Newsfunders.org: Community Campaigns for Independent Journalism
Newsfunders.org transforms journalism crowdfunding by using a campaign model to build very large annual-donor communities.
About You
About You
About Your Organization
Organization Name
Newsfunders.org
Organization Website
Organization Country
United States
Country where this project is creating social impact
Is your organization a
Non‐profit/NGO/citizen sector organization
How long has your organization been operating?
Less than a year
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Innovation
Entry Form title
Newsfunders.org: Community Campaigns for Independent Journalism
Select the stage that best applies to your solution
Idea (you're poised to launch)
How long have you been in operation?
Still in idea phase, but looking to launch soon
THE NEED: Describe the need for your solution and the size/dynamic of the community (ies) you will engage
Tens of thousands of journalists are out of a job nationwide, and legions of newly minted reporters are pouring forth from journalism schools. Who's going to put them to work? Even the most high-profile nonprofit experiments -- ProPublica, The Bay Citizen, etc. -- lack the resources, scale and sustainability to meet the basic civic-information needs of thousands of underserved communities around the United States and around the world. These new nonprofits, as hard-hitting and professional as they man be, are really just sentimental monuments to the grand old newsrooms of yore. Today's information economy demands a radically decentralized finance system for independent journalism -- one that directly connects journalists and the public, that rewards quality and disinvests in substandard work, and that creates a new value proposition for journalism as a service to communities and democracy.
THE SOLUTION: Please explain what your solution offers and how it is innovative. How will you put your solution into the hands of users or beneficiaries? Be specific!
Newsfunders.org is a campaign-based crowdfunding service for independent journalism. Unlike existing crowdfunding projects, such as Kickstarter.com or the otherwise invaluable Spot.Us, Newsfunders.org provides not just the mechanism for handling donations, but also the MARKETING CAMPAIGN required to reach truly widespread audiences and achieve large-scale donor support. Like MoveOn.org -- but WITHOUT the political advocacy -- Newsfunders.org will constantly campaign to build a huge base of millions of online subscribers who want to support quality journalism as a civic good. By applying CRM to this large and engaged community, Newsfunders.org can develop funding and promotional campaigns and relationships, and create a transformative model for journalism financing in the 21st century.
THE MODEL: Walk us through a specific example of how your solution makes a difference through use of information technology and media
1) CONNECT PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS with the funding they need to do their jobs. Every donation of $20 to Newsfunders.org will direct $15 to vetted local nonprofit news outlets, freelancers or support agencies, and $5 for national coverage of local and regional issues. A small transaction fee will cover administrative costs.
2) FUND BEATS, SUPPORT FREEDOM OF THE PRESS. By funding a beat, donors will help set coverage priorities, and ensure that journalists have the independence and resources they need to cover important news and issues that are overlooked by legacy media.
3) BUILD A MASS MOVEMENT to support the unfettered practice of responsible, professional journalism. Use your promotional clout to spread the word through social media. Democracy is better served when journalists and the public are directly linked and accountable to each other. Money from institutions is always hard to get and comes with strings attached.
Newsfunders.org is a collaborative campaign to transform the financing of journalism, and liberate journalists from the challenges of legacy-media business models. We are in the early stages of business planning, and welcome your support.
THE MARKETPLACE: Who are your peers and competitors? What challenges could these players pose to your success or growth?
The only major journalism crowdfunding service is Spot.Us, a longtime ally and partner to many small news publishers. Kickstarter.com and Indie Go Go are high-profile, more mainstream "project" funding services. They do not present a challenge to Newsfunders.org, as they do not follow a campaign-based approach to building donor communities. Instead, they leave the marketing to the individual project managers, creating a "popularity contest" that is often biased against important, high-quality but less glamorous projects. This also drains the resources and staff energy of small news enterprises by requiring journalists and news producers to also be marketing managers. This is a double-whammy that greatly reduces the potential impacts of crowdfunding as a means of financing independent journalism on a mass scale.
Social Impact
This Entry is about (Issues)
FOUNDING STORY: We want to hear about your “Aha!” moment. Share the story of where and when the founder(s) saw this solution’s potential to change the world.
