Counter-Currents
The Counter-Currents 2023 Fundraiser
What Are We Doing Wrong?
Greg Johnson
345 words
Counter-Currents, like all advocates of dissenting ideas, depends on the generosity of our readers and friends. This year our fundraiser goal is $300,000.
Why should you give? Here are just a few reasons:
- Counter-Currents publishes established talents like Jim Goad, Spencer Quinn, Mark Gullick, Stephen Paul Foster, Collin Cleary, Jef Costello, Alex Graham, Margot Metroland, F. Roger Devlin, Beau Albrecht, Richard Houck, Kathryn S., Travis LeBlanc, Morris V. de Camp, Steven Clark, and Michael Walker, plus Alain de Benoist in translation.
- Counter-Currents continues to publish books by such important figures as Jonathan Bowden, Savitri Devi, and Francis Parker Yockey.
- Counter-Currents continues to attract new talents like Pox Populi, Clarissa Schnabel, Asier Abadroa, Gunnar Alfredsson, Anthony Bavaria, and Kenneth Vinther.
- Counter-Currents doesn’t just focus on problems, we also promote thinking about workable, humane solutions. (For instance, see my “Introducing the Homeland Institute.”)
- Counter-Currents doesn’t just focus on the news cycle, but the long game of cultural struggle. In other words, we realize that political change has metapolitical conditions.
- Counter-Currents doesn’t just have depth, we have reach: According to SimilarWeb, we had 2,295,536 page views last month. Let’s compare that to some of our peers, as well as some losers and haters:
- American Renaissance: 4,008,628
- Counter-Currents: 2,295,536
- SPLC: 1,888,600
- Takimag: 1,350,193
- TRS: 1,292,976
- VDare: 1,197,342
- Occidental Observer: 635,253
- Chronicles: 362,490
- Occidental Dissent: 105,711
- IHR: 70,140
In short, we’re getting a lot right. But we must be doing something wrong, because so far this year, we’ve only raised $69,063.84, which is less than half of what we had at the same time last year. So if something has changed or something needs fixing, please let us know in the comments below. We value your ideas.
Thank you again for your loyal readership and generous support.
Greg Johnson
Editor-in-Chief
There are many ways to help, but the easiest is with an e-check donation. All you need is your checkbook.
You can explore all your donation options on our newly-redesigned Donate page.
Also, check out our new Paywall page!
For a preview of events in Year Fourteen, check out our birthday page.
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56 comments
Greg, you are not doing anything wrong. I have noticed this fundraising miss before and wondered what was going on. This is what I have come up with.
If we can believe Mark Zandi, the average household is paying more than $700/month for basic services and goods than they were three years ago. Over time this adds up.
Throw in the massive uncertainty around the economy in the wake of the Urkaine War, BRICs moves towards another form of global reserve currency, insane levels of US debt, the legal circus around Trump and, increasingly, Biden, and you’ve got a lot of people who are simply digging in. All of this is a sign of intelligence, which is the defining characteristic of your audience.
Then you have the fact that people are simply demoralized, both by actually existing reality and because of the massive campaign waged by our enemies to produce this exact outcome.
It all adds up to a bad time for giving. I say keep doing what you are doing and expect a Christmas card..
Thanks for your kind words, analysis, and support. I am sure the economic situation and the other factors you list are largely to blame.
Question to Rightists: Does the Left slow down or double down when the economy gets bad?
They just dip harder into the public till.
They are locking up dissidents on the Right for posts they have made even non threatening but simply misleading. People on the Right have no government nor any other legal safe guards such as the Left. These are factors.
Honestly that sounds like an exaggeration. The actual persecution is bad enough. But none of it is new.
Greg, I wouldn’t say that you or anyone here is doing something “wrong.” Your work is both excellent and admirable. Most of the other writers here are great too!
