Friends of Willamette Week | January Newsletter – Year-End Report | January 18, 2023

Dear {{First Name}},

On November 1, Friends of Willamette Week set out to raise $55,000 in this fall's Give!Guide campaign. It was our most ambitious year-end fundraising goal to date. We didn’t have a matching gift or a large donation lined up. What we had was a year when WW's reporters wrote some of Oregon’s most consequential journalism. 

That fact didn’t go unnoticed. When the dust settled at midnight on December 31, Friends of Willamette Week had raised $71,822 from 714 donors from our 2023 Give!Guide efforts. Thank you for recognizing the importance of local independent journalism. Reader support is what makes our work possible, and we are thrilled to put that funding to good use.

To pile on the good news, Willamette Week’s year-end fundraising initiative, Give!Guide, set a historic record, raising $8,355,095 for 250 local nonprofits. What began in 2004 as a ma-and-pa fundraising campaign—with some $28,000 raised for 24 nonprofits—has turned into a community fundraising machine, raising a collective total of more than $64 million. Our community has proven time and time again that it’s willing to invest in a better tomorrow, not just for ourselves, but for everyone who calls Oregon home. 

From the entire Willamette Week staff, thank you! 

2023 Editorial Timeline 🗓

Here's a recap of what your support helped achieve last year.

What's to come in 2024?

We plan to grow next year by expanding our sales and editorial teams. We’re working toward reaching more readers, giving you more places to find us online, adding another magazine to our schedule, helping this city reinvigorate its arts scene, and covering a municipal election on a scale Portland has never seen before.

We hope we can count on you to keep reading and continue supporting our journalism. It truly makes a difference in our ability to dig deeper.