So what does the near future look like for Contingent?
We have some great material lined up for March and early April. We probably won’t be able to publish as much in, say, April or May as we will in March, but if we grow our base of monthly donors we can keep this going as a bare-bones site, perhaps one piece a week. Then as we raise more money we can ramp up our content; our goal is have a publishing schedule of four to five pieces a week.
What’s your budget?
The monthly budget for a bare-bones schedule of one piece a week would look something like this:
- $1500 for the editorial staff ($500 for each editor, based on a $25 hourly rate and a lowball estimate of 5 hours a week)
- $1200 for four pieces (usually between $250 and $500 for a piece; more on rates here)
- $300 for our marketing consultant and webmaster
- $150 for donor management costs
- $10 for accounting software
- $340 for inevitable random things we didn’t budget for
So about $3500 a month.
Are you a 501(c)(3)?
We’re a non-stock, non-profit corporation, chartered in the state of Connecticut. But a nonprofit is only eligible for tax-exempt status if it’s carrying out its stated mission, which in our case would mean publishing articles. Now that we’re doing that, we can soon apply for tax-exempt status, which will let us get more out of each donation and make us eligible for more grants.
Why “contingent”?
Our name refers in part to the historical concept of contingency—the idea that any single historical event is dependent on a multitude of causes. In other words, there is no single thing that can explain a historical event, and therefore no way for historians to ask every possible question about the past. There is always more digging to do.
The name is also an allusion to the growing percentage of professional historians who are contingent workers as opposed to full-time, long-term employees. Over the past few decades, and especially since the 2008 recession, colleges and universities have increasingly adjunctified their faculty, since it is cheaper to pay two part-time people to teach two classes each than to pay one full-time person to teach four classes. As a result, thousands of historians have been left adrift, unable to find full-time work.
American Historical Association chart illustrating the decade-long downturn in full-time work for history PhDs (source: American Historical Association)
These historians have lots of stories that they want to share with the public. But the outlets that will usually publish them (paywalled academic journals) aren’t accessible to the public, while the outlets that are accessible to the public often won’t publish them. Frequently in the latter case, and nearly always in the former, the historian isn’t paid. Contingent will be somewhere they can tell these stories, and will pay all its writers and contributors.
How else is Contingent different from what’s already out there?
We are committed to paying everyone.
We’re not going to be focused on a particular theme, country, or historical period.
Our content will emphasize how history is done.
We’ll publish content and target audiences a lot of magazines and presses won’t because it’s supposedly not “the kind of history that sells” for “the kind of people who read history.”
We believe there is a hunger among the larger public for well-done, accessible history beyond the Trumpocentric hot take. Unfortunately, history-related stories from mainstream journalism outlets are sometimes poorly sourced and argued (or just lift a professional historian’s work wholesale), while good work done by professional historians is often inaccessible to the public thanks to the dysfunction and paywalls of academia. We hope to help bridge this gap between historians and the public, and provide something of real value which neither the 24-hour news cycle nor traditional academia have the structural incentive to provide.
Why didn’t you set this up in collaboration with a university or another existing organization? Wouldn’t that have been easier?
We talked about this for a while but decided it really wouldn’t be any easier. For one thing, none of us are associated with a university in such a way that would make a collaboration like that feasible. Moreover, doing this on our own allows us to maintain editorial independence, so we have control over what the content looks like and who our writers and audience are.
What can I do to help Contingent?
You can donate, of course.
You can tell other people about the site. Tweets help but Facebook posts and emails to friends help even more. Share with someone you know (a friend, family member, a historian who’s not on social media a lot) why you’re excited about Contingent and encourage them to donate.