For news organizations in Colorado and across the country, a year-end donation, membership, or subscription campaign is an opportunity to spotlight your community impact, build trust with readers, and strengthen your financial sustainability. Inspired by the season of giving, individuals, foundations, corporate sponsors all play a role in a successful campaign to support local public-service journalism and informed communities.
In 2019, the Colorado Media Project expanded our #newsCOneeds year-end campaign to include 18 Colorado news organizations, spanning startup news websites, public radio stations, locally-owned newspapers, and more. With support from three Colorado philanthropic institutions – Bohemian Foundation, Gates Family Foundation, and Rose Community Foundation – CMP offered $5,000 matching grants to each newsroom. Collectively, the 18 newsrooms raised $177,842 from 1,145 individual donors through the 2019 #newsCOneeds campaign and matching grant program.
CMP also partnered with the national NewsMatch campaign to provide newsrooms with training and support. Since 2016, NewsMatch has raised $100 million in a unique collaboration of funders and newsrooms to build journalism capacity. Josh Stearns, program director of the Public Square initiative at Democracy Fund, a founding NewsMatch sponsor, outlines the campaign’s interlocking goals as two-fold:
Raise awareness for the role of journalism in our society, expand community support, and strengthen capacity.
Create new “on-ramps” for local and national foundations to support nonprofit news.
“You can go to your neighbor, to your supporters, the people on your email list, and say, ‘we’re part of this big thing,’” said Jason Alcorn, former NewsMatch project director and current managing director for the American Journalism Project, in his 2019 INN Days lightning talk. “For funders who maybe aren’t as familiar with giving to journalism before, NewsMatch is an easy way for them to support the entire field.”
To tap into what makes a match campaign successful, CMP interviewed project leaders from six of our 2019 #newsCOneeds participants, representing a true cross-section of our statewide cohort: non-profit and commercial; rural and urban; print, digital and broadcast.
Among the questions CMP asked for this case study :
How do they approach year-end fundraising?
What’s the relationship between individual and institutional donors?
For commercial newsrooms, how do you balance readers and advertisers to rally a year-end push?
How has COVID-19 changed plans and expectations?
And, with regard to Black Lives Matter, how does your newsroom incorporate diversity in your coverage and your calls for community support?
Below, you’ll see what we learned from Aspen Journalism,
Chalkbeat Colorado, Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition,
Denver Westword, and KSJD Radio in Four Corners.
For further reading, here are some of the helpful resources we used to inform our research and conversations:
2019 Results and Learning Report - NewsMatch
General FAQ - NewsMatch
Donation page optimization tips for year-end fundraising - INN
Case Study: 50,000 first-time donors? Here’s how four nonprofit organizations used NewsMatch to the fullest - NiemanLab
Aspen Journalism: Good journalism is fundraising
Brent Gardner-Smith, executive director of Aspen Journalism, is no stranger to year-end fundraising. As an INN member, Aspen Journalism has participated in the national NewsMatch program since 2016. Also, prior to founding the organization in 2011, Brent himself was the GM of Aspen Public Radio.
According to Brent, the key to a successful match campaign is leverage. His goal is to take the matches from CMP and NewsMatch, and double them locally. “We think there is a powerful message to local funders to match the donations from blue-chip funders.”
To convey that message, Brent relies squarely on the strength of the work. “I’ve always said that good journalism is fundraising.” As a recent proof of concept, through a grant from the Water Desk at CU (itself a grantee of the Walton Foundation), Aspen Journalism funded a freelance reporter to cover local opposition to the proposed construction of a reservoir on lower Homestake Creek, published in collaboration with the Vail Daily.
Likewise for individual donors, the call to action relates contributions to increasing newsroom capacity. Making it clear—an investment in Aspen Journalism is an investment in Aspen. “One of the biggest pitches right now is the size of the newsrooms in Aspen are directly correlated to the real estate market,” Brent says. “We can control the information in our community a different way, that isn’t subject to market volatility.”
Now in the time of COVID-19, that capacity is more crucial than ever. After some of Colorado’s first cases were confirmed in Aspen, Brent allocated $10,000 to staff the launch of “Tracking the Curve,” a daily-updated digital repository of data culled from state and county websites. Going forward from a personnel perspective, while they’ve weathered the storm thus far, securing a PPP loan to prevent layoffs, Brent says the next four months are critical.
Preparing to restate their case, Brent is rolling out a sustained campaign of direct asks to donors at all levels. Again centered around increasing, or at the very least maintaining capacity for covering the issues that matter to his community. Therein, Brent is keen on pitching a social justice reporter to explore how the current national conversation resonates in a small mountain town such as Aspen. “For us as a community, it's brown lives matter,” he says. “Our entire economy depends on undocumented labor … the system is unjust.”
