The Black Commentator - July 13, 2006

We now have 3 ways for you to make financial contributions to BC, whether or not you are currently a BC Paid Subscriber.

Many readers have written to us, wondering how to become a BC Contributor after having already become a BC Paid Subscriber. Others would like to help financially support BC even though they are not BC Paid Subscribers. Still others would like to send financial support on a regular basis. With the current BC Paid Subscription/BC Contributor sign-up, none of this was possible, although some creative readers actually purchased additional BC Paid Subscriptions as a way of making further contributions. To all of you who have written, and purchased additional BC Paid Subscriptions, thank you. You’re helping to keep us going, and we truly appreciate your generosity, as do, we’re sure, all the BlackCommentator.com readers.

Here’s a brief outline of the 3 BC Contribution methods. In future issues, all will be available by clicking a new button labeled “Contribute Now”.

1. Recurring Contributions by Credit Card - Click Here

You determine the frequency and amount with which you’d like to contribute on a regular basis.

You will be directed to an online form to fill out and submit online.

The only credit card information you will enter on the form is the last 4 digits of the credit card you elect to use.

If you elect to use a credit card already on file with our credit card processing company, you do nothing more, and will see your contributions begin to appear on your statement.

If you elect to use a different credit card than the one on file with our credit card processing company, or you do not have a credit card currently on file with them, we will send you an email, asking you to call us so that we may complete the one-time set-up of your recurring contributions.

2. Occasional Contributions by Bank to Bank Transfer - Click Here

Any time you’d like to make a contribution to BC, you fill out an online form with your name and email address and submit it online.

You will receive an email from our bank that you approve and submit with your banking information, via Secure Server.

Our bank then sends the transfer request to your bank for processing.

3. Occasional Contributions by Credit Card - Click Here

Any time you’d like to make a contribution to BC, you fill out an online form and submit it online.

We then email you an invoice which you can pay online via Secure Server, using the credit card of your choice.

Thank you to everyone who wrote to us with suggestions of how we could make supporting BC more reader-friendly. Together, we're going to make BC survive far into the future.

As we've mentioned before, we need 20% of our readers (or the equivalent, including BC Contributions) to be BC Paid Subscribers in order for us to survive. Beyond that, we can begin the outreach plans we have to decrease the “Digital Divide” in under-served, economically-strapped areas. We dream of that, but our reality is that we either reach the 20% by the end of 2006, or we don’t continue to publish beyond the end of the last BC Paid Subscription. It’s simple economics, and the BC Readers will determine which way BC goes – onward, or out.

Update – Here’s this week’s graph:

We welcomed 33 new BC Paid Subscribers this past week. Thank you to those who went to the Sign Up page and became BC Paid Subscribers, or mailed in checks and money orders. And an additional thank you to those who also became BC Contributors.

We moved up 1.28%, although this week, we've begun to include equivalent subscriptions from BC Contributions, so we're also showing a one-time increase from past BC Contributions. We're now a little over 1/5 of the way toward our 20% goal. Will you help BC?

If you want to know more about what it means to become a BC Paid Subscriber please visit our Frequently Asked Questions page. If you have a question we didn't answer, please let us know by contacting Nancy Littlefield. Thank you.

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