2010 Annual Report

Steven C. Markoff, Chairman

Dear ProCon.org visitors,

2010 was productive and successful for ProCon.org. Some of our major accomplishments and events for the year were:

1. We added 10 new issue websites (in alphabetical order): Abortion, Climate Change, Clinton, Concealed Guns, D.A.R.E., Gay Marriage, Health Care Reform, Reagan, Vaccines, and WTC Muslim Center (I. below).
2. We enhanced our resources for teachers and expanded the list of schools that use ProCon.org from 932 at the end of 2009 to 1,502 at the end of 2009 (II. below).
3. Kamy Akhavan became our new President on Dec. 7, 2010 (III. below).
4. Our traffic increased 58% from 6,523,545 sessions in 2009 to 10,322,703 sessions in 2010 (IV. below).
5. We were the subject of a peer-reviewed scientific study about language and politics (V. below).
6. We were referenced in the mainstream media 120 times in 2010 compared to 76 times in 2009 (VI. below).
7. We received over 1,000 responses to our ProCon.org User Survey of high school students (VII. below).
8. We corresponded with hundreds of VIPs who helped improve our content (VIII. below).
9. We started the year with 4,656 email subscribers and ended 2010 with 25,830 (IX. below).
10. We increased the average number of external sites per month that link to ProCon.org sites from 105,503 in 2009 to 168,099 in 2010, a 59% increase (X. below).
11. We added a new feature – the “Cite” button – to all ProCon.org pages so readers can easily and properly add ProCon.org content to their bibliographies and endnotes (XI. below)
12. Our organization ended 2010 with a staff of eight in-house full-time employees vs. nine at 12/31/09. (XII. below).
13. We held our first interactive exhibit at the San Diego Science Festival and drew over 500 participants to our donated double booth (XIII. below).
14. In 2010 we received contributions from 157 donors – a 171% increase from the 58 donors we had in 2009 (XIV. below).

Thanks to our readers for your continued interest in the information we supply, and thanks to our talented researchers, IT Manager, President/Managing Editor, Board Members, interns, and volunteers. Thanks as well to our expert sources, the media who referenced us, the hundreds of teachers who used our content in the classroom, and to the millions of ProCon.org readers who helped our organization become so successful. And a big thanks to all our supporters for your helping us continue our good work.

My thanks again to everyone who helped us achieve so much in 2010.

Sincerely,

Steven Markoff
Chairman, ProCon.org

P.S. If you like our sites, please tell your friends and make a tax-deductible contribution to help us continue our work. Click here for seven ways to support us.

1. 10 New Issue Websites
2. ProCon.org for Teachers
3. Kamy Akhavan Becomes President
4. Traffic
5. Scientific Study on ProCon.org
6. In the News
7. ProCon.org User Survey

8. VIP Correspondence
9. Email Updates & Reader Response
10. Linked Sites
11. Cite Button
12. Staff
13. San Diego Science Festival
14. Financials

1. 10 New Issue Websites: In 2010 we added 10 new websites in one year. Those 10 sites are listed below in the order in which they became publicly available:

