Donating to AIIJ and BirminghamWatch has long been a pain point for both potential supporters and the organization itself if they wished to do so through our website. The old forms confused many, particularly once you were navigated away from the site to complete transactions. I’ve heard from many that using PayPal was a non-starter. Plus, some genuinely just didn’t trust it because of how it looked.
Recent updates to our donation platform should address many of those concerns.
The process is now faster, cleaner, and easier to use. It is mobile-friendly and even more secure. While we’ve left PayPal as an option, particularly for those who like to have the option to Venmo us, we’ve made Stripe the default platform.
The updates allow supporters to use apps like Google Pay for payments, so you can spend less time figuring out the forms and more time with our journalism.
We’ve made minor tweaks to our privacy policy and terms of use and expect to make additional significant changes in the coming weeks to reflect these and other expected changes, including the ability to manage your account on our website.
Summer campaign in full swing
This update should make it even easier than ever to support our $30,000 summer campaign.
We’ve set this ambitious goal so we can build on our reporting on the issues shaping Birmingham’s and Jefferson County’s future — the future of our neighborhoods, public health, economic mobility and accountability in government. Your gift will help us build on work that explains complex systems, follows the facts, and keeps the public informed. It helps us hire and support the journalists who make this work possible.
We’re grateful for the $5,000 in challenge funds received early on and the $1,300 in new donations received so far from both longtime and new supporters.
Please let me know if you have any questions or issues with the new process, and thanks in advance for your continued support of journalism for the The City Built to Change the South.
André Natta is the executive editor of BirminghamWatch and the executive director of its parent nonprofit organization, the Alabama Initiative for Independent Journalism.