In my avid-news-reading life, I’ve found just a couple of publications that I’ve budgeted to subscribe to this year. (Trust me: I’d sign up for ten if I could make the budgeting work! News media are important to me.) One of those is running a subscription drive right now to vastly expand their newsroom. Because I subscribed last fall, I often glaze over their fundraising pitches — but lately I’ve been paying a bit more attention, in part because Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo is significantly better at multi-tasking the whole asking-for-support-and-creating-content-at-the-same-time thing than I am. Drawing on his own “talking points”, I’d like to quickly call on the value of why supporting Wicked Grounds via Patreon is important, especially as we build this thing: A regular Patreon support stream allows us time to accept the kinds of projects that we might otherwise have to ignore in the hustle. So far this year we’ve launched a regular quarterly play party at the SF Citadel, authored several advice columns, brought on several new kink artisan vendors, sponsored IMsL, done several new interviews, and have started exploring re-launching the Wicked Grounds Podcast. None of that would be possible without knowing we have a small stream of budget to carve out time for these kinds of projects. A growing Patreon support stream helps us grow. Your support builds not only new education and online products, but allows us to support new artisans, authors, munch leaders & educators. Most importantly, subscriptions — whether Patreon or our legacy VIP program — build predictability into our operations. Knowing that Patreon subscriptions will reliably cover the X in our budget means we can focus on building the shop for event season and weathering the slow season equally well. It’s hard to believe, but the “slow season” is just around the corner. The shop stays busy through September, then tends to slow down every winter. With your help, with your continued support, we can use that time to build better education for kinksters everywhere — write more content, build the podcast, do some videos, maybe even get out to more conferences beyond the Bay Area. Instead of the yearly belt-tightening, we can spend our energies making something even greater for the full kink community. This August, we’re going to launch a “back to school” membership drive to our community, with assertive goals to make sure the Grounds is sustainable for a long time to come. So here’s my brief request: If you’re reading this, and you’re not yet a patron, sign up at any level. Even $1/month helps us know that you’re here, you’re listening, and you value our content. If you’re already a subscriber and you value us and what we’re doing, tell a friend about us! Because we are adult content, you cannot search for us on Patreon. You can only find us with a direct link. So tell your friends about us and then share the link so they can check us out! If you’re already a subscriber and you’d like to do more, you can always increase your subscription level. The VIP level, in particular, comes with some very sweet online and in-store benefits throughout the year. You’re here and reading this because you already love us. Please help us do more of what you love. Finally, I’d like to thank everyone who is already supporting us. (If you’ve signed up for VIP packages, we have some swag coming your way!!!) If you haven’t yet jumped in, and you’ve been considering joining, please do it now. It will take less time to set up than you’ve spent reading this article. I promise. xoxo WickedMir