Chalkbeat Colorado: Pitching impact, equity, and positive outcomes
Kimberly Spencer, Director of Donor Relations and Leadership Gift Planning at Chalkbeat, thinks of Chalkbeat as a middle man. Donations to Chalkbeat are like investments, made to fix a problem, address a specific need. They are a vehicle for affecting positive change in education policy.
A vanguard in nonprofit journalism, Chalkbeat has raised $25 million in philanthropic funding since its founding, the vast majority of which has come from local sources. Last year, supplementing participation in the CMP cohort and the national NewsMatch campaign, Chalkbeat secured four local matches across its seven U.S. bureaus, quadrupling individual donor impact.
Their pitch to institutions and individuals alike is “impact.” Parents, teachers, and policymakers read Chalkbeat every day. That journalism informs important decisions and leads to positive outcomes for students. Chalkbeat measures impact quantitatively, through MORI (Measures of Our Reporting’s Influence), a proprietary standard of metrics and processes which includes a WordPress plugin for tracking individual stories and themes, available for open-source download.
Impact data is pasted directly into slide decks presented to funders (philanthropy covers 85% of all local costs for the Colorado bureau, according to Chalkbeat’s strategic plan). This year, anticipating a perhaps more challenging fundraising landscape, Kimberly and her team are getting creative, looking at alternative mechanisms such as donor-advised funds and appreciated stock donations.
Over these difficult last several months, Chalkbeat’s impact has been felt in even more extraordinary ways. Since schools shut down, Chalkbeat has published food maps for parents in need to find subsidized meals for their children. As schools begin to reopen, Chalkbeat has all the latest information on schedules, safety measures and more. They’ve also adapted to continue practicing engaged journalism, albeit virtually, keeping their communities involved in the conversation.
All Chalkbeat stories are covered through an equity lens, and long before protests for racial justice swept the nation this spring, Chalkbeat has made strides to ensure that its staff reflects the communities they cover, many of them low-income areas serving a majority black and brown students. In the past year, Chalkbeat has added two people of color to its board of directors and increased staff diversity by more than 10 percent
“We have to be able to tell our story,” Kimberly said about this year’s fundraising outlook. “This is not a time for us not to have education coverage.”
Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition: Journalism’s legal firepower keeps government accountable
The Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition is not a newsroom, and executive director Jeff Roberts is not a journalist (although he does practice journalism, on what he considers the “open government beat”). All that said, the nonprofit CFOIC is a critical part of the journalism infrastructure relied upon by newsrooms all across our state. Participating in the CMP year-end campaign alongside 17 Colorado news organizations, as well as the national NewsMatch program, was a perfect way to make that connection to donors.
Since taking over in 2013, Jeff has fielded 3,400-some inquiries through his office, many of them from journalists, but many also from the general public. Last year they tallied 675. Many of these requests have led to successful litigation or access to government information, in some cases paving the way for important change. Without CFOIC, already understaffed Colorado newsrooms, and certainly private citizens, wouldn’t otherwise have the knowledge and resources to wage those battles.
As a matter of fact, Colorado is one of several states where the courts remain the only recourse for challenging a denial to public records. To help ease that burden and provide some much-needed “legal firepower,” the CFOIC applied for and won funding to staff a full-time, pro-bono attorney to support enterprise and investigative journalism through the Local Legal Initiative. That hiring process is currently underway.
Through year-end giving, individual donors show their gratitude for the important work the CFOIC does on their behalf. Nonetheless, Jeff counts on bolstering their grassroots support with a patchwork of grant funding. In the looming shadow of coronavirus, that revenue stream is less predictable than in years past. “I’ve already been told by one big funder that they're more focused on COVID-related public health efforts,” Jeff lamented. “We need to make the case that access to information is also essential to public health.”
On April 10, CFOIC led 60 more than Colorado newsrooms in co-signing an open letter to Governor Jared Polis, requesting additional actions to ensure government transparency with regard to public health data. Mere weeks later, the CFOIC again led a charge, co-authoring a condemnation of the targeting by law enforcement of press members covering the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in Denver.
“I was a Denver Post reporter for most of my career, with no experience asking for money,” Jeff said. “But being able to point to our track record, the things we do on a daily basis … at the end of the year, I feel comfortable making that ask.”
Denver North Star
Straightforward appeals rally community goodwill
For David Sabados and the Denver North Star, the CMP match campaign came at a convenient time. Just six weeks after they launched in October 2019.
“In a way having the matching campaign was a legitimizing for us,” David recalled. “When we went out and said here's a brand new newspaper, trust us, being a part of the program gave people some comfort.”
