| | | | Dear Friend,
This is an urgent reminder that we have just 2 days left to reach our annual Spring campaign goal of $175,000.
With a large boost from our readers yesterday, we are now within striking distance, with only another $75,000 to raise to make that goal!
Please consider supporting our mission to build a Culture of Life by making the most generous donation you can today.
| | Have you ever wondered who is behind LifeSite, and what our organization does with the money you donate?
Sometimes we find that readers of LifeSite, new readers in particular, understandably do not realize the size and scope of our mission: including not just how many millions of people read LifeSite (6 million people last month alone, for the record), but also the number of people and resources required to keep this unique international news service going every day.
It is quite an eye-opener when we list everything involved. Given the exponential growth of LifeSite over the past few years, it seems time to present an update. This should help you to understand why we must set our quarterly campaign goals at the very least at the levels that we do each time.
Every single member of the LifeSite team is passionately dedicated to our mission. Many have families with children and all depend on prayer (we have a staff prayer conference call every morning at 9:30 a.m.) to do this challenging work. They are also highly principled persons who see this work as being much more of personal mission than a "job".
They care deeply about the issues that we write about and their impact on the world. At least several were on the "other side" in the past and experienced profound conversions to pro-life, pro-family beliefs.
In addition to the English language LifeSite, we also publish two other versions of LifeSite. There is the Spanish language Notifam and the Portuguese language Notifam. These two services have been completely re-designed and their readership has dramatically increased in the past several months.
Almost all of our journalists are paid salaries or an hourly rate (part-timers). Nearly half are full-time, and the rest are part-time with widely varying total hours per month. A small number of the part-timers are able to offer their work to LifeSite as a no-charge gift to the pro-life and pro-family cause.
Almost all of the news reporters work from their homes. Our one office is located in Front Royal, Virginia in the Human Life International building. Much of the LifeSite, Canada administration work (payroll, bookkeeping, mail and donation receiving, etc.) is contracted to Campaign Life Coalition (CLC) in Toronto. We are very grateful for CLC's assistance.
Since the introduction of our dramatically new website last year, we have also been able to add prominent paid bloggers to the LifeSite team. In addition to our own bloggers, other notable pro-life bloggers such as Jill Stanek and Ryan Bomberger permit us to re-publish and often give much wider exposure to posts from their blog sites.
Back in September 1997, it was just John-Henry Westen and myself, the two founding staff of Lifesite. Things have certainly changed since then.
CURRENT NEWS TEAM
North America
1. John-Henry Westen – Co-founder, Editor-in-Chief, journalist
2. Steve Jalsevac – Co-founder, managing director, editor, journalist
3. John Jalsevac – Website development, petitions, journalist
4. Patrick Craine – Managing editor, journalist, Canadian bureau chief
5. Ben Johnson – US bureau chief, journalist
6. Dustin Siggins – Washington DC bureau reporter and media outreach
7. Kirsten Anderson – Washington DC and region reporter
8. Lisa Bourne – Journalist
9. Pete Baklinski – Journalist
10. Ted Baklinski – Journalist
11. Lianne Lawrence – Toronto journalist and LSN Canada donor relations
12. Steve Weatherbe – Journalist
13. Drew Belsky – Journalist
International
14. Hilary White (Italy) – Rome and Europe reporter
15. Jeanne Smits (Paris, France) – European reporter
16. Andrew Smith – Australian reporter
17. Michelle Kaufman – New Zealand reporter
18. Matthew Hoffman – Latin American reporter
19. Gualberto Guilherme Araujo – Brazilian editor
20. Gualberto Garcia Jones – Latin America bureau chief
21. Sophia Vazquez Mellado – Spanish language reporter
22. Mei-Li Beane – Spanish Language reporter
23. Natalia Duehlom – Polish correspondent
24. Matthew McCusker – London correspondent
Bloggers
25. Anthony Esolen
26. Matt Fradd
27. Abby Johnson
28. Jonathon van Maren
29. Melanie Pritchard
SUPPORT TEAM
30. Jon Fidero – Development Director
31. Andy Parrish – Marketing, media, public relations
32. Clare Magaad – LSN U.S. Office Manager
33. Megan Mulherin – Database management, Donor relations coordinator
34. Linda Wilson – Donor relations
35. Tommy Farrel – Donor relations
36. Theresa Jalsevac – Daily news subscriber services, article publishing
37. Jacob Westen – Article publishing
EXTERNAL SERVICES
LifeSite employs the services of a wide variety of companies and individuals for website design and development, video production, graphic design, donation processing, mass emailing of the Daily News, web hosting, payroll, legal work, marketing of LifeSite and much more.
Some of these external costs are in the six-figure level, given the large volume and variety of articles, videos and photos that we publish, the cutting edge complexity of the website and the high level of traffic that LifeSite must now be able to handle.
We also have on-going and major computer, photo and video equipment costs since we are a digital service requiring high quality, reliable and the most up-to-date digital resources.
Finally, our team, and especially John-Henry, have been required to do a lot more travelling in recent years to cover major stories on site and to attend and be actively involved in very important meetings in several nations.
The Marches for life in Washington, DC, Ottawa Canada and Rome, Italy have required a team of LSN staff. As well, we are the original organizers of the Rome Life Forum in Vatican City that is now billed as a Voice of the Family (which LifeSite co-founded) event and is co-sponsored by a number of International groups.
I hope this has helped you to much better understand our financial needs and will encourage any who might have been hesitant to donate to re-consider and send a generous gift for the LifeSite mission.
We are amazed that so much has been accomplished over the years, thanks especially to the generosity of those who believe in what we do and have wanted to express their appreciation for this work and what it has meant to them.
Please join our other supporters today with your gift.  You can also donate by phone or mail. We would love to hear from you!
For life and family,
Steve Jalsevac
Co-founder and Managing Director
LifeSiteNews.com | | | | | | |
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