When we began 2011, we decided to take a different approach this year for our fundraising. Here’s the BackPage editorial from January 2nd, 2011:

Our Gamble — the Fundraising Strategy for 2011 —

Each year, we notice that many… maybe *most* givers decide to pitch into Brigada at the end of the year. We’re not sure why that happens but we observe it. Maybe it’s because of the spirit of giving in the Christmas season, I don’t know. Either way, we also notice that there is also a very small contingent who used to be annoyed that we asked for funding for Brigada. Of course, many of them have run their course and perhaps stopped generating the purely volunteer ministries that they were staging. But Brigada, in part because we can hire some secretarial muscle with these funds (not a full-time secretary, mind you) and because we operate lean and can keep the bills paid — well, we’re still around. Yes, sometimes we get behind, but somehow, maybe partly because of the debt we feel to those who pitch in, we keep doing this… from one midnight to the other.

 

So for 2011, whether for good or for bad, we’re going to roll the dice and try a different gamble: We’ll work week after week throughout the year and never mention finances until November & December. In those final weeks of the year, we’ll ask you to take part… to participate in making Brigada happen again for another year. It’s a gamble. Maybe nobody will give? But we’ll give it a try and see what happens. And we’ll pray. Please join us.

 

Doug Lucas

Brigada Founder/Editor

[end of excerpt]

 

So — here we are. … and here’s your chance to pitch in. If you like the idea of Brigada, if you’d like to keep the fire burning, if you’d like to assist with the partial secretarial help we try to muster each year, if you’d like to help spur us on through the end of the year and get us started in 2012 in the black, if you feel there is a place for a Brigada Today — then please send a generous donation (or ask your church to do so today). Only the month of December remains. Would you help cover the cost for someone who can’t?