1. On Jan. 18, 2010, ProCon.org launched the website Vaccines ProCon.org to explore the question “Should any vaccines be required for children?” The site received 60,928 sessions in 2010.
2. On Feb. 18, 2010, we launched the website D.A.R.E. ProCon.org to explore the core question “Is the D.A.R.E. program good for America’s kids (K-12)?” The site received 48,773 sessions in 2010 and received one media reference.
3. On Mar. 31, 2010, we launched the website Concealed Guns ProCon.org to explore the question “Should adults have the right to carry a concealed handgun?” The site received 38,665 sessions in 2009 and received one media reference.
4. On Apr. 21, 2010, we launched the website Abortion ProCon.org to explore the question “Should abortion be legal?” The site received 55,986 sessions in 2010.
5. On June 15, 2010, we launched the website Climate Change ProCon.org to explore the question “Is human activity a substantial cause of global climate change?” The site received 23,580 sessions in 2010.
6. On Sep. 2, 2010, we launched the website Health Care Reform ProCon.org to explore the question “Are the March 2010 federal health care reform laws good for America?” The site received 41,863 sessions in 2010 and was referenced in the media four times by media outlets such as an NBC affiliate and The Hill.
7. On Sep. 16, 2010, we launched the website Gay Marriage ProCon.org to explore the core question “Should gay marriage be legal?” The site received 27,572 sessions in 2010.
8. On Oct. 5, 2010, we launched the website WTC Muslim Center ProCon.org to explore the core question “Is it appropriate to build a Muslim community center (aka the “Ground Zero Mosque”) near the World Trade Center site?” The site received 18,069 sessions in 2010 and received one media reference.
9. On Oct. 18, 2010, we launched the website Reagan ProCon.org to explore the core question “Was Ronald Reagan a good president?” The site received 8,409 sessions in 2010.
10. On Oct. 18, 2010, we launched the website Clinton ProCon.org to explore the core question “Was Bill Clinton a good president?” The site received 6,048 sessions in 2010.

2. ProCon.org for Teachers: ProCon.org expanded the list of schools that use ProCon.org from 932 schools at the end of 2009 to 1,502 at the end of 2010. We add schools to this list when we see that an educator (not a student) from that school has referenced ProCon.org online, usually in a lesson plan or suggested resources list. We include a PDF of the lesson plan so that other educators can get ideas and draw inspiration from each other.

   Those schools were from 32 different countries including (in alphabetical order): Austria, Australia, Canada, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Macedona, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Philippines, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, Trinidad & Tobago, USA, United Arab Emirates, and United Kingdom.

   The breakdown of schools by level is as follows: 279 elementary and middle schools, 711 high schools, and 512 colleges and universities.

   In 2011, we will continue to make our extensive resources available at no charge to teachers, librarians, administrators, other educators, students, and others. We believe that most of the approximate 100,000 schools in America would love ProCon.org if only they knew about it. We would appreciate it if you would tell all the teachers, librarians, administrators, other educators, and students you know about us and our work.

3. Kamy Akhavan Becomes President of ProCon.org: On Dec. 7, 2010, Kamy Akhavan, Managing Editor of ProCon.org, became President of ProCon.org. Kamy, who has been with ProCon.org since Dec. 7, 2004, also continued his duties as Managing Editor.

4. Traffic: ProCon.org websites received 10,322,703 sessions in 2010 compared to 6,523,545 sessions in 2009 – a 58% increase. By the end of 2010, our websites had received a total number of 30,052,101 sessions since the organization’s formal inception in 2004. The detailed traffic chart appears below.

5. Scientific Study on Procon.org: For the first time, ProCon.org was the subject of a peer-reviewed scientific study. Max-Planck Institute for Informatics researchers published the study “Language-Model-based Pro/Con Classification of Political Text” in the Proceedings of the 33rd International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval. The paper basically concluded that pros and cons work well to classify controversial political topics.

6. In the News: ProCon.org received 120 media references in 2010 compared to 76 in 2009, 55 in 2008, and 16 in 2007. The references started on Jan. 5, 2010 with the Huffington Post. Alan Thicke played to win money for ProCon.org on a special celebrity edition of Don’t Forget the Lyrics!, a game show on VH1. President and Managing Editor Kamy Akhavan was interviewed ten times on radio stations across the country. After one interview on Fox News Radio (Indianapolis), the host said, “ProCon.org is a great site for unbiased information. Allowing my listeners to form their own opinions is important. That is why I enjoy interviewing the people of ProCon.org on my program. They are the best at describing both sides of a debate.” Other notable media references include CNN, the Washington Post, Yahoo! News, CNBC, Reuters, the Guardian, AOL News, AARP Bulletin, and Fox News Radio.

