As we go into the weekend I want to thank everyone who’s contributed so far to this year’s drive for the TPM Journalism Fund. We hit the half way point to our goal of raising $500,000 early yesterday morning. Even though we’ve gotten a lot more experience at holding these drives they remain nerve-wracking. They amount to a collective trust-fall – hopefully – into the arms of the larger TPM community. So it always feels really good, at many different levels, when you’re there for us. If you have had a moment to contribute yet you can click right here. It’s easy and quick.
We’ve always gained quite a few new members recently. Which is wonderful. And we want to welcome all of you. We’re still trying to understand the precise reasons for it.
One reason seems to be our new membership system in itself, by which I mean the software that runs it. As you know, our business is almost entirely based on membership fees. So a smoothly running system to manage memberships in all its dimensions – processing fees, authenticating users, record keeping and user experience – is mission critical. (Neither the old or the new system ever touch or store your credit cards. For that we use the industry-standard security and fulfillment of Stripe dot com.)