Counter-Currents is one of my favorite white nationalist organizations for a plethora of reasons. One in particular is that (at least I’ve never seen it) you don’t call for foolish measures like partitioning the United States and ridiculous things along those lines. I could write a book longer than the Bible about why that wouldn’t work nor is it desirable, but that’s another discussion for another time.
My only guess as to why the donations aren’t as high as you’d like them to be is one part economic struggle (inflation, food, mortgage, etc) killing most people’s wallets, and one part fatalism. I see it more on other white nationalist websites than I do here, but even a few people who post here are abandoning hope about our situation both here and abroad. If that’s how they feel, fine, but I really wish folks of that persuasion would gracefully exit white nationalism and stop being negative on discussion boards such as these — as these should only be used for those who are willing and able to discuss solutions on how to save us and our countries. I feel sad for the whites who are giving up, because they’re guaranteeing victories by our enemies and no future for whites anywhere in the world, let alone North America — but again, I just ask that they stop perusing and posting on these websites and leave them to us who are actually trying to do something.
I’m not sure if you’ve heard of other white organizations like the National Justice Party and the American Freedom Party, but those groups are not only running websites and having meetings, but they’re getting people out in the public all over the country protesting the Great Replacement and all other anti-white things that are happening nationwide. I wonder if we should dialogue with them and see about things we could do together in the public sphere, while combining resources and action groups — maybe ones who distribute flyers and whatnot. Ideas, ideas, ideas. Anything to wake up more whites and put a stop to this madness once and for all. Everything is out in the open and undeniable today, so what better time than now to do the things we were too afraid to do in 1988?
I can only give a little upwards of $75 a month to Counter-Currents for the time being, but that could change. I also have recruited many friends and acquaintances to this website and I ask them to donate $20 each if they can. Every little bit helps
Either way, never give up, and keep doing what you’re doing!
Ian, thank you. I appreciate your support. I also appreciate your attempts to get others to read and support Counter-Currents.
Hang in there.
I think part of the drop off may still be corona related, both the initial illness and the disastrous vaccine response.
We all may be facing a much “smaller” future: one with less money, fewer things and people.
To look at that future with an optimistic lens: there won’t be so much financial need as well.
The Covid recession and inflation are a large part of the problem. Ordinary people simply have less to spend, and the vast bulk of our supporters are ordinary people.
It’s true that the economy sucks, but it’s also true that 100% of our readers can afford to give $5, and if they did, Counter-Currents would have millions of dollars.
I’m willing to chip in. I know the aim of the sanctions against you are numerous and unfair, probably illegal (but why spend tens of thousands challenging them when you’d most likely lose) and it is having an effect, sadly.
My example from the UK is that I cannot use CashApp here, I tried but it would not process my donation. I’m loathed to use Entropy because it asks me to sign in via Google or Youtube which I do not trust with my details. I emailed asking for advice on which kind of gift card to purchase electronically to support the fundraiser.
I admire your work, this site and all contributions by the writers if someone can explain to me how I can do this easily, I shall.
I contributed to TPC recently and it was via Give Send Go as TPC has been the victims of similar sanction to CC. Is Give Send Go an option?
Please write to [email protected] and we can walk you through the options.
I used to exclusively donate to CC, but this year I have included Mark Collett and The Nordic Resistance Movement. This however goes from the total amount I can spend, which has not increased, as my income has not, while my expenses has. So perhaps one reason it looks so meager this year is that there are other worthy causes popping up and looking more serious than they did a year ago, while the amount of the shared audience that is serious enough to chip in hasn’t increased yet?
Thanks for doing what you are doing. It is some consolation that there are more worthy recipients of your support than in the past.
Dear Greg, I have to admit that I have been holding back until now. I have been trying to make more money on the side so that I can donate more before the end of the year.
A question has been troubling me for a while: How many donors in terms of percentage are Americans and how many Europeans? I mean: there are more than 300 millions people living in the USA, half of which are Whites. If every white person donated only 1 dollar a year, CC would be massively funded…
Thanks. The majority of our donors are Americans, but we have supporters from all over the white world.