It seems like everyone I know is an award-winning journalist or news publisher that didn't get their grant renewed. That's the case for Newsdesk.org, which received the SPJ's national Sigma Delta Chi award for its Spot.Us-funded coverage of pollution and public-health in West Oakland. It's also the case for a number of Newsdesk.org's peer organizations, all high-achieving, community-based news publishers living hand-to-mouth on individual donors, and wilting in the shadow of a few anointed nonprofit news behemoths that get all the grants, and spend and act more like grand legacy newspapers than lean, high-impact online ventures.
The point, however, is not to cry and rail against it all, but instead to simply sidestep the issue. Crowdfunding leads the way forward. Individual donors really are the solution. But most news startups lack the marketing clout to go out and build a huge individual-donor base.
Thus Newsfunders.org, which must be for journalism what the Red Cross is for public health: Networked nationwide and around the world, massively appealing, and having the highest impacts and engagement LOCALLY. A recognized public good everyone can invest it. Aha!
Specify both the depth and scale of your solution’s social impact to date
Newsfunders.org is in its earliest stages. We have not even launched a Minimum Viable Product, and have no intention of doing so until we've done much more research and development. Our first real step was to conduct a survey of the news-funding habits (subscriptions and donations) of attendees of the National Conference on Media Reform. Though the sample was highly self-selected, it is representative of a core support group for Newsfunders.org. The survey found widespread support for local nonprofit news and newspapers, and sharply limited support for existing, national-scale news sources. Respondents expressed interest in making one annual donation to a service that would support multiple news publishers, and that could also elevate local coverage to the national stage. Donations/money spent ranged from zero to five figures. The largest single donor group was of people giving or spending between $200 and $500, followed by people giving or spending $5–$50. These are significant findings, and require more detailed follow-up research and recruiting.
What is your projected impact within the next 1-5 years? Is your idea replicable? If so, how?
Our initial goal, in the first six months of the project's formal launch, is to recruit 5,000 Inaugural Donors giving $20 each annually. This would net $100,000, to be disbursed in block grants supporting beat coverage by qualified news-publishing partners. The Investigative News Network, with its vetted community of 60 members, will be the first beneficiary of Newsfunders.org. The initial 5,000 donors would be recruited through a widespread (but primarily online) marketing campaign, and from that group individuals would be recruited to act as local campaign organizers. The model should proliferate locally, with individuals serving at the grassroots to galvanize their peers through fundraising house parties, social media, etc. Five-year goal: A million donors nationwide.
Winning entries present a strong plan for how they will achieve and mark growth. Identify your six-month milestone for growing your impact
5,000 inaugural donors giving $20 each to create a $100,000 block-grant fund for independent local journalism nationwide.
Six-Month Tasks
Task 1
R&D on donor platform and promotional campaign, recruiting major partners.
Task 2
Implementation of marketing campaign.
Task 3
Disbursement of initial block grants to qualified news partners.
Now think bigger! Identify your 12-month impact milestone
At 12 months, campaign model should expand to 20,000 individual donors giving $20 annually.
12-Month Tasks
Task 1
Thorough evaluation of six-month goals and methods, and subsequent refining/retooling/adaptation of campaign model
Task 2
Implementation of peer-review and reputation-based evaluation of content produced through Newsfunders.org monies.
Task 3
Launch of next-phase marketing campaign, using evaluation and peer-reviewed measures to guide subsequent grantmaking.
How many people have been impacted by your project?
Fewer than 100
How many people could be impacted by your project in the next three years?
More than 10,000
Sustainability
Explain how your company, program, service or product is structured
Non-profit
What barriers have hindered the success of your project to date? How do you plan to overcome these and other challenges as you grow your solution?
One current barrier is my own availability, as a time-stressed parent of a toddler, for developing the Minimum Viable Product. This is a crucial step. The entrepreneurial process of producing an MVP is so focused on the basics, that a successful launch can set up a long period of efficacious follow-up, development and sophistication. Another barrier is the development of marketing materials and effective strategies for reaching widespread audiences. This depends on communicating a renewed/revitalized value proposition for journalism as a public good -- no small challenge in an era of widespread mistrust of the journalism establishment, and low expectations for an industry better known for dumbed-down news "candy" and establishment partisanship than accessible public-interest reporting.
