history for all!
Some weeks ago I asked you to support Contingent Magazine.
They didn’t raise their total goal of $18,000, but they did raise enough to cover their startup costs and put out a March issue.
However, the magazine needs your continuing support to rise above one-hit-wonder status. Editor Marc Reyes writes:
Contingent Magazine is trying to get to 1,000 recurring donors. A thousand donations of 3 to 5 dollars a month is at the lower end of how it will cost to operate, but it still means a functioning site paying its bills and all the contributors and editors.
The higher the donations means running more pieces – whether they are shorts, field trips, book reviews, or long features.
3 or 5 dollars a month may not seem like much. For Contingent Magazine, though, 3 dollars goes a long way. Over 12 months, 3 dollars ($36 total) pays for a full month of our accounting software. 5 dollars a month is a little more. 5 bucks gets you a grande mocha at Starbucks or a matinee movie ticket. But 5 dollars a month, over a year, fully pays for Contingent’s PO Box.
A pledge of $10 a month pays for nearly half a short or field trip piece. These showcase your research or discuss the inner workings of an archive that was crucial to your study. For March, we have two field trips and four shorts that we know you’re gonna dig.
If you can give $20 a month your donations funds nearly 70% of a book review or nearly half a feature. For March, we have two book reviews planned, one of which will be @sarageorgini’s Household Gods: The Religious Lives of the Adams Family. If you can donate at this level (the 20-25 dollars-a-month range) you’ll guarantee that we can produce more features, innovative photo essays, and book reviews. And we are focused on reviewing and highlighting books by non-tenure-track scholars and contingent faculty.
- Received donations from nearly 400 people
- Received over 50 submission pitches
- Gained nearly 2400 Twitter followers
- Held a live stream that over 200 people viewed
If you are a grad student or postdoc or adjunct, please consider a 3 or 5 dollar a month donation. Especially if you are thinking of pitching us something in the future. We need to be around to showcase your work and pay you for it. If you are a history teacher, archivist, librarian, or early career professor, please consider pledging 10 to 15 dollars a month. Your support means we can run more than one piece a week. And if you can pledge 20 to 25 dollars a month, you are making it possible for us to run features and invest in new forms of media for the site.
Over time Contingent Magazine wants to experiment with scholars, designers, and artists to produce podcasts, animation, and short films. If it’s a way to explore and understand the past, we want to try it and bring it to you on the site.
Contingent Magazine is at 2,393 Twitter followers & we need folks to become recurring monthly donors. If half of you pledged 3 to 5 dollars a month, we can run the bare-bones version of the site. If the other half donated 10 to 15 dollars a month, we would fully fund the site.
We received a lot of great pitches this month. And we know more are coming soon. We want to run as many as we can, but it costs money and we need your support to make Contingent run longer than March.
If you like what we stand for, think this is a worthwhile project, or want to someday pitch something and see your work published with us, please consider a monthly donation. Every contribution matters and gets us to a fully funded site.
I’m supporting Contingent.
If you can, will you?
At the very least, could you share their mission on your own media?
Running In My Head 