I went to monthly giving instead of one gift a year, but the total is twice as much in the end and it’s much easier. I would like to recommend it to anyone who is able. I also hope to do extra when I can. Reading Counter Currents each day is a great education and a community of people I admire. Keep up the good work and good things will happen!
In short, we’re getting a lot right. But we must be doing something wrong…
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Could it be that C-C depends upon an Israeli outfit, SimilarWeb, and its algorithms for an accurate count of monthly page views? I wouldn’t trust the reliability of those Jews any more than I trust the SPLC Jews who have openly vowed to “destroy” White dissidents.
NationalVanguard.org servers consistently report more than 1,000,000 monthly page views but apparently the National Alliance’s online magazine didn’t make the cut for SimilarWeb’s list. Boohoo!
Regardless, sincere best wishes, Greg, with fundraising and your tax-exempt Homeland Institute. That is excellent news.
—
Question to Rightists: Does the Left slow down or double down when the economy gets bad?
—
I don’t know. Our Alliance, being neither left-wing nor right-wing, but strict geographical racial separatists, cares not about the phony left v. right ruse any more than we care about the Republican v, Democrat dog and pony show. We see it as racially responsible, eligible Aryans vs. the Jew and his collaborators.
The movement is small enough without throwing “collaborators” out.
Conscious collaborators with the jewish power structure, unless they are deliberate infiltrators, are hardly the basis for a pro-White movement. Mr Williams is promising to fight them which sounds sensible, allowing for the probably small chance that some might genuinely be turned to our ( their own ) side.
A “pro-White” movement that promises to “fight” “Aryans” it doesn’t consider “eligible” isn’t a pro-White movement but a cult of violent extremists.
SimilarWeb is a website that we look at from time to time. It is not a utility running in the back end of our site. When CC started, we installed a web stats program in the back end (a self-contained program, not a “service” scraping our data and sending it who knows where). This program consistently gave us higher numbers than SimilarWeb and other web based services. But the program became antiquated and could not survive the upgrade of the site a couple of years ago.
We tried some other programs, and frankly they seemed overcomplicated and not particularly accurate. This is why we dropped our monthly newsletters when we no longer had commensurable stats. Now we just list the week’s top five without numbers, which are probably meaningless anyway.
I think a lot of these measurement technologies are quite arbitrary not to say fake. But for merely relative measurements, i.e., comparing CC to the SPLC, it doesn’t really matter if similar web is accurate, as long as it is consistent in its metrics.
Congratulations on your healthy traffic. The more successful groups in the movement, the merrier.
Greg, I enjoy the writing here. On top of the writing, there are these little gems like up and coming right wing star Hanania having written for you in the past. Consider this comment a pledge to donate once I have my proverbial shit together.
I think for a lot of people it’s finances what with inflation being out of control. I try to eat meat just on the weekends to try to save some money.
I’m amazed to see these numbers, especially on Amren.
Just a suggestion. At least for me one of the incentives to donate was the free copy of “The year America died.”
Thanks for this. It is surprising, though, how little traffic comes our way when we are mentioned in the mainstream media, even linked there, as with the Hanania story. Mainstream media believers don’t have much intellectual curiosity, it seems.
Publish a guide to secure communications and funds transfer with a focus on anonymity. I think many more people want to donate but are afraid of ending up on a ‘terrorist’ watch list.
We have such a guide. Just write to [email protected].
You can still send money anonymously through the mail, either cash – wrap it in paper – or a money order, which can be purchased anonymously with cash from nearly any grocery store (as can envelopes and stamps in many cases).
Those who want anonymity can have it if they’re willing to do a little work to drop a letter in the mail.
Yes, much appreciated. In more than 13 years, I can think of only one occasion when a cash donation went astray.
How many fundraisers were here at this time last year? I’ve seen very few this year. Counter-currents can’t ask for money. I like well-written fundraisers from a variety of authors with a strong story.
