The Norwegian American strikes back
Photo: Derek Willis
A sneak preview of the new video we made for this campaign, with special guest star Ingvill Montgomery of Hovden Formal Farm Wear. Doesn’t she make a cute nisse?
Hello, dear readers!
It’s that time again. Spring. Easter. Fundraising season.
It’s been two years since this paper—the only Norwegian-American newspaper still publishing—almost shut down. We kept going thanks to the generous support of people like you. We raised around $40, the amount we thought we needed to support the paper’s losses for a year.
Instead, we made it last two years by cutting costs and increasing subscriptions and ads. We have made a lot of changes since then, including the name of the paper! We’ve gone from weekly to biweekly, which in addition to making our jobs less stressful (though not half as stressful, for some reason) has saved us a lot of money on printing and shipping (though again not half the money, because we print longer papers on better paper with more color). We also moved our office to the ‘burbs, saving (this time actually) half the money we were paying in rent.
So I’m pleased to say that we’re losing less money than we used to! Our bottom line has gone from $-35K in 2014 to $-21K in 2016. I’m even more pleased to say that we’ve done this despite increasing our wages and benefits by $64K! But we are still operating at a loss each year.
So we’re running a new campaign. You can go there now! Please do! (igg.me/at/theNA).
Let me tell you about a few of the great perks we have on offer, thanks in large part to our friends in the Scandinavian community:
• Did you miss out on the chance to be a DJ for a day with Doug Warne of the Scandinavian Hour last time? He is once again offering three lucky supporters 15 minutes (or an hour) of fame!
• Hovden Formal Farm Wear is back again, this time by offering a bandana design available exclusively through this campaign.
• Sometime contributor David Burke has donated one 2-night stay for two people at the B&B he runs out of his house in Skoppum, Norway, complete with organic breakfasts. Apparently there are goats!
• Our friends at Old Ballard Liquor Co. are offering an Aquavit Club that will provide you with one bottle of aquavit each quarter plus two at Christmas (six total). This is a great way to make sure you don’t miss out on their special vintages, which often sell out fast! What’s the catch? Well, this perk doesn’t ship. You must go to their distillery in Seattle to pick up your bottles.
• By popular demand, we’re bringing you a collection of recipes that have been featured on the pages of The Norwegian American. This spiral-bound cookbook will cover main courses, soups and sides, and of course sweets. It even has a few drink recipes! Thanks for this perk go to Daytona Strong, who has improved our Taste of Norway pages by leaps and bounds, and to the amazing food writers who have agreed to be on our pages.
• Plus more! Seriously, you’re going to love this stuff.
All money we raise will go right back into this paper. We have an endless list of things we’d like to spend money on, little luxuries like marketing, payroll (imagine what we could do with more than two full-time employees!), paying writers and photographers, and travel to Nordic festivals to increase our subscriber base by physically going where the Norwegian Americans are and shoving our papers in their faces.
A lot of people just don’t know about this 128-year-old newspaper, which has been described as “surprisingly interesting” by readers young and old.
Will you help us change that? Tell your friends! Buy a gift subscription for someone (for as much or as little of a year as you like)! Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter! And if you can, please send us a few bucks and take home a great reward.
This article originally appeared in the April 7, 2017, issue of The Norwegian American. To subscribe, visit SUBSCRIBE or call us at (206) 784-4617.
