The Sick Times is starting 2025 with great news. Thanks to readers who supported our end-of-year fundraising campaign, we raised nearly $50,000 in small-dollar donations — which will be more than doubled, due to matching funds and additional support.
This was our first year participating in the Institute for Nonprofit News’ NewsMatch program, which supports news organizations like ours with resources to bolster end-of-year fundraising campaigns. Our campaign was a great success, and we are set to receive matching funds from NewsMatch as well as two other generous donors.
Your generosity enables us to continue sharing vital Long COVID news and commentary in 2025, with no paywalls or other barriers to access our stories. This campaign’s success will also help us show other media funders that the Long COVID community is worth investment.
Here’s what we raised:
- $49,000 in small-dollar donations from readers;
- $30,000 from the Disability Visibility Project — half utilized as matching funds and half as a direct donation;
- $15,000 in matching funds from NewsMatch;
- $16,000 in matching funds from Eli Dickinson & Kat Zambon;
- $4,500 from NewsMatch’s Knight Community Match Bonus;
- $1,000 from NewsMatch’s New Donor Bonus…
… for a total of $115,500 raised during this campaign.
This funding will support our work in 2025 and set us up for longer-term success. We will use these funds to:
- Better compensate our internal team and make our work more sustainable. Long-time readers may remember that your two co-founders Betsy and Miles worked entirely for free during the first few months of The Sick Times’ publication. We’re still not able to pay ourselves full-time salaries, but your support will enable us to cut down on other, outside work and truly focus on running The Sick Times.
- Increase compensation and hours for our podcast producer James and engagement editor Heather in 2025. With greater time commitments, they will both be able to work on reported stories and larger-scale projects.
- Add more capacity to our freelance budget, with a particular interest in working with additional editors on larger stories and producing multimedia projects such as videos and illustrations.
- Cover costs for our website and reporting tools, as well as a small travel budget. We hope to attend major research meetings about Long COVID and related diseases in 2025; reach out if you would like to invite us to cover your event!
- Pursue more partnerships with other news organizations, as well as other funding opportunities. With this improved stability for 2025, we will double down on finding grants, sponsors, and other ways to continue supporting our work in the long-term.
We are working with our fiscal sponsor, MuckRock, to finalize our budget for 2025, and will update our financial transparency page with that information once it’s ready.
Your support during our fundraising campaign will help us show the media industry what we at The Sick Times already know: Long COVID and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic are vital topics worth investment and in-depth coverage. We’re excited to further expand our work and continue telling impactful stories in 2025.
Thank you!
P.S. The stickers we’ll be sending to folks who donated were delayed by holiday mail chaos. We hope to send them out by mid-January; keep an eye on your email for updates!
Leave a Reply