We started in June this year, not March as in previous years.
So it works out mathematically. March, April, May, June, July, August is greater by half than June, July, August.
Personally not a fan of the paywall model. I find I just don’t visit the page as much. I used to give at fund raisers and yearly, now it sort of slips my mind. Seems like the movement has hit a lull.
Sorry to lose you, but on balance the paywall benefits us, so it is here to stay.
No worries. You do important work, I understand and will remember this year. Just saying it changed my behavior at least.
PS: I enjoy the debate format
I’ve looked at numerous sites pertaining to nonprofit fundraising. Nearly all of them suggest in-person meetings (both formal and informal) and conferences as a good way to get otherwise reluctant donors to open their checkbooks. Invitation-only events are fine, but they may send the wrong message to those who don’t receive an invitation–and you can’t get a donation from someone who isn’t there. I’m sure there are many of us who’d like to meet you and the rest of the C-C staff. There may be concern about infiltrators and agents provocateur, but doesn’t that go with the territory at this point?
I looked into more conventional institutional fundraising in late 2021 and the first half of 2022. It increased revenue but basically the additional revenue was consumed by the fundraising process itself. It was worth a try, but I have concluded that conventional institutional fundraising does not work for CC.
I am really not a fan of the conference model. Our last conference was a blast, but we ended up losing money. Guess who didn’t lose money? Airlines, hotels, restaurants: all businesses that promote the Great Replacement. If things had gone only slightly differently, we would have been fine. But I can’t begin to express how galling the whole thing is.
Every conference motivates people in the movement to spend huge amounts of money OUTSIDE THE MOVEMENT. The amount of money spent outside the movement on a big national conference is enough to pay two full-time activists for a year. Whatever conferences are, they are not a good strategy to get people to invest IN THE MOVEMENT.
This is why I began doing smaller local meetings around the US: the NW Forum, the NY Forum, etc. It is much cheaper to come to the people than induce the people to come to us. Beyond that, local meetings are more likely to give rise to friendships and productive collaborations than national meetings with people from far away. Also, I can reach people who can’t afford the money and time to come to larger events. I also go to AmRen or send people there. Yes, it is a conference, but by going to it, I am going to the people too.
I’m sure everyone has a different perspective. Personally, I rarely respond to fundraiser posts and I find them off-putting, although I was inspired to give a little extra by Jim Goad’s appeal last year. Perhaps people have fundraiser fatigue. Unless there’s a special event, I always donate around December.
Are there any areas with a large concentration of readers? Local, in-person events may be profitable in some areas.
Some people are motivated by recognition or reward or a personal “thank you” or even an exclusive little icon next to their name.
There’s also maybe work that can be done to lower the barrier further, although I think you’ve done well already.
Everyone can afford to give $5. What stops them? I wish I knew.
I appreciate your support and input.
I started our fundraiser later this year, thinking that maybe it would be more effective. That was a serious mistake. Next year, I plan to run the fundraiser March to New Year’s Eve again. If you don’t like fundraiser posts, there are usually ~19 other pieces to read each week.
Oh, I’m certainly not complaining. 🙂 The breadth and volume of original work published on Counter-Currents makes it a real gem.
A critical thing is maintaining communications with the readership. Aside from the content, the Counter-Currents crew have some of the best “radio voices” online and the listener gets the sense from your podcasts that one is being directly addressed.
Be good if there were to be one podcast on the weekend, and one during the week. One podcast could deal with theory and another with activism. Something for the intellectual and something for those who are hitting the streets. It would be useful to interview activists who are pushing White Nationalism. People are more likely to contribute ca$h if it contributes to things moving forward.
And yes, there are all sorts of logistical challenges involved here. But think of C-C as the Voice of the WN Underground.
Thanks. I appreciate this. But these things take money, and I am not in the position to contemplate increasing my financial obligations. Instead, I am forced to contemplate cutting them back.