7. ProCon.org User Survey: We started a ProCon.org User Survey on Oct. 28, 2009 to get input from high school students using ProCon.org. The survey received 1,022 responses by Mar. 1, 2010.

   Some notable results from the survey include:

   – 40.9% of high school students who spent more than five hours on ProCon.org scored between 2200 and 2400 on the SAT, at least 46% higher than the national average score of 1509.

   – Students who used ProCon.org more than once were 21.1% more likely to be enrolled in Honors or Advanced Placement (AP) classes and 14.3% more likely to hold a school leadership position such as student government, club president, or team captain.

8. VIP Correspondence: We’ve received beneficial feedback and/or content from many VIPs. Here’s a random sample (in alphabetical order):
   
   • Gregg Barak, PhD, Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Eastern Michigan University
   • Paul Barron, Director of Library and Archives at the George C. Marshall Foundation
   • Thomas G. Blomberg, Dean and Sheldon L. Messinger Professor of Criminology at Florida State University
   • Dave Brian, Editor of The 420 Times
   • Michael Bugeja, Director of the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University
   • Daniel J. Carlat, Editor-in-Chief, Carlat Psychiatry Report
   • Kyle Clanton, Executive Producer, Listen uP! Radio on WEAA FM of Maryland Public Radio
   • Todd R. Clear, Dean of the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University
   • Raphael Cohen-Almagor, Chair of the Department of Politics and International Politics at the University of Hull
   • Robert J. Cottrol, PhD, Harold Paul Green Research Professor of Law and Professor of History and Sociology at George Washington University
   • Andrew Couts, Associate Editor at TheWeek.com
   • Barry M. Dank, PhD, Founding Editor of Sexuality and Culture
   • Peter Dunn, Fox News Radio Indianapolis
   • Lauren Duran, Director of Communications for the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University
   • Mark Eddy, Specialist in Social Policy for the Congressional Research Service
   • Aziz Farag, Saudi TV
   • Christopher J. Ferguson, PhD, Professor of Behavioral, Applied Sciences and Criminal Justice at Texas A&M International University
   • Robert I. Field, JD, MPH, PhD, Professor of Law, Earle Mack School of Law and Professor of Health Management and Policy at the Drexel University School of Public Health
   • Guillaume de Fondaumiere, Former President of the French National Video Game Association
   • Kenneth R. Fulton, Executive Director of the National Academy of Sciences
   • Frank Gaskill, PhD, Founding and Managing Partner of Southeast Psych
   • John Gaudiosi, Reporter for Reuters
   • Matania Ginosaur, former Lechi [Stern Gang] member
   • Ned Griffith, Senior Public Affairs Specialist, Government Accountability Office (GAO)
   • David Hanson, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, State University of New York at Potsdam
   • Alexes Harris, PhD, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Washington
   • Muhammad Ali Hasan, MFA, Co-founder of Muslims for America
   • Andrea Hess, Pharm D, Assistant Editor of Pharmacist’s Letter/ Prescriber’s Letter
   • Steven G. Horwitz, Dana Professor of Economics at St. Lawrence University
   • Yuval Itan, PhD, Researcher in the Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment at the University College of London
   • A.M. “Jake” Jacocks, Jr., Chief of Police (Ret.) and Board Member of the Virginia Beach Police Foundation
   • M. Zuhdi Jasser, President of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy
   • Adam J. Keigwin, Chief of Staff, Office of Senator Leland Yee, Assistant President Pro Tempore of the California State Senate
   • David Kelley, PhD, Executive Director of the Atlas Society
   • Kenneth Klukowski, JD, Fellow and Senior Legal Analyst with the American Civil Rights Union (ACRU)
   • Becca Knox, MPH/MSW, Director of Research at The Brady Center
   • Lawrence Kutner, PhD, Executive Director of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation
   • Robert R. Lang, Staff Director of the Standing Committee on Substance Abuse at the American Bar Association
   • Steven Lapham, Associate Editor, National Council for the Social Studies
   • Noam N. Levey, Health policy reporter for the Los Angeles Times
   • Pete Ludovice, Producer & Host, Inside the Black Box – “Science, Only Funnier”
   • Evan Mandery, JD, Chair of John Jay College of Criminal Justice at City University of New York
   • Ira Mehlman, Media Director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform
   • Darin Miller, Media Coordinator for Family Research Council
   • Jeffrey Miron, PhD, Senior Lecturer and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Economics at Harvard University, and a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute
   • Jeffrey A. Mittman, Executive Director of the ACLU of Alaska
   • Jefferson Morley, National Editorial Director of the Center for Independent Media
   • John Patrick Mullins, PhD, Assistant Professor of History at Marymount University
   • Michael Newdow, Founder of the First Amendmist Church of True Science

