PEERS Finances: Doing well and we would greatly appreciate your support
Dear friends,
Last year, many of you saw our email informing of a wonderful supporter who sent us a huge donation of cryptocurrencies. Asking to remain anonymous, he told us that at age 67 he was on his death bed. As he had already arranged for his family to be taken care of, he wanted to support our work, which had a profound impact in his life.
This most generous man had done very well with the cryptos and gifted us with an amount that cashed out to about $386,000! We have deep gratitude to this kind man who helped to relieve any anxiety we had around finances. May he rest in peace and help to guide us from the other side.
One unusual challenge that arose from this amazing act of generosity is that we could lose our nonprofit status. If a nonprofit doesn't get at least 1/3 of its donations from a large number of donors averaged over five years, their nonprofit status can be revoked. Because of the size of this wonderful donation, PEERS could lose our nonprofit status if we don't get enough donations from a wide spread of donors to meet this requirement over the next four years.
We did make enough the previous four years to keep our status, but this year we've seen a significant drop in donations. Normally, we get at least several and sometimes many donations between $1,000 and $5,000 each year. This year, we’ve only had one (for $1,111). Partially because of this, the amount of donations we've received are down this year over 25% from normal years. If this trend continues, we could lose our nonprofit status.
You might ask with this big donation last year why we continue to show the "in the red" numbers. We obviously have a very healthy buffer in the bank now, but as donations are down quite a bit this year and we are spending more now to make improvements, we are actually far more in the red for the year this year than we've ever been (about $36,000).
We have found that donations drop by around 40% when we stop showing the "in the read" number. So this year we are showing how much we are in the red each quarter (the $36,000 number for the year seems too scary) hoping to inspire more people to donate. We are in very good shape financially overall, yet we still need your support to maintain our nonprofit status and to continue to grow and thrive.
The exciting news is that for the first time ever, we now are able to hire another person full time to join me in this important work. We actually hired a great guy from the Netherlands early this year, only to sadly realize after a couple months that his English wasn't fluent enough for our needs. As writing is such a big part of this work, we had to let him go. But later this month we are hiring a fabulous, talented young woman named Amber Yang.
Amber has masters degree in organizational change and development. She has been a top contributor to Project Censored for several years, is a specialist in the transformative modality of restorative justice, and has incredible, creative Internet skills (she designed the new look of the WantToKnow.info home page). She is incredibly smart and articulate with a very positive attitude, despite a good knowledge of the dark side of our world which WantToKnow.info covers. I've know her and appreciated her great work for about five years. Amber seems ideal for what we are looking for.
So please join us in celebrating that PEERS is doing very well overall financially and we're very excited to bring in new talent. With Amber, we plan to have an even stronger focus on solutions. And we hope that you will continue to support us, particularly to avoid losing our nonprofit status.
As PEERS is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, all contributions are tax deductible to the fullest extent permitted by law as long as we maintain our status. To contribute using your credit card online, please visit the link below to make a one-time donation or to set up a monthly contribution.
To send a check or money order, please make your donation out to PEERS and mail it to:
PEERS
16791 Greenhorn Road
Grass Valley, CA 95945 USA
PEERS stands for Public Education and Empowerment Resource Service. You can also use the above address to send a one-time or monthly donation using your bank's free online "Bill Pay." Just give your bank a call and they will help you. It's quite easy.
To read the fascinating history of how PEERS and WantToKnow.info came to be, click here. For the most recent yearly report on PEERS, including detailed financial information, click here.
Thank you for being one of the small, but ever-growing number of people who want to know what is really going on in our world and who are working together for the good of all people in our beautiful world. Together, we really are making a big difference.
With deep gratitude and very best wishes,
Fred Burks for PEERS and WantToKnow.info
Note: For many glowing reader reviews of WantToKnow.info, click here.
Please support this important work: Donate here