Although I don’t listen to podcasts myself, Francis, I hear you. Perhaps a good compromise is simply that Counter-Currents shows how much money is needed to make that extra podcast, and people can donate to make it happen. Then the community can get its podcast if it wants it, and Greg doesn’t have to pull money away from critical things. The dollars flowing in for various projects (or not) could also give Greg insight into what people really want to see from Counter-Currents.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/18/opinion/reverse-migration-black-majority-states.html
Greg, check this out lol.
snrg: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/18/opinion/reverse-migration-black-majority-states.html
That Jew-owned (read: anti-White) paper wants nearly $500 per year from subscribers at its “special rate” after the first year, for the privilege to read its crap online. Your first year, only $50-plus.
Is that smart, or what? Since you apparently are already subscribed to the NYT online, why not just copy and paste the gist of this article if reverse-migration-black-majority-states is really relevant?
Your payment method will automatically be charged in advance the introductory rate of $4.00 every 4 weeks for 1 year, and after 1 year the standard rate of $25.00 every 4 weeks.
Greg is only asking a fraction of that amount to have C-C paywall privileges.
The best way to cite mainstream media, especially paywalled MSM, is to copy the url, go to Archive.is, paste in the link, then share the Archive link here.
I wonder how the archive.org crawler, I think that is what it is called, itself can bypass the MSM sites’ paywalls.
I think a key point for brainstorming here is how we as a movement can better bring in WEALTHY WHITES specifically.
– specific flyers for wealthy white neighbourhoods
– network through the right circles
– contact them on social media (you’d be surprised at the number of wealthy individuals who read DMs from randoms online)
We only need to reach a few to get going.
I would echo what Francis XB said. Your weekly podcasts offered a personal connection and engagement with CC that print articles and the comments sections simply do not. Your AMAs, co-hosting episodes and interviews gave me something to look forward to each week. They were consistent reminders and incentives for me to donate, whether I asked a question or not.
I’m sure you know precisely how much money was directly podcast-generated via Entropy, Odyssey or DLive tokens (whatever they are, I never bothered to figure out lemons, ice creams and ninjaghinis). Maybe the math didn’t add up. But I would also consider how those weekly episodes drew people into CC and made them feel a stronger real-time connection to you as CC’s intellectual leader. Podcasts are more accessible for some people, like myself, and they are a more dynamic medium than print. That intangible effect could make your audience feel more incorporated and give them a sense that “something is happening.”
Maybe you could take a poll to figure out what percentage of your audience would donate more and more often if regularly scheduled Greg Johnson podcasts were resumed.
One problem is that Greg Johnson is one guy with a limited amount of time – and podcasting takes a lot of it, especially when you consider how it requires uninterrupted time – but I do agree that we would benefit from closer community connections. Perhaps that could be via a more distributed effort with local meetups and events organized by the community itself, but through some infrastructure that Counter-Currents provides.
Personally, I think greater transparency and interactivity in funding may help spur donations. I know there are things you want to do but you can’t because you don’t have the money. Consider listing them on the website, saying how much they will cost and how much has been raised so far. Allow earmarking of funds towards particular projects and suggestions of new projects (perhaps with a minimum percentage of initial funding from the community first to get some skin in the game). People like to know that their money is going to something tangible, so when Project X comes to fruition they can think “I helped make that happen.”
If you’ve ever participated in a Kickstarter or similar crowdfunding project, you’ll recognize the effectiveness of “stretch goals” in getting people to open their wallets – in addition to simply being able to say “I helped build that.”
The site’s basic operating expenses can be listed too, so people see that running the website costs a lot of money. Counter-Currents is free for us, but it’s not free for you. You might even show the month’s operating costs covered in an unobstrusive section at the top of the website. (BitChute did this, for example.)