9. Email Updates & Reader Response: We started the year with 4,656 email subscribers and ended 2010 with 25,830. Some respones from our email updates and our “contact us” tabs are provided below. Over 99% of the feedback we received was favorable or neutral to our overall efforts.

10. Linked Sites: The number of 3rd party websites that linked to ProCon.org in 2009 was 105,603 per month. In 2010, that average increased to 168,099 – a 59% increase!

11. Cite Button: On Sep. 24, 2010, we added the “Cite” button to all ProCon.org pages so readers can get any ProCon.org page’s bibliographic or endnote citation according to the Modern Language Association Style Manual (MLA), the Chicago Manual of Style (Chicago), the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA), and Kate Turabian’s A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (Turabian) – four of the most popular bibliographic protocols (XI. below).

12. Staff: Our organization ended 2010 with a full-time staff of eight in-house employees compared to nine at the end of 2009. Our 2010 end-of-year staff included five researchers, one IT Manager, one President & Managing Editor, and me, our Chairman (unpaid).

13. San Diego Science Festival: The San Diego Science Festival donated a double booth to ProCon.org, and we created an interactive exhibit of pros and cons on two featured topics: whether obesity is a disease and whether social networking sites are good for society. About 500-600 people participated in our interactive booth including students, teachers, scientists, parents, and others. Check out some photos from the event to see how much critical thinking took place in our booth.

14. Financials: We received charitable contributions from 157 donors in 2010 – a 171% increase over the 58 donors we had in 2009.

    The 2010 financial data will be posted as soon as our audited financials are completed. In the meanwhile, our 2004-2009 Financial Information for ProCon.org appears below. Prior year audited financials and 990 reports are also available on our “About Us” page.
    
    1. 2009 Financial Summary
    2. 2009 vs. 2004 – 2008 Expenses: A Graphical Breakdown
    3. Detailed Chart of Financial Data, 2004-2009
    4. Definitions of Terms Used

1. 2009 Financial Summary

In 2009 ProCon.org received total gross income from donations of $660,012 down from $776,297 in 2008. Of our $720,151 in 2009 expenses, $618,097 (85.8%) was spent on program services, $62,527 (8.7%) on management and general expenses, and $39,527 (5.5%) on fundraising expenses. ProCon.org operates with such a high percentage of its expenditures in program services for several reasons, including: we spend small amounts to yield large amounts of funds raised, our operation is remarkably efficient, and our Chairman has refused a salary since we started.

2. 2009 vs. 2004 – 2008 Expenses: A Graphical Breakdown

4. Definitions of Terms Used

Program services are mainly those activities that the reporting organization was created to conduct and which, along with any activities commenced subsequently, form the basis of the organization’s current exemption from tax.

Overall management expenses usually include the salaries and expenses of the chief officer of the organization and that officer’s staff. General expenses include those for meetings of the board of directors or similar group; committee and staff meetings (unless held in connection with specific program services or fundraising activities); general legal services; accounting (including patient accounting and billing); general liability insurance; office management; auditing, personnel, and other centralized services; preparation, publication, and distribution of an annual report; and investment expenses.

Fundraising expenses are the total expenses incurred in soliciting contributions, gifts, grants, etc.