T-Squared: Keep It 100

Today is the first day of our fall membership drive — a nine-day period in which we'll raise, ideally, $100,000 to enable the sort of civic journalism you've come to expect from Team Texas Tribune.

Specifically, those hard-won dollars will pay the freight for, among other things, the next year's worth of energetic and impactful multi-platform investigative reporting to supplement our first-in-class daily reporting, a continued beating of the drums for greater transparency and disclosure by public officials and institutions, a redoubled focus on educating the rest of the country about the realities of life in Texas, and a statewide suite of hot-seat events that hold politicians and newsmakers accountable before audiences of our fellow citizens. Talk about a return on your investment.

Pledge drives — and this is our most ambitious one yet, building on the success of our best-ever spring drive — matter for several reasons. Practically speaking, smallish donations ($10, $35, $60, whatever) add up quickly; membership at all levels accounts for more than 13 percent of our overall fundraising goal in 2015. Beyond that, they're a visible endorsement of our hard and important work by the people who matter most, validating the fundamental premise of nonprofit media: We're in this for you and you alone.

And there's an added psychological benefit. Member contributions — especially recurring contributions, which equate to predictable revenue — give us confidence that we'll have an ample budget to achieve our public-spirited mission for the foreseeable future.

We're happy any time you value what we do and why enough to dig deep, but especially during this week-plus. Give what you can by clicking here, and thanks so much for helping us to make Texas better and smarter and Texans more thoughtful and more engaged.