Mormon Stories 2025 Fundraising Appeal

John Dehlin [00:00:02] hello everyone and welcome to a special mormon stories podcast episode it's december first twenty twenty five and it's the week of giving tuesday for twenty twenty five as some of you may know each year there's a tradition in the united states called giving tuesday where the tuesday immediately following thanksgiving nonprofits hold fundraisers and reach out to people and say during kind of black friday holiday times when you're shopping remember us in your giving if you're willing and able and so it's that time again and i just wanted to make this super brief here at mormon stories podcast we worked super super hard in twenty twenty five to deliver quality programming from the long form episodes with margie to the joseph smith series with john turner to kind of a reboot of the lds discussion series with nemo and julia and colby to news coverage to all sorts of other types of things we feel like we had a great year in upping our quality and in productivity and we hope you have appreciated that too and as you know we rely on donations for probably i don't know i'm going to guess eighty percent of our support we don't do product placement we don't do product sponsorships we do that literally for your benefit we could make money in that way but we just don't want to annoy you we do run ads but we've worked really hard to minimize the ads both in spotify and on apple podcasts and on youtube and all you have to do is get a premium account on either spotify or youtube and you won't even hear the ads and again we don't monetize on tiktok or instagram so how do we fund mormon stories in the open stories foundation we do it through our donors and unfortunately every month we have a couple dozen people cancel their donations for all sorts of different reasons from they just move on to they fall on financial hard times and sometimes they just lose interest and so if we don't get new donors to replace the old ones then we have to in theory start cutting services also over the past several years we've had unforetold legal expenses that were quite substantive and for the some of you who have been tracking us online there is a chance that there will be legal expenses that are unforeseen in twenty twenty six although i'm not prepared to talk about that yet and you know talks are underway but i'm hoping that there won't be more legal fees but there's a chance that there will be but more importantly we just we like to pay our our we obviously repair staff but also we do our best to pay co hosts and other featured talent we try to pay the travel expenses of our guests sometimes we go on our honorariums and for all sorts of reasons we need your financial support to keep going and if you're a donor we just want to thank you and say thank you so much for all you've done to support mormon stories we hope you'll continue to support us and if you're not a donor we want to ask for your support today what we can promise in twenty twenty six are more high quality in depth classic long form faith journeys with margie we are going to be continuing and even completing the life of joseph smith series with doctor john turner i believe we're twenty two or twenty three episodes in but we have at least ten to fifteen more episodes to go we're just coming up on the liberty jail time period in missouri then we're going to go straight to naboo and hit polygamy and john c bennett and the council of fifty and joseph's martyrdom we're going to hit all that and much more really really hard john turner promises that that series is going to end with the bang so to speak no pun intended we are going to reboot and continue the lds discussion series that's one of the most important things we've ever done on mormon stories with mike nemo and julie and others mike has retired but colby reddish has volunteered to step up and take mike's place him along with nemo and julia we have some great episodes planned to discuss mormon church truth claims in as neutral as evidence based and as unbiased way as possible we also want to continue what we started in twenty twenty five which is the mormon bridge builder series panel with bo euler julie doctor julie hanks and janice spangler and for all those reasons we just want to ask you for your support go to mormonstories dot org donate to become a one time donor or preferably a monthly donor or an annual donor all your donations in the us are tax deductible we're transparent in our finances and we try to spend all our money on programming or a direct support to further the cause of mormon stories and the open source foundation which is to provide informed consent to mormons and questioning mormons never mormons people out in the world that just want to learn more about mormonism we feel like there literally is not another podcast or youtube channel in the world that is as unbiased and is willing to interview people from all sides of the spectrum and that strives for evidence based unbiased thoughtful discussion of mormonism and mormon stories so if you value this type of content and you want to see it continue or if you want to support it all you got to do is go to mormonstories dot org donate click on whatever amount you want to sign up for make it as recurring as you want and it's tax deductible we're transparent and we love our mission and we appreciate everyone who's willing to support us in that effort want to thank all of all of you who donate through super chats as well and just most importantly we just really appreciate the support we have a staff julie is on our staff brooklyn's on our staff margie's on our staff we pay nemo we pay colby we pay our co hosts the ones that need or want support and again all that support comes for you so thanks so much for all of your support in twenty twenty five we are looking forward to an amazing twenty twenty six with your support again this is doctor John Dehlin it's mormon stories you can donate at mormonstories dot org donate or you can go to mormonstories dot org and click on the donate but top of the page we we love you we're grateful for you and we hope you will continue supporting us not just our mormons and our ex mormons but also our never mormons we could really use your support so please donate if you can be good to each other be kind to each other be peace builders be bridge builders and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of mormon stories podcast thanks everybody take care happy holidays happy giving tuesday happy christmas and happy hanukkah and kwanzaa let's have a great end to twenty twenty five and a great two thousand and twenty six and beyond take care everybody

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.