I sometimes wonder to myself: “If I gave twice as much, or stopped donating entirely, would I even notice a difference?” I think I wouldn’t. Partly that’s because I’m only a small fry, but it’s also because I have no idea what the money goes to. There are certainly things I wish Counter-Currents or AmRen or some site on our side did – especially around local community building, local political opportunities, etc. – and if that aligned with your goals I’d be glad to give some extra money specifically for that. I’d also be glad to give extra money specifically for content that I value, such as interviews with people like Joost Strydom, head of the Orania Movement, or street activists fighting demographic replacement in Ireland, or others.
In short, it’s easier to give money when it’s going to something specific that I value, or when I can see the results, and it may be true of others. (Again, I think Kickstarter provides a good model.)
These are excellent suggestions. I will think about how to implement them. We did have a patronage project for The White Nationalist Manifesto. That worked well. I will consider it for The Great Replacement.
Hi Greg, Just to add to AdamMils comment, I have some ideas on how you might get in more donations. If you had a page on the website which could track people’s donations if they WANT to earmark them for a specific project or type of project. This would also be a way for people to put ideas forward that they think are worth pursuing.
So it would sort of be like how people pay to send in superchats because they want other viewers/listeners to hear their comment and get their dopamine hit (lol, for some people that is part of it).
People could pay to have their idea put up on this new webpage in the hope that it would be seen by more people and potentially receive more funding to make it a reality.
Counter Currents would have the veto to not put an idea up if it was not very good.
You could also set a minimum $ amount for an idea to make it onto the page. That would help separate the casual people vs serious people. Maybe $500. Maybe $1k.
All donations that are for specific projects are to be used to maintain CC website, staff etc if needed (highly likely early on).
I can see that there would be some admin work involved but i think the pros would outweigh the cons. Definitely potential for something like this in the dissident right/pro white think tank space.
I think this is important. I will talk to our tech guru and Program Director about how we might implement such things. We already have done such projects. So the first thing is to create a single page on the site where one can look at them and see their progress.
Hi Greg, Thanks for your reply.
I thought about this some more and had this to add.
Another more simple way you could do this is for YOU to decide on 20-30 small projects that you definitely want to do, then allow people to vote on which project is done first via donations to specific projects.
You could show amount donated and the number of donors per project or only the total amount donated. Both have their advantages.
I also thought to mention here, one of the best things Counter Currents/Greg Johnson can provide to the pro white movement, that would also help justify people donating money to you, would be to design intelligent flyers.
As events happen in America, the design and publishing of flyers for activists to 1. print and distribute IRL 2. share as a meme online would be a great way for Counter Currents to contribute. People would feel more obliged to donate for this. Because they would want to see more of it. It would be a wonderful force multiplier for CC. It would also bring in more internet traffic.
I see all these ‘active clubs’ and ‘white lives matter’ groups on gab and telegram. I’m sure they would appreciate more flyers.
Anyway, hope you have a good day and take this feedback on board.
I took part in one Kickstarter campaign years ago. If I recall correctly, I signed up and gave my credit card information. But the card was not charged until the campaign actually received enough pledges to be viable. Our trouble is that we have no credit card processor. This means that we would have to either collect pledges and then follow up each pledge with a request to pay once enough as been pledged, OR we would have to charge people in advance even though we have no guarantee of actually fully funding the project. The first is an unreasonable risk for us, the second an unreasonable risk for donors. I am trying to figure out a way around this.
That’s a good point. I would personally be willing to contribute to some projects – the more important ones – even if there’s no guarantee of full funding, but not all. However, to piggy-back on HJK’s comment above, if people could see their earmarked funds on some section of the website, they could perhaps choose at any time to redirect them to another project or to the general fund, or perhaps request a refund minus a processing fee if the balance is over some threshold. (In that case, you’ve received an interest-free loan…) That said, tracking earmarked donations in a database would become an administrative burden if it couldn’t be mostly automated. Whether it would be worth the effort, I don’t know.
In any case, I think it may be worthwhile to write an article once per year or so laying out the things you want to do but don’t have funding for. If nothing else, it can help gauge interest, and people might have useful suggestions.
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