A huge THANK YOU to all our donors. You all really came through!

[Skinner]

As you may know, we did not have very high expectations for last week's fund drive. We know a lot of you have been upset about the extended Democratic presidential primary, and how the infighting between the supporters of the two remaining candidates has made Democratic Underground a significantly less friendly place than usual. And we know that the economy is not doing very well right now. There are plenty of reasons why you all could have decided not to support our fund drive, and perhaps you would have been justified in making that choice.

And yet, once again, you all came through for us. Thank you to everyone who donated last week, and thank you to all of our monthly subscribers.

We are very grateful to have such generous and understanding members. We know that this place can be frustrating sometimes. But still you recognize the value of DU, and you are ready and willing to help -- even when times are tough.

And the support could not have come at a more critical time. We have experienced a significant increase in traffic to our site over the last six months. You may have noticed that sometimes we have to turn off some of our functions in order to keep up with the high traffic -- and it has been happening more and more as of late. We are in the process of (once again) upgrading our database server. The new server, which should come online in the next few weeks, will probably cost somewhere between $10,000 and $20,000.

So, thank you, DUers. You all are the best.

David Allen ("Skinner")
Dave Allsopp ("EarlG")
Brian Leitner ("Elad")
DU Administrators

By the way: You are now able to check your DU donor status. Just click the "Options" icon at the top of any page, and then click the "Donor status" link. Make sure that your donor status is up-to-date, because we are going to be implementing some new ad placements, and donors don't have to see them.

[EFerrari]

1. Is there somewhere that we can send some wigs to?

lol

Good going, DU!

:yourock:

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. It was a pleasure shaving your heads guys

but I was looking forwards to the cream pie!

[SemiCharmedQuark]

3. The real prize is thinking how sad all the people celebrating DU's worst fundraiser are

Aww...

But a pie would have been good too.

[Avalux]

4. Can I just say one thing?

You guys should never shave your heads. ;)

I donate because I don't know what I'd do without this place. That might be either a good or bad thing; but the thought of DU suddenly going *poof* would be very difficult to take. Maybe it's because it gives me comfort to know I'm not the only raging liberal out there; DU has become like an old familiar friend after all these years.

So yeah, we have trolls, we have contentious primary seasons; but neither of these are permanent. I want DU to stick around and remain as permanent as possible.

Thanks for all you do - and a shout out to the moderators as well!

:grouphug: