In the past year — from January through December 2019 — the PDD Calendar published 7,937 Duluth-area events. Each one was edited by a human being before the “publish” button was pushed.

It’s a tremendous amount of work to keep up with all the submissions from the more than 1,000 organizations that have sent us info about their concerts, plays, improv nights and snowshoe hikes. That’s why once a month we set our dignity aside and remind readers how much we appreciate their financial support.

Yes, PDD does receive income from advertising, but not enough to pay anything close to living wages. In 2019, 82 percent of PDD calendar-worker income came from advertising; 18 percent came from donations. So the donations are a big help.

We have never uglied our website with popup ads, animated ads, Google surveys or auto-playing videos, and we don’t intend to start. There are no paywalls on PDD. We don’t publish “paid content” drivel or lists of the “Twelve Hot Drinks to Make Winter Warmer.” We don’t gather and sell your personal information. We believe the internet can be better than that. We went 15 years without groveling, but now we do it once a month and so far it feels like the bits of funding that roll in are worth the mild tarnish of virtual panhandling.

Thanks in advance for anything you can do.

Follow this link for more info about our calendar fundraising.