SUNLIGHT PRESS

Our goal is first and foremost, to stay in business as a digital literary journal. When we launched in 2017, we had no idea if we'd get submissions, or if writers would find us. Both happened. Now we find ourselves struggling to keep up with the work submitted each month. Each week as editors, we cull through dozens of short stories, essays, poems, Artists on Craft essays, and photographs. We personally acknowledge artist submissions within 24 hours and contact artists about the status of their work within two months. Reviewing every submission requires the work of the two of us, a volunteer poetry editor, and several volunteer readers.

Secondly, our stated goal from the start has been to pay for the work we accept and publish. We love the greater literary community we've gotten to know and the smaller one we've formed at Sunlight. We've met awesome artists from all over the world, and have published writers and artists from across the U.S., as well as from Japan, India, the United Kingdom, Canada, Africa, among many others.

As we head toward our fifth year at The Sunlight Press and complete our third year as a nonprofit journal, we hope to gain new readership and to continue to solicit/receive donations to pay our artists and to fund writing and photography contests. A longer term goal is to fund scholarships for high school students planning to study literary/visual arts in college, or for college graduates seeking careers in the creative arts.

As our About Us page states: We want to hear the ways people turn toward light and hope, whether it is through the arts, culture, spirituality, or humor, and also how they respond to the darkness and navigate unknown spaces.

Our strategies include the two of us continuing to invest our own funds in the website and in honorariums for artists. We'd like to gradually reduce our own investment and increase the investment of our readers and donors. We know this is the only way to sustain our core mission: paying for the work we publish. While we are dedicated to financial support for the arts, we cannot do this alone. We need help.

We know people support the arts by visiting museums and galleries, attending book readings by authors, buying original art, and donating to arts organizations they love and trust. Art brings joy and connection, but can't exist without financial support. We always tell our contributors every donation helps and every dollar goes directly toward honorariums for artists.

Because our staff is small and all-volunteer, we've not had time to research and find available grants yet for small literary art journals. Though we now qualify for grant funding as a nonprofit, we don't have the resources to identify this funding. One strategy would be to offer a summer stipend to a college intern or other volunteer who could identify and apply for grants for The Sunlight Press.

As mentioned above, unfortunately at this time we do not have the time or resources to devote to significant fundraising efforts, be it through online campaigns or identifying grant funding. We'd like to do more of both and hope with additional time and volunteers, we can. If we continue going strong, we'd also like to hire a very part-time literary assistant as well as interns to help with these tasks and with social media. This would free us up as editors to devote time to reviewing and editing submissions.

In the immediate future we plan to seek more volunteers to help with our site - reviewing submissions, helping with social media, and perhaps applying for grant funding. This fall we will again seek donations through our subscriber base at MailChimp and through personal appeals via email and letters.

As stated above, our biggest accomplishment was launching our website and digital literary journal in January 2017 and attracting submissions and readers. We are proud to be going strong in 2020, continuing to offer a diverse and provocative array of stories and essays, poems and photographs. We love hearing from readers about work that resonates.

The Sunlight Press continues to be an ad-free journal with no pay wall that attracts award-winning writers and artists, as well as many new voices never published. We publish twice weekly on Mondays and Wednesdays, and occasionally post more often when we run a full week of essays, short stories, or poetry, for example. Since launching, we've not stopped publishing (other than for a two-week holiday break each December).

We love what we are doing here and look forward to 1) offering more writing contests with cash awards; 2) nominating more of our published work for Pushcart, Best of the Net, and other literary prizes; and 3) reviewing submissions from American writers and artists, as well as those from all across the world.

Our short-term goals are working hard to raise funds to pay our contributors and offering our readers the quality work they've come to enjoy and expect. We set high standards for ourselves as editors, and for the work we accept. We hope this keeps readers coming back and lays the groundwork for greater financial support from donors.