We're creating top-quality KM articles for a large and growing readership

"Knowledge management" (or "KM" for short) is the process of creating, sharing, using, and managing the knowledge and information of an organization. By doing KM better, organisations perform better, creating better outcomes for customers, clients, employees, managers, and shareholders.

A bit over two and a half years ago, RealKM Magazine was founded with the aim of publishing practically-oriented articles to help managers and KM practitioners connect with the latest research and insights in KM and related disciplines such as communications, marketing, psychology, biology, sociology, and management research.

In that time, we've struck a real chord! We've published over 700 articles, our monthly readership has grown to 5,000 and is still climbing, and our most popular article has now been viewed more than 12,000 times.

We also just published the first release of the RealKM Open KM Syllabus, an attempt to systematically describe the themes and topics required for a fully-rounded education in knowledge management theory and practice.

In short, our goal is to advance the discipline of knowledge management. And we would like your help to do that.

Where to from here?

RealKM Magazine's success has been made possible by the generous sponsorship of founder and publisher Stephen Bounds through his consulting company, and many hours of work by editor and lead writer Bruce Boyes.

RealKM Magazine is helping a lot of people, and we want this to keep happening for a long time. But relying on Stephen's financial support alone isn't sustainable in the long-term.

We need to broaden our financial support base, and ideally become self-sustaining.

We don't want to run ads because they're just going to annoy you, our readers, and ads that market who-knows-what will just detract from our commitment to providing evidence-based information. We also don't want to charge fees for access to articles because that would fly in the face of our commitment to open access information (too much high-quality information is being hidden away behind paywalls, denying the public the evidence it needs to make the best decisions). We do have a store, but KM is unfortunately not the sort of thing that lends itself well to saleable products, meaning we only earn a little through store sales.

So Patreon is perfect for our situation. Our readers and supporters have the opportunity to become our patrons, donating whatever they would like on a recurring monthly basis, from just $1/month upwards.

By becoming our patron, you can make a significant contribution to KM, and to the many customers, clients, employees, managers, and shareholders who benefit from improved KM.

How we'll use the money

Our "run" goal is to raise $1500/month. This will cover our website hosting and e-newsletter cost, and keep Bruce going as our part-time editor and lead writer. We'll also expand our content to produce a short video on a KM topic every month, as voted by patrons.

Our "sprint" goal is to raise $3000/month. This will take us to the next level of being able to increase Bruce's hours, as well as commission other writers and content producers. This will mean more articles, including more in-depth feature articles, and more video content. We'll also plan and execute a simple KM experiment each quarter and publish the results on the RealKM Magazine website. Patrons will be able to choose from a shortlist of possible research topics.

Thank you!

You, our prized readers and supporters, have made RealKM Magazine the success that it is today. Thank you for making this possible, and for hopefully joining us as a patron as we continue RealKM Magazine's journey into the future!