Mad Chapman reflects on the support The Spinoff has received for What’s Eating Aotearoa.
On Tuesday night, I and several other Spinoff staff spent far too much time refreshing the PledgeMe website, eager to catch the exact moment we hit our target of $50,000. It happened, but that’s not to say we were expecting it as a given. And I experienced genuine relief at no longer having to view my own face in the video thumbnail dozens of times a day.
We launched our fundraising campaign for What’s Eating Aotearoa just over three weeks ago. The line we tagged to it was “an ambitious fundraising campaign for an equally ambitious editorial project”. Both statements felt very true when we first conceived it, and the work that will be delivered because of the support we have received will live up to that promised ambition.
What we did not expect was just how many of our supporters would rally four weeks out from Christmas at the end of a tough year to support longform journalism. We had an inkling the idea would be received well, but to have had more than $54,500 pledged from 1,148 people in three weeks has been an extraordinary reminder for us of the strength of our community, the merit of the idea and people’s goodwill towards (and belief in) The Spinoff.
We launched the campaign to Spinoff members and some keen supporters the day before we launched it to the public. These people already support The Spinoff financially, and yet it was these people who got us to $10,000 by the time we woke up, ready to launch it to a wider audience.
Since then, we have had hundreds of emails, calls and messages of support, and no fewer than 450 suggestions from supporters and members on what we should cover as part of the project. Some extraordinarily generous people have donated their time, expertise and goods to the campaign to offer as rewards.
We hit our target and then some. We end this year ready to take a break, enjoy some good kai and prepare for this ambitious editorial project. We cannot wait to share the work with you.
I will leave you with the words of Charlotte Muru-Lanning, who is “stupidly excited about this project” but also sadly leaves us at the end of the year. In her final edition of The Boil Up yesterday, she outlined her vision for our kai newsletter, describing it as “a shared table where we can gather to break bread and contemplate the meaning of food in our lives”. We hope to take those words of Charlotte’s and make them an integral part of the What’s Eating Aotearoa project next year.
All that is really left for me to say, effusively, is ngā mihi nui, thank you and have a restful holiday season.