We made it with 5 days of overfunding left! Thank you all!
Thank you, thank you, thank you! You’ve done it, we’ve done it: we now #OwnTheMedia together!
A fantastic 1149 readers, journalists and supporters joined us as co-owners in the past 25 days. Together, you invested £200,000 and helped us reach the target 5 days early. And we’re still going strong, moving towards our ‘stretch goal’ of £250,000 by Wednesday 8 July.
We are overwhelmed not just by your hugely generous support but by the many kind and insightful messages you shared from around the globe via the Crowdfunder page, email, social media, phone, postcards, letters and in person.
When we started the campaign, we listed 10 reasons to invest in Positive News. Little did we realise that over the next 25 days, you would give us hundreds more reasons why you did. Many a time we were touched by what you wrote.
We had readers from 18 to 89 years old sending investments online and via cheque. One reader wrote to say they invested “a chunk of my pension”, and other new co-owners bought shares to celebrate their wedding anniversary.
One of our journalists bought shares on behalf of her soon-to-be-born twins, and yet another reader got them for her husband’s birthday. One reader even decided to buy shares for every volunteer in his organisation so that they can all join our community.
Some readers in Norwich decided to hold a ‘kindness warriors’ meet-up to spread the word about our community share offer. And when we entered our last week, many existing co-owners spontaneously decided to top up their initial investment to get us nearer the target.
Seán Dagan Wood, editor-in-chief of Positive News, said: “To all our new co-owners I want to say a huge and sincere thank you. It is amazing to know that we now have this incredible community at the heart of Positive News, and that you have created the opportunity for Positive News to flourish like never before.
"And it's not even over. I’m excited to see how far we can take this campaign in the remaining five days, and how much more we will then be able to do to give voice to all the inspirational change taking place in the world.”
Stretch goal
If you are as taken aback by this fast progress as we are and haven’t yet invested, there is good news: you can still join! You can invest until Wednesday 8 July 6pm GMT at www.ownthemedia.org.
With 5 more days to go in the crowdfunding campaign, we are now officially in ‘overfunding mode’. Our stretch goal is £250,000 and every pound of investment will be used to develop our content, products and services. You can read more details about our funding plans here.
Our target of £200,000 was the minimum that we calculated we need in order to have a reasonable chance at making a success of our plans for Positive News’ future. But the more we now raise, the more time and resources we can give ourselves to get this right in order to make Positive News financially sustainable and increase our reach and impact.
With additional funding we will be able to allocate more to key needs such as employing core staff and investing in developing our content, website and new magazine. More funding will also mean we have a cushion to help us make ends meet and be resilient to any unexpected circumstances. Please help put us in the best possible starting position we can be!
For now though, let’s take a moment to celebrate. Dear co-owners, wherever in the world you are: here's to our collective future full of positive news. Together, we will change the news for good.
Thank you!
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