How do you see the information-technology and media sectors shifting over the next decade? How will your solution adapt to and/or drive that changing environment?
Two trends will conflict: On the one hand, decentralized innovation, enterprise and open-source practices will continue to give communications power to individuals and small communities. On the other hand, commercial and institutional power will follow a reverse trend of greater concentration of authority, credibility, monetization and control over content production. Newsfunders.org stakes its hopes squarely in the former, by hewing to a decentralized model that empowers individuals and is easily replicated at the local level.
Failure is not always an option. If your solution fails to gain traction in the next two years, what other applications of the idea could you explore?
Newsfunders.org could easily be used by well-resourced, major news organizations, particularly nonprofits, as a paradigm for generating public support for their own coverage. The ability to fund BEATS rather than individual stories ensures that journalists have the freedom they need to cover issues as they arise, while the donors themselves still get to influence coverage overall without specifically anointing one particular story over another. This plus the imperative that Newsfunders redefines journalism's value proposition as a widespread public good could compel journalism organizations to refocus on directly serving the needs of the public, rather than the more abstract social measures of foundations or the hard profit-margin goals of corporate shareholders.
Expand on your selections, explaining how you will sustain funding
Newsfunders.org can run comfortably on a very small staff comprised of marketing, IT and finance professionals. It will be supported in the grantmaking process by a larger, pro bono community of advisers representing all stakeholders. Direct support for operations will come, initially, from major philanthropy. A more established organization will also enable donors to add an additional $1 to their donation to support admin/operations. In its mature state (at the five-year mark), Newsfunders.org will also maintain an institutional endowment of at least $5-10 million to ensure core administrative staff expenses are met.
Tell us about your partnerships
Newsfunders.org's advisory board members represent themselves only, but represent points of entry for organizational partnerships. They are: Kevin Davis (Investigative News Network), Josh Stearns (Free Press), Nathaniel James (Mozilla Foundation), Kwan Booth (OaklandLocal.com), Linda Jue (G.W. Williams Center for Independent Journalism), Lila LaHood (The San Francisco Public Press), Christine McClintock (Independent Arts & Media), Michael Stoll (The San Francisco Public Press), Anna Tarkov (journalist and media consultant).
What type of team (staff, volunteers, etc.) will ensure that you achieve the growth milestones identified in the Social Impact section?
Paid staff: CEO/Project Director; Campaign & Community Development Director; CTO; CFO
Volunteers: Local campaign developers, journalism advisers
Changemakers is a collaborative and supportive space. Please specify any community resources you would need to grow and sustain your initiative. Select all that apply
Investment, Human resources or talent, Marketing or media, Research or information, Collaboration or networking, Pro-bono help (legal, financial, etc.), Innovation or ideas, Mentorship.
Specify any resources you might offer to support other initiatives. Select all that apply
Marketing or media, Research or information, Collaboration or networking, Pro-bono help (legal, financial, etc.), Innovation or ideas, Mentorship.
Please elaborate on any needs or offers you have mentioned above and/or suggest categories of support that aren’t specified within the list
The categories listed are all relevant to the needs of the project and of social entrepreneurship in general.
Summary
Define your company, program, service or product in 1-2 short sentences
Newsfunders.org is a collaborative crowdfunding campaign to create massive new support for independent journalism.
Identify what is innovative about your solution in 1-2 short sentences
Newsfunders.org transforms journalism crowdfunding by using a campaign model to build very large annual-donor communities.
 | 28 weeks agojosh wilson said: Hello Tim! Thanks for your message. I greatly appreciate it. I'd like to learn more about your work and will check out the Changeshop. ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 28 weeks agoTim Scheu said: Hi Josh - Wanted to connect because I love the model that you're pushing re: Newsfunders. I've read 100+ of the ideas that have come ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 36 weeks agojosh wilson updated this Competition Entry. |
| 36 weeks agojosh wilson updated this Competition Entry. |
| 36 weeks agojosh wilson submitted this idea. |
