About Founding Memberships
Friends,
This is going to take a minute. Please bear with me.
Short version: We’re making some updates to our Bulwark+ membership program and adding some stuff. None of this will affect you unless you want it to.
Now the long version: Right now you’re a Bulwark+ member who subscribes for $100 a year or $10 a month. We now have two new additional tiers:
The first is called Founders, for $300 a year.
Founders will get a suite of perks:
Three free gift subscriptions to give away to anyone you like. These run concurrently with your membership and your recipients can be updated as often as you like.
Two virtual Bulwark town hall meetings per year with Bulwark staff. Our first Bulwark town hall will be January 10, 2024 at 8:30 p.m. Eastern.
Informal get-togethers at Bulwark Live events hosted by Jim Swift.
And coming soon, a place for all Founding Members to chat where we hope you’ll be able to meet other members, exchange ideas and share information, also led by Jim Swift, senior editor and author of the Overtime newsletter.
The second tier is called Navigators, for $1,200 a year.
What do Navigators get? To be honest, not much more.
Navigators will get all the benefits of the Founders but with extra gift subscriptions to give away. We’ve created this tier because we’ve heard from readers with a lot of resources who wanted a way to give us more support beyond their annual subscription. Before today we didn’t have a great way to do this. Maybe you’re one of these people. If so, and you’d like to join the Navigators tier, we are grateful—because we understand that this isn’t a value-play. It’s just pure philanthropy on your part.
We do have monthly payment options. Email foundingmembers@thebulwark.com to set this up.
I would like to pretend that there’s some high-minded goal in all of this about deepening relationships with our core customers. But that’s not the truth. It’s just about money. Let me explain.
The Bulwark isn’t really a business. It’s a mission.
Here is a secret: We give memberships to Bulwark+ to pretty much anyone who emails us saying that they wish they could join, but can’t afford it. We don’t believe that your ability to pay should determine whether or not you get to help save democracy. We believe, in our hearts, that it’s going to take ALL OF US to get out of this mess.
And it has been the generosity of our members who do pay that makes it possible for us to have this policy.
Thank you for making this possible.
Fundamentally, we don’t love the idea of having “tiers” of Bulwark members. But we also recognize that some people have more resources than others and that some people want to support us with more money. We’re being good stewards of it—we’re not using this money to buy giga-yachts. The money we get from subscribers gets pushed right back into The Bulwark: That’s how we were able to add Joe Perticone and A.B. Stoddard this year, expand the reach of our content dramatically on YouTube, Snapchat, and other social apps, and send Tim to risk death at MAGA meetups.
Oh and before I forget the biggest achievement of the last year—“The Corruption of Lindsey Graham.” That project took Will and our editing teams many, many months to produce while still doing their day jobs. And we gave it away for free because that’s the mission.
Establishing the Founder and Navigator tiers is a way to make it easier for people with more resources to give us more money . . . so that we can keep building and sharing this project with everyone, whether they are paying members or not.
You’re a member and that’s amazing and we are so grateful for you. Thank you.
If you’d like to give more and get some bonus stuff, we’d be grateful for that, too.
So that’s the story.
None of this changes anything about your existing membership or the ethos of The Bulwark.
We’ve been able to build this community because of you. We’re creating more ways for people who want to support us to do so.
And together, we’re going to keep growing this thing of ours.
Best,
JVL
P.S.: If you have any questions about this program or anything else about The Bulwark, simply email Jim at foundingmembers@thebulwark.com.