PLEASE HELP PRAIRIE FIRE SURVIVE THESE TOUGH TIMES!

“Winnipeg is a giving place. It gives energy and substance to creative effort. It receives in return an abundance of accomplishment.” – Robert Kroetsch

Dear Friend of Prairie Fire,

Every year we write to our many friends and supporters asking for help in publishing Prairie Fire magazine and in carrying out our various projects. This year is a bit different, because for the first time we need your help simply to survive.

Unfortunately, with the economic downturn, federal funding for magazine publishing has been decreasing for several years. Some of these changes we’ve anticipated, others were unforeseen, none of them appears based on the quality of our magazine, programming, or management. There is simply less money to go around. As a result of these and other factors, we currently find ourselves with an accumulated deficit of more than $30,000, our first large deficit in many, many years.

We’ve compensated by cutting programming. A few months ago our online journal, Prairie Fire Review of Books, was put on hiatus and our reading series, Prairie Fire Wordfest, has been discontinued until further notice, while staff hours and pay have also been affected. Board and staff have put their heads together to plan additional fundraising, and this letter is the first of these measures. Thirty thousand dollars is a big challenge for a little magazine, yet if only sixty friends of Prairie Fire were to donate $500 each, our foundation would be strong. If three hundred friends were to donate $100 each, we’d be in the black in no time.

Some organizations ask you to buy a brick, we’re asking you to buy a page; buy several. Your donations this year are vital in helping us to continue publishing Prairie Fire and to pay our writers and artists, editors and staff. Your support also shows major funders that the work we do in our community matters. At the top of this page I quote Robert Kroetsch saying that Winnipeg is a giving place. With this plea, we hope to learn that all of Canada is a giving place. So please, consider making a donation this year, either by sending a cheque, calling us with a credit card information, or by going online at www.prairiefire.ca.

We’ll reward your generosity with a charitable tax receipt, a mention on our donor page for a year, and an ongoing commitment to serve our literary community far into the future.

Yours sincerely,
Andris Taskans
Editor