Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

Small Wars Journal has kicked off our

first fundraising campaign.  During June 2010, or more precisely through the 4^th of July, we have a goal of raising $50,000 for Small Wars Foundation,

the 501(c)(3) that operates Small Wars Journal. While we dearly appreciate the donations so far – our community of interest and practice needs to do more here to help us keep the lights on – seriously. For many this site has been a free ride, for others a serious investment in time and money that can no longer sustain itself with pats on the back.

When we reflect back on where we are now, damn, we're thankful. We are

where we are now, first and foremost, because of the quality of thought and writing

by our content contributors (all volunteers), the substantive participation of commenters

on the Journal and SWJ Blog, and the richness of discussion in the Small Wars Council. 

We have benefitted immensely from the early endorsement and continued participation

of some of the greats in the field.  We have received some individual contributions

and we have efforts underway enabled by some generous grants. We are humbled by

the way the community has embraced Small Wars Journal.

Even more humbling is the amount of work we need to do to keep up with your interest

and continue to be worthy of the value you seem to place in us.  We have a

criminal backlog of good content submissions that we need to be able to work through

faster, since timeliness in so important to our dialog. We have a lot to do to update

and expand the site's other content, particularly to exploit the potential of an

upcoming platform and usability upgrade made possible by a grant. We are doing a

lot, we can do a lot more, and we need some resources help to close the gap. Call

it capacity building.

So to better serve you, the small wars community of interest, we are in the unpleasant

but necessary position of coming to you, hat in hand, in an NPR-like scenario. We

are counting on your contributions, coupled with support from grants and foundations,

collateral income (advertising and referrals), and volunteer contributions of effort

and content, to help us do more of what you seem to value and want us to do.

Please see our Support

pages for more ways you can help.  Here are the most blunt ones:

Track the

campaign's progress here.