Dear Swellesley Report readers:

More subtly than we probably should, we ask for donations to support our independent journalism venture.

To be clear, we’re a small business, not a non-profit. But we’re no media behemoth. Donations help to cover the cost of everything from web hosting to our newsletter distribution system ($26 per month) to our media insurance (more than $1K per year) to our calendaring software ($200 a year).

Down the road, we’d love to also offer stipends to budding journalists interested in contributing if donors would like to support that specifically. We were lucky to have an intern this summer who sought college credit for her work.

But we’ve heard from a couple of readers lately (and more in the past), that they’ve had trouble donating via the PayPal link we provide. We’d hate to think that people intend to donate, then get stymied by a tech issue on our end.

If you do run into issues, please let us know and describe what happened, and we’ll try to resolve this issue. We’ve created a fresh link and tested it out ourselves this past week and donated to ourselves. That was unsatisfying in the short term, but we hope it will pay off in the long run…

Regards,

Bob & Deborah