Do you want Greater Greater Washington to be around for a long time? I do! If that’s going to happen, to be perfectly honest: we need your financial support now.

Last year’s reader drive brought in $15,000, including larger-dollar donors who contributed to a matching program we did. We raised about $10,000 in business support. With that, we hired Jonathan Neeley part-time and kept the servers running. But now we have to do it all over again for this year; plus, it’s not enough. If you’re a supporter but haven’t yet made a financial contribution, we hope you will now!

Where the money goes

Our amazing team of volunteer contributors, Breakfast Links curators, and editors do a lot. It’s not easy to make all of this happen, especially since people have day jobs. So much goes on behind the scenes: comment moderating, responding to emails, planning events, social media, and more, all from volunteers.

But at the core of things is editing all of the posts. We’ve learned the hard way that it’s too chaotic to have multiple volunteers handling editing. We need one person who’s in charge of getting the content ready and posting it. That’s Jonathan, and he’s doing a terrific job.

Unfortunately, Jonathan is just half-time right now. And the simple fact is that putting out 3-6 great posts every day isn’t a half time job. Plus, Jonathan wants to have a full-time job like most people, and we want to keep him. We really want to make Jonathan full-time. But we’re going to need significantly more money than we had last year, and not just one time, but every year.

There’s even more for us to do

Plus, the editors have been posting about all the things we want to do that we’re not doing: Speakers. Live chats. Recruit more contributors from all around the region. And much more. We’re not everything we’d like to be. Some of that we can do more with volunteers, but someone has to manage that, and some of it costs money directly.

Why we can’t do it alone

You might ask, what about you, David, former Googler? I’m fortunate to have made some money from working at Google which has enabled me to start, write for, and edit GGW without being paid. I’m also giving what I can financially on top of that. But Greater Greater Washington has become more than I can support myself, and that’s why we’re turning to you.

Some of you are giving monthly or yearly through PayPal. That’s amazing, and we really appreciate it! If everyone who’s signed up for monthly or yearly contributions renews this year, we’ll get $5,851 each year in addition to the many one-time folks who often give annually. The ideal thing would be to get those automatic payments up to the level that covers our costs, and then we don’t have to hassle you all quite so much.

Please give!

But so far, that plus our one-time donations is not enough for our server costs and Jonathan’s part-time costs, let alone to go to full-time or do more. Please give what you can now.

We don’t want to do these reader drives very often. We’re experimenting with the best time of year, doing it in February for last year, and now December. Maybe twice-yearly drives like NPR will work best. Help us get on track to make Jonathan full time and do even more great projects next year to keep Greater Greater Washington giving you interesting and informative content and discussions. Thank you!

David Alpert created Greater Greater Washington in 2008 and was its executive director until 2020. He formerly worked in tech and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco Bay, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He lives with his wife and two children in Dupont Circle.