A Message from WisconsinEye Public Affairs Network
from Jon Henkes, network president
Greetings to you from WisconsinEye Public Affairs Network. I recently ran across a cartoon that caught my attention. Most everyone is familiar with the character of Winnie the Pooh. In the cartoon, Pooh is walking along with his good friend, Piglet.
Pooh turns to Piglet and asks, “What day is it?” Piglet answers, “It’s today!” To which Pooh replies, “Ahh, my favorite day.”
Today. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. But today. WisconsinEye is grateful for today because we are privileged for the opportunity to once again bring you another day of State Capitol coverage and award-winning civic programming. More on today in a moment, but first a few words about yesterday and tomorrow.
WisconsinEye has experienced many favorite yesterdays –in fact, 17 years of them and thousands of hours of delivering reliable, bipartisan, unedited, free, live, archived, spin-free, accurate, always available coverage of your state government. It’s a remarkable record of public service.
Tomorrow, we envision an even more robust network, with additional State Capitol coverage, enhanced viewer experience, new programming that fosters civil dialogue, and a classroom initiative that inspires learning about government and a young person’s role in civil society. Our vision for a bigger, better tomorrow is thanks to a bipartisan act of the Wisconsin Legislature and Governor Evers who presented the network with a matching grant challenge, to build a permanent endowment. We are incredibly grateful for the opportunity.
Today, however, WisconsinEye is faced with a challenge unlike anything before. We are an independent, non-profit State Capitol network – the first of its kind in the country and a model that inspires bipartisanship, trustworthiness, and equal treatment of all sides and all voices.
We rely upon charitable donations for our day-to-day operations. The current fundraising environment is extremely challenging, and we need your help to keep WisconsinEye operating at full speed.
Here’s the bottom line: We need to raise $500,000 by mid-August in order to meet our budgetary needs for the remainder of 2025.
Simple math tells us that if each of the 115,000 unique visitors to the WisconsinEye website in the last 12 months were to donate just $4.38 we would reach our goal. But it’s never that easy.
It’s going to take generous donors at every level, but especially those who are capable of doing more. And we’re looking for a few champions who will go the extra mile.
WisconsinEye is a no-frills, streamlined organization. Every dollar donated is maximized for impact.
Every tax-deductible gift makes a difference.
We need your support to continue providing award-winning WisconsinEye programming.
$500,000 is just a fraction … and I do mean a fraction of the millions and millions of dollars that flowed into political campaigns over the last two election cycles in Wisconsin.
If electing individuals to public office can generate that level of support, we ask this question:
Should there be interest in investing just a fraction of that amount to provide citizens with unfettered access to the actions of those elected officials as they act on billions of dollars of taxpayer spending, and vital policy issues that impact every person, business, school, and community across Wisconsin?
WisconsinEye operates on charitable donations. If you value this network please make a tax-deductible gift in support of our 2025 operations. It’s easy. Just go to…
Or by mailing a check to WisconsinEye122 W. Washington Ave. Suite 200Madison, WI 53703
If you feel the tug to become a champion for WisconsinEye, please call me. The phone is on 24/7. My number is 608-316-5490.
Today is a good day. With your help, tomorrow will be even better.
Thank you.
