Sure, the payout may not be good. But the odds are 1:1. (Photo by jarsyl via Creative Commons)

Today – and today only! – donations of $10 to $50 to Midwest Energy News (and/or Fresh Energy, the organization that publishes the site) will be matched not once, but twice.

Here’s how it works. Make a contribution via our GiveMN page, and it will automatically be doubled, thanks to a commitment from three anonymous individual donors to Fresh Energy. Then, if you tweet about it or post to your Facebook page (be sure to tag @MWenergynews or our Facebook page so we see it), the donation will be tripled (so, $20 turns into $40 and then $60, just so we’re clear on the math).

Also, four donors will receive $50 donation cards to GiveMN to donate to any organization they choose. Those winners will be chosen based on the creativity of their Twitter or Facebook posts, as judged arbitrarily, and probably capriciously, by the Fresh Energy communications staff.

The offer ends at midnight tonight.

The donations go to Fresh Energy, but all money designated for Midwest Energy News will go toward the editorial mission of this website. That includes original reporting from our outstanding freelance journalists, as well as our daily aggregated report highlighting the best energy reporting from around the region.

This is an exciting time for Midwest Energy News. Since we launched a little over two years ago, our audience has grown dramatically, and our original reporting has been featured in Grist, the Huffington Post, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, InsideClimate News, EarthTechling and other outlets. We’re in the process of redesigning the website to better highlight our original content, and we’re hiring our second Journalism Fellow, a part-time reporter who will focus on Michigan and Ohio.

While individual donations make up only a small part of our revenue stream (the rest of our funding comes from the Joyce, Kresge and Garfield foundations), every little bit helps. In addition to supporting our efforts, your donation is a signal to our funders that the service we provide is valuable and important to readers.

And if financial support isn’t workable for you right now, there are other ways you can help out. Follow us on Facebook or Twitter, or encourage friends and colleagues to sign up for our daily email digest.

As always, thanks for reading!

Ken is the director of the Energy News Network at Fresh Energy, and has led the project from its inception as Midwest Energy News in 2009. Prior to joining Fresh Energy, he was the managing editor for online news at Minnesota Public Radio. He started his journalism career in 2002 as a copy editor for the Duluth News Tribune before spending five years at the Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington, where he held a variety of editing, production, and leadership roles, and played a key role in the newspaper's transition to digital-first publishing. A Nebraska native, Ken has a bachelor's degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a master's degree from the University of Oregon.