We hope you’ve enjoyed your Memorial Day weekend and the start of summer!

Here at East Cobb News we took a bit of a break from our usual schedule and took stock of the generosity of our readers.

Thank you so much for those of you who have pledged your financial support for the work we do at East Cobb News, giving you the local news that you love!

We provide this community resource free to readers, including our popular Sunday newsletter, and we want to keep it that way.

But as I have mentioned over the last couple of weeks in this space, I am considering the option of a paywall. We have a growing audience—around 60,000 unique monthly visitors on average, and more than 9,300 newsletter subscribers.

But while we are a frugal operation, we also have increased business costs, and we want to expand our coverage of the news in this large, busy community.

Nothing has been decided yet about charging for access, but as I laid out at the start of the year in launching the 1500 Club, we want to get to 1,500 recurring monthly donors by the end of the year.

That’s less than 20 percent of our newsletter subscribers, for example.

Please contribute today!

It’s an ambitious goal but I know we can do it, because we have a growing, engaged audience of readers who tell us all the time how much they appreciate what we do.

Now is the time to show it, and shortly I’ll be explaining how we use the donations that we get from readers. We want to be upfront with you about where the money goes.

As we close out May, I’ve set a goal of getting to 250 recurring monthly donors by the end of June. If we can do that each month, we’ll surpass 1,500 by the end of the year.

But first things first. At this time, we have fewer than 50 recurring monthly donors. We really do need your support now more than ever!

We’re suggesting a reasonable amount—$6 a month—but you can contribute more if you like. While we appreciate yearly and one-time contributions, we really want to have recurring monthly donations.

We have a safe and secure online payment platform, Press Patron, that you can manage easily.

Help keep East Cobb News free—please donate today!

With 250 monthly donors, we will bring in $1,500 a month at that $6 amount—there’s that 1500 number again—that will help us in a significant way. In my next column I will detail what that funding will support.

We also will be offering other incentives at higher payment tiers, which I also will outline in the near future.

Before you get too busy with your summer, please think for a moment about how much you value East Cobb News and make a contribution accordingly.

Nobody else is doing this in our community, and our plans are to keep giving you the local news that you love for a long time to come.

Let us know what you think about all of this: e-mail me at wendy@eastcobbnews.com. I’m interested in hearing from you.

Thank you for your support of East Cobb News!

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