Membership Month: Support grassroots media that challenges the power of billionaires, big business and the far-right

Dear Friends of the NB Media Co-op,

First of all, we would like to thank all of our supporters from the bottom of our hearts. Thanks to you, we have accomplished some wonderful things over the past year.

Today we’re asking for your help as we launch our annual Membership Month fundraising campaign.

This year, we need your support to grow monthly donors to:

• help sustain the NB Media Co-op throughout the year
• continue to operate with paid staff
• ensure that our articles are never hidden behind a paywall

Please make a donation or renew your membership here and share this call with your networks. We suggest a monthly donation of $5 (annual or one-time donations are also welcome — membership dues are $30 per year, or pay what you can).

Why support your NB Media Co-op?

The NB Media Co-op relies on financial support from members and from organized labour to provide an alternative voice in a province marked by extreme concentration of media ownership. (To learn more about the NB Media Co-op, check out this recent Briarpatch article, ‘Don’t hate the media, be the media’.)

In the words of Tracy Glynn, co-founder and coordinating editor, “We started the NB Media Co-op to be the solution to the problems in our province’s media landscape… Our journalism is still independent, and telling important local stories. What we achieve is thanks to our community. We are so grateful for readers who give what they can to sustain our work!”

At the NB Media Co-op, we believe that regular people working together can accomplish great things. Your support helps provide news coverage of social movements in New Brunswick, critical journalism on our most pressing issues, and hopeful takes about a more just future. We publish thoughtful commentaries that oppose tired old story lines and confront a dangerous status quo that dehumanizes and divides us.

By becoming a monthly donor, you can help us challenge the power of billionaires, big business, and right-wing populists, by platforming underrepresented voices on inequality, racism, colonialism, and the climate crisis. And we punch well above our modest weight. 

Our goal during Membership Month is to increase our total monthly donations to $1,000. Currently, 55 members are donating $745/month. This would mean:

• 51 new monthly donors contributing $5 per month. Or,
• 5 new monthly donations of $20; 5 new donations of $15/month; 5 new donations of $10/month; and 6 new donations of $5/month.

Over the past year:

• We increased the hours of our first paid part-time staff person
• We hired a full-time video journalist with the support of the Local Journalism Initiative
• We expanded French-language content, publishing more than 60 articles in French
• We expanded our social media presence with an Instagram account
• We continued to distribute bi-monthly print issues of The Brief and organize events to increase media literacy and dialogue on critical issues
• And we are currently partnering with The Madhu Verma Migrant Justice Centre to publish articles about the current housing reality for migrants and those with precarious immigration status in the province

We want to do even more, and we need your support to get us there!

In case you need other reasons to support media for social justice: we’re giving away prizes to both new and renewing members who donate in March!

Donors will be entered into a draw for a chance to win books, some of them by our very own members. Titles include:

• Bargaining Forward: The story of the 2021 CUPE strike in New Brunswick
• Letters from the Future: How New Brunswickers Confronted Climate Change and Redefined Progress
• Capitalism and Dispossession: Corporate Canada at Home and Abroad 
• And more…!

Thank you for your support!

The NB Media Co-op Board of Directors,
Sarah, Tracy, Tobin and Dave