End of August, the Kedis­tan fund dri­ve will be one year old. Here’s a look at how things stand right now.

5663 euros. As of Tues­day August 9th, that’s the total amount col­lect­ed over almost 12 months.

Yes, even though we keep show­ing cats mis­be­hav­ing, some 200 donors, includ­ing those who made direct gifts, stepped up with their con­tri­bu­tion. Well, we’re going to amaze you but that’s enough to keep Kedis­tan func­tion­al. On a fru­gal regime no doubt, but too much cat food is harm­ful to your health.

Of course, we’re not say­ing you shouldn’t pour any­thing into the bowl. We’re sim­ply say­ing that the num­ber of sub­scribers has often com­fort­ed us and warmed the cock­les of our heart.

Thanks again to all those who take seri­ous­ly the need to pub­lish a free webzine about Turkey and the Mid­dle East, one that doesn’t rely on dubi­ous and atten­tion-grab­bing bits of cut-and-paste. Their con­tri­bu­tions have con­tributed to fresh­en­ing up the A in Kedistan.

Here is a brief report on the use we’ve made of the monies col­lect­ed so far.

We have spent 3500 euros.

This cov­ers incom­press­ible expens­es such as the serv­er site, main­te­nance, secu­ri­ty, « design » as well as relat­ed costs and var­i­ous sub­scrip­tions, to which are added those trav­els costs not cov­ered by the kedi them­selves to attend meet­ings and pub­lic interventions.

We’ve set aside 1200 euros for com­put­er-relat­ed mate­r­i­al and as an emer­gency fund.

The rest pro­vides a small cush­ion for upcom­ing sched­uled activities.

We spare you the details.

We’ve noticed that the month­ly bud­get require­ment we had set at
350 euros need­ed to be raised to 400. The fund­ing dri­ve which will con­tin­ue for anoth­er year, takes this adjust­ment into account.

We want to be clear on the fact that no « com­fort » amounts cor­re­spond to « dis­guised adver­tise­ments ». All arti­cles on films, books, music, are done because we like them and are pub­lished free of charge. We some­times refuse sollicitations…

None of the con­trib­u­tors receive one cen­time from the bud­get and some of them cov­er their own expens­es. The jour­nal­ists pay for their press card and union mem­ber­ship, for instance…

Free is free and works both ways…We don’t think any of you will won­der why this is so ? We haven’t left the euro zone, but we pay out our salaries in humanity.

So, what else is there to say…

Are you not sur­prised to learn that a mag­a­zine with an aver­age month­ly read­er­ship of approx­i­mate­ly 100 000 (stats cal­cu­lat­ed on the year end­ing), who con­sult a month­ly aver­age of 320 000 pages only received funds from 200 sub­scribers ? We are…

We think there are sev­er­al rea­sons for this.

-The main rea­son is prob­a­bly the fear of cred­it card pay­ments on inter­net. We can­not guar­an­tee the secu­ri­ty of the trans­ac­tions done by the asso­ci­a­tion col­lect­ing the funds, although we’ve not encoun­tered any prob­lems so far. And there’s always the pos­si­bil­i­ty of mak­ing a direct transfer…

– The refusal in prin­ci­ple to deal with “crowd­fund­ing” sites deemed com­mer­cial, and the « inter­est » they collect…Two answers : we’ve tried to choose the most eth­i­cal one in the jun­gle of the so-called sol­i­dar­i­ty econ­o­my, and there are no charges oth­er than a vol­un­tary con­tri­bu­tion to it.

– The fear of leav­ing per­son­al infor­ma­tion on the web and of see­ing the data exploit­ed either by us or by the crowd­fund­ing site. We use your data to sign you up to our free newslet­ter, if you so wish, and they are also required for account­ing trans­paren­cy but not pub­lished anywhere.
And you cer­tain­ly know that you leave more foot­prints on the web through your search­es and consultations…

– The guilt trip of not being able to afford more than a sym­bol­ic amount… But that’s pre­cise­ly the whole prin­ci­ple of the sub­scrip­tion. Every­one does what he can, even if it’s two euros… And the A will only be the bet­ter for it.

– Final­ly, you’re not giv­en to throw­ing mon­ey into the col­lec­tion plate… Don’t wor­ry, oth­ers do it for you… But, in that case, boy­cott the pay­ing sites of the main­stream press and their boss­es, and stop shar­ing them on social net­works. We’ll always be there to pro­vide an alternative…

We nev­er let our­selves be soft-soaped, nor do we trim our claws in order to please… Nor do we join debates on senior­i­ty seat­ing at the Anar­chy counter, just as we have flag and jar­gon phobias.

Kedis­tan is not for sale and sur­vives sole­ly through your dona­tions and your sup­port. It will always answer « Here » on sol­i­dar­i­ty, our pages are filled with it.

And as you now know, we have a spe­cial link with Zehra Doğan since 2015, and will not relent in our efforts to get her out of jail. So there’s anoth­er fund­ing dri­ve ded­i­cat­ed to this cam­paign. You will find it well dis­played on our pages. In that case, it isn’t about infor­ma­tion that’s free or not, but about active sol­i­dar­i­ty that requires mon­ey as its bloodline.

That’s it. We’ll stop our miaow­ing right here, with the link to the sub­scrip­tion site and the (French) video pre­sen­ta­tion on how to use it.

For transfers:

Les amis du Kedis­tan Crédit Mutuel / CM Mazé
IBAN FR76 1027 8394 1000 0219 6880 186
BIC/Swift CMCIFR2A

Online:

How to use:

 

Trans­la­tion by Renée Lucie Bourges.
iknowiknowiknowblog.wordpress.com
French ver­sion > Souscrip­tion • A la miaou pense à nous

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Le petit mag­a­zine qui ne se laisse pas caress­er dans le sens du poil.