December 2014 Fundraising Report
Friends:
Because of you, our year-end fundraising campaign was quite successful, raising well over $70,000. That’s a 6% increase from the previous year — an impressive number when you consider that the average for nonprofits nationally is only 4%. Thanks to all of you, both for your generous contributions and for the vote of confidence that they represent. As part of the community that recognizes that open access to law helps all sorts of people solve important problems, you’re helping 28 million people around the world find and understand the law — and to use that understanding to solve problems, either for themselves or for others. Thank you. We’re immensely grateful for your belief in the LII’s mission, and for your investment in our work.
Your contributions buy time and talent — the two things that we never have enough of. One of the advantages of being affiliated with a large university is that the students are unbelievably smart and skilled; your contributions allow us to employ people who will, in a year or two, be working for the likes of Google, Facebook, Oracle, and for an array of high-end law firms. They turn out amazing work in developing new features, in writing new material for the site, and — most importantly — in undertaking collaborative work that needs both legal and technical expertise. Because they’re students, your dollars go a very long way (and, incidentally, you’re helping them buy groceries).
This year, we’re planning significant improvements to our US Code collection, primarily in the form of linkage to interpretive information like the IRS written determinations we added to the tax code last year. Right now, we’re working on the interpretive letters that the USCIS issues in response to questions about immigration law, on finishing our grand project of linking all of the words in the CFR and US Code that are defined by statute to their respective statutory definitions, and on making the interpretive material in our 5,000-article WEX legal encyclopedia directly accessible from the laws they explain. We expect that WEX itself is going to expand significantly during the next year — we are actively recruiting volunteers to help us create more expert commentary and explanation, and many of you are already helping out. Contributions of effort are really important, too — and I’m hoping that many of you in our community will join us in making WEX the best place for people who want to understand the law.
Once again, thanks for helping us out. LII donors are a unique bunch, and all of us are delighted to have your support. As always, I’m eager to hear from you — so don’t hesitate to drop me a line with your comments, suggestions, and criticisms.
