During the Great Recession, Americans cut back on charitable donations by more than 13 percent.
Now imagine how much charitable giving could decline with the unemployment rate zooming to levels not seen since the 1930s.
It's impossible to predict how many Americans will be forced to cut back as a result of the pandemic, but it's clear that nonprofits like The Intercept need to prepare for a drop in donations. In fact, since this crisis began, we have already seen a rise in the number of readers canceling their monthly donations.
Every day, thanks to the support of our readers, The Intercept is able to publish stories that you can't find anywhere else — reporting that not only sheds light on wrongdoing by powerful politicians and corporations, but also has a real impact in the world.
Case in point: Last month, The Intercept reported on how the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant polices were preventing foreign-born physicians trained in the U.S. from working on the front lines of the Covid-19 pandemic. In response, a bipartisan congressional group called on the administration to lift these nonsensical restrictions.
Later that same month, The Intercept reported that the videoconferencing service Zoom was not providing the end-to-end encryption that they claimed to offer users in their advertising. Zoom almost immediately responded by committing to changes that we called for in our reporting.
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