The Banyan Project has just started its search for funding and to date no grants have been secured. However, several interesting conversations are under way.
Among the most intriguing is with the National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions, whose member institutions serve populations concentrated in the ill-served public that Banyan aims to serve. The Federation's interest is piqued by the idea of buying Banyan service journalism so its credit unions can offer the articles in newsletters and websites as a way to help their depositor/shareholders make better life and citizenship decisions. Banyan's interest is piqued by the potential for the Federation to front the cost of launching the project, with the Changemaker grant as seed money. Because I am based in Newburyport, Massachusetts, north of Boston and near Portsmouth, N.H., and just over an hour from Portland, Maine, the plan is to use New England experts as sources for the journalism that New England credit unions would provide to their members.
When it matures, Banyan's aim is to deliver a comprehensive array of journalism tailored to be directly relevant to the lives of less-than-affluent Americans from coast to coast. But we plan to start on a manageable scale, with service journalism on a regional basis.
Banyan's business plan includes six revenue streams, one of which is ancillary sales of its journalism. From the start we'd expected this revenue to come on line well downstream, but the credit union interest opens the possibility for this stream right at launch. Selling the service journalism widely enough would produce a surplus that could help seed community-level pilot sites first in Boston and, later, other cities. Other potential funders include the Boston Foundation.
Comments
Please support this project. Large segments of the US population are underserved by the media, and the Banyan Project aims at changing that.
It looks like you have a great board assembled and some early endorsements, do you have early stage funders committed as well?
David
Ashoka
Hi David --
The Banyan Project has just started its search for funding and to date no grants have been secured. However, several interesting conversations are under way.
Among the most intriguing is with the National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions, whose member institutions serve populations concentrated in the ill-served public that Banyan aims to serve. The Federation's interest is piqued by the idea of buying Banyan service journalism so its credit unions can offer the articles in newsletters and websites as a way to help their depositor/shareholders make better life and citizenship decisions. Banyan's interest is piqued by the potential for the Federation to front the cost of launching the project, with the Changemaker grant as seed money. Because I am based in Newburyport, Massachusetts, north of Boston and near Portsmouth, N.H., and just over an hour from Portland, Maine, the plan is to use New England experts as sources for the journalism that New England credit unions would provide to their members.
When it matures, Banyan's aim is to deliver a comprehensive array of journalism tailored to be directly relevant to the lives of less-than-affluent Americans from coast to coast. But we plan to start on a manageable scale, with service journalism on a regional basis.
Banyan's business plan includes six revenue streams, one of which is ancillary sales of its journalism. From the start we'd expected this revenue to come on line well downstream, but the credit union interest opens the possibility for this stream right at launch. Selling the service journalism widely enough would produce a surplus that could help seed community-level pilot sites first in Boston and, later, other cities. Other potential funders include the Boston Foundation.
Tom Stites
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