CaryCitizen Reaches Fundraising Goal

Cary, NC – We are humbled and thrilled to announce that CaryCitizen has reached it’s fundraising goal of $50,000. We will be able to continue operations and publishing through the end of this year, and hopefully beyond, without interruption.

One Big Push

Last week, Town of Cary reached out and offered to buy services from us equivalent to the amount we needed to close out our fundraising campaign.

Those services will likely include advertising and marketing on CaryCitizen channels as well as services from Goodtree.Studio, the parent company of CaryCitizen.

“CaryCitizen has been part of our media and advertising portfolio for years, and being able to continue to reach our citizens with local news and information is vital to our community, especially now,” said Cary Town Manager Sean R. Stegall.

“CaryCitzen is also a small business that’s important to the success of other small businesses in our community that can’t afford the costs of advertising with large media. So, whether we looked at it from an economic development perspective or a citizen engagement point-of-view, it just made good sense for us to frontload marketing dollars we already had available for outreach this year.”

Thank You, Everyone

We are very grateful to Town of Cary, and equally grateful to all our individual supporters.

Thank you, Cary Citizens!

GoFundMe Campaign Is Officially Over

We know that everyone has had many uncertainties during this difficult Year of the Pandemic.

The support of the community has really lifted our spirits and we wanted to share the good news with all of you.

What’s Next?

Coronavirus has upset everyone’s life and livelihood. We’ve all had to change habits we rather liked, like going to the gym or the office or eating out.

The same is true for news. For decades, advertising has supported newspapers, TV stations and local outlets like CaryCitizen.

But think of all the advertisers who have cut back on their media presence since the pandemic began: hotels, cruise ships, airlines, events, concerts, restaurants, gyms, shopping centers, retailers.

The successful completion of our fundraising campaign gives us four months to figure out what will work next year and beyond. We want to use that time well.

During the campaign, we had several people set up monthly payments via our PayPal, kind of like the NPR sustainer model.

In the case of CaryCitizen, 1,000 sustainers at $10 per month (or 2000 at $5 per month) would effectively fund community news in Cary.

What Do You Think?

Give us your opinion about what might work to make CaryCitizen resilient in an uncertain future:

  • Do you think a sustainer model could work for CaryCitizen?
  • Would segments or tiers of support make sense for a community news organization?
  • What promotional items would you suggest as thank you gifts to sustainers?

Thank you again for your support!


Hal Goodtree is the editor and publisher of CaryCitizen. Write to him at [email protected].

7 replies
  1. Elizabeth Ryan
    Elizabeth Ryan says:

    Congratulations on reaching your funding goal! I think a sustainer method would work fine, as WUNC and UNC-TV do.
    But, as a longstanding donor to public media, I think you might want to ask those local groups how much trouble and expense a promotional gift program would be. I backed off from that years ago because, how many tshirts and coffee mugs do I really need, and how much money is siphoned off from the donation for those?
    On the other hand, you could just give gift cards to local business and let the donor pick.
    Thanks forall your efforts over the years.

    • Liz Dolan
      Liz Dolan says:

      I agree with you sustainer model and can add a perspective from one group. I donate to various charities. I think I appreciate most what the FoodBank CENC has been doing in 2020.

      Food Bank CENC sends an email newsletter blurb and an occasional link to a quarterly WebEx (it used to be in person, I guess, which I never attended, but I honestly enjoy listening to the virtual call) discussion of how donor funds are being used to support the mission. It’s a feel-good feedback thing, mostly info they have to collate for reporting purposes anyway, and I don’t feel like they’re wasting my donor dollars on totes or whatever.

      They are also hooked into various platform’s fundraising apparatuses. So a donor can also use the info from the report-out to seed their own little 5-day fundraiser, for example, which my husband has done for them also on FB, to the tune of a few hundred. My 2 cents on the topic. Local news is important 🙂

  2. Scott Korbin
    Scott Korbin says:

    Thank you Cary Citizen, and thank you to Town Staff for supporting this truly “Grass Roots” organization which keeps us so well informed of the wonderful people, places and things we have here.

  3. Brent
    Brent says:

    Good thoughts from Elizabeth and Liz. A sustainer model is worth looking into.

    I’d be happy to contribute something — call it a voluntary subscription — for all the value that CaryCitizen provides to me and others.

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