“why not try to get corporate sponsorship?”

“Why not try to get corporate sponsorship?” a few people, online and off, have asked. It’s a reasonable question... and the answer, too, is quite reasonable. I could try that. I could spent a lot of time and energy at tasks I’m not very good at -- researching companies that might be interested, schmoozing, selling myself, etc. -- at a job that has no guarantee of results. (There’s a good reason why fundraising is a full-time job for people with specific skills at organizations that rely on that as a source of income.) Time I spend learning how to do that job and then actually doing it is time I cannot spend crafting content for your reading pleasure.

But let’s assume for a moment that I get lucky and actually succeed at getting a corporate sponsor. You know what that means, right? It means the site is once again festooned with ads... only this time for whatever it is that that one corporate sponsor wants to sell you. For we must be clear about this: Garnering corporate sponsorship for a site like FlickFilosopher.com doesn’t mean I have to sell myself out: it means I have to sell you out. The only reason any corporation would give me money is because I went to them and said, “Look, I have X number of readers who could be your captive audience.” Any company that jumps at that is absolutely going to take advantage of that: they will be selling their widgets at you. Hard. Because they will want to get more than their money’s worth out of me... and you.

I don’t want to do that. I don’t think you want me to do that. So help me cut out the corporate middleman by kicking in a few bucks.

Thank you.

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