During its years of publication, HaMagid made numerous appeals to its subscribers for nedavot (donations) to help those in need.  Sometimes the appeals were to help support Jewish settlement in Eretz Yisrael (Israel); other times for famine relief in Persia or to aid a shtetl devastated by fire.  On other occasions, the donations were to fund the publication of Jewish books or help provide for individuals in distress.

In response to these appeals, HaMagid’s subscribers, who resided primarily in cities and shtetls in Eastern and Western Europe, took up collections.  Often, one or two subscribers would solicit others in the community, though, sometimes, in large cities, formal committees would be constituted to do the collecting.  The collected money, as well as individual contributions, was then sent on to HaMagid for disbursement.  In subsequent issues, a few columns (sometimes, several pages) would be devoted to listing the names of the contributors.

The Jewish National and University Library's "Historic Hebrew Newspapers" website has scanned in all 19,000+ pages of HaMagid for 1856-1903, and allows the user to pick the year, month and day of a HaMagid issue, and then to scroll through the images of the pages of that issue.