Turn to the center of this issue of Real Change, and you’ll find the 2014 Annual Report, a celebration of the 1,817 people last year who said, “Yes. I love helping my vendor when I buy the paper, and, I want Real Change to do even more. Here’s what I can do.”
Last year, our whole budget was just slightly north of a million bucks. What we did with that is a little astonishing.
We created opportunity for about 800 vendors. We provided work and community to those who might otherwise have had none.
We paid for quality weekly reporting and kept progressive community journalism alive in Seattle.
We paid for organizing and advocacy that led to actual wins, and we made a real difference in the lives of people who are the most poor.
And our community of supporters made it all possible.
More than half our budget comes from the generous donations of our readers. Last September, for example, 513 of you joined us for breakfast. We raised nearly $107,759 that morning as we celebrated 20 years of Real Change.
This money got us through to December, when our winter fund drive inspired another $219,000 in generous end-of-year support.
Because you helped us beat our $200K goal, we ended the year $7,591 in the black, as opposed to more than $10,000 in the red. Whenever we can finish the year with a little more in the bank than we had before, that’s a success. Long-term stability matters.
What other successes did your support make possible?
Let’s imagine for a moment that last year’s 1,817 supporters took their collective $564,582 and spent that on iced Frappuccinos instead. What would that mean?
First of all, it would mean less opportunity for vendors at greater cost. What do I mean?
We would not have the professional news team that makes weekly publication possible. Each week, an editor, a graphics designer and two reporters assisted by a bunch of volunteers cranks out a fresh issue for our vendors and readers.
Without your support, half that team would be gone, and so would their 16 first-place regional journalism awards.
We’d publish every few weeks or so. Vendors would be out there pushing stale papers and paying more to do so.
Many street papers charge vendors half the cover price or more. Our vendors pay 30 percent, or 60 cents per paper. That’s where last year’s $345,084 in circulation revenue came from.
Because of those 1,817 supporters, our vendors got to keep more in their pockets.
Last year, we added a new part-time organizer and quarterly paid vendor internships in the advocacy department. The year before, we added a full-time organizer. Our supporters made that possible, too.
What did that buy? Last year we tripled the size of our homeless speakers bureau and vendors got to share their stories with hundreds more people. We enlarged our community of activists, beginning with our vendors and working outward.
Those activists stood up for affordable housing, expanded survival services, police reform, fair labor practices and more. They gathered petition signatures, testified at hearings, turned out at rallies, made phone calls, sent emails and engaged in the work of social change.
Reader support made that possible.
This year, we launched a new, mobile friendly website, and we’re hiring a brand new communications staff person. This will help attract the new activists, readers and supporters that will keep Real Change strong and growing.
This April, with the help of a team of volunteers who work at Google, we’re launching a cashless payment app, and we’re rolling out the Real Change digital edition that you can buy and read on your phone for $2.99.
Vendors will earn more money from the new electronic sales and won’t have to carry as much cash on the street.
Would this sort of innovation be happening if we were scraping by without your support? In a word: “No.”
We appreciate our readers and supporters, and we want you to know that every single gift matters. Our community makes us strong, and with your help, Real Change is just going to keep getting better.