A former city council candidate, David co-founded the North Star to fill an information void in Northwest Denver. It’s beloved neighborhood predecessor, the Denver Tribune, had folded in 2017 after 83 years in print. David hears every day from readers how glad they are to have a newspaper back covering their community.
Rallying that goodwill, the initial pitch for the match campaign was simple – help us get off the ground. Since then, the ask has evolved, tying memberships to growing the coverage and distribution footprint. The North Star is a primarily print paper, delivered monthly to more than 31,000 homes. Every edition has a trackable quarter-page membership signup. More dollars equal moor doors and more Northwest Denver news.
Since the onset of COVID-19, David has tried to be even more straightforward in asking his community’s support. “Businesses don't generally don't talk about how they're doing,” he said. “In a pandemic, it’s less weird to say, ‘hey, we’re a small business, and this is a hard time.’”
Denver Westword: The best things in life are (still) free
Patty Calhoun founded the Westword as “vigorous exercise in freedom of the press.” A paper whose reporters are free to cover and uncover what’s really happening in our city, and crucially, a paper whose stories are free to read. For four decades, the Westword has shown Denver the value of a free paper.
Westword will always be free. Patty can’t stress this enough … no paywall, not ever. But, journalism costs money, and while Westword relies on a loyal stronghold of local advertisers, online advertising revenue is difficult to come by, and often comes at the expense of the digital user experience.
So, fighting 40 years of instinct, Patty made the difficult decision to develop the first-ever Westword membership program, offering ad-free digital access to paying supporters. Fortuitously for CMP, the launch coincided with the year-end match program, giving our program participants the opportunity to welcome an institution of Colorado journalism into the fold.
Readers have embraced the change, especially since, according to Patty, they still have the choice. Also while members have enjoyed the more streamlined user experience, Westword is shifting the value proposition away from the ad-free component. This is in deference to its community of advertisers, many of them local restaurants and retailers struggling to stay afloat through ongoing public health restrictions.
In a show of further solidarity with those small businesses, whom Patty credits with giving the city its “special flavor,” Westword has introduced a new Denver Restaurant Directory, a digital consumer guide for finding delivery, takeout and dine-in. And for those that have leaned on the Westword for finding live music (hand raised emoji), the concert calendar has been resurrected, listing upcoming opportunities for supporting local performers, in accordance with safety measures, of course.
As reluctant as Westword, other commercial newsrooms, local businesses, really anyone can be to ask for support (Patty’s word was “begathon), the lesson of the last several months is that you always can. Nonetheless, at least as far as Patty is concerned, giving will always be a choice. “Westword will continue to be free,” she assured her readers. “Like the best things in life.”
KSJD Radio: Innovate … and loyal members will weather the changes
When development director Shawn Collins arrived at Cortez, Colorado-based KSJD five years ago, they initiated a shift away from the fundraising drive incentive structure of premiums and prizes (aka, everybody gets a tote bag). For a small radio station in an economically depressed area, serving the Four Corners region of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah, the move made sense in terms of dollars. More importantly, Shawn and KSJD realized their audience of loyal listeners was more than willing to give for what they were already getting … high-quality public media programming.
Participating in the CMP match campaign provided those loyal supporters an opportunity to double their impact. They eagerly took advantage, to the tune of KSJD meeting their goal in a single day. Furthermore, participating in a statewide campaign lent an added air of credibility to their broader fundraising effort, which they parlayed locally into a second match with major donors, in part helping to increase year-over-year major donations ($500+) by more than 45 percent.
Beyond the fundraising bump, being a part of the larger campaign cohort proved to be a valuable learning experience for Shawn and her team. Seeing what other Colorado newsrooms were doing, particularly those also operating in news deserts, and sharing resources for making a successful match. Shawn specifically cited the promotional assets and accompanying technical assistance as providing an easy way to tailor messaging to their audience.
Those pitches again tied listener donations directly to programming capacity. To emphasize that connection, on #GivingNewsDay, KSJD announced the expansion of additional headline newscasts, an audience favorite, as made possible by community support.
Now with COVID-19, newsroom capacity is more important than ever. While the local newspaper has had to roll back distribution to just once a week, thanks to the match program, KSJD has ramped their coverage up, hiring a field reporter and equipping him with what Shawn calls the “world’s largest boom mic.” One focus of that field reporting, how coronavirus has hit especially hard on the area’s native community, part of an ongoing effort to forge stronger connections with the nearby Navajo and Ute Mountain tribes.
Thus far this year’s fundraising has understandably lagged, but Shawn remains optimistic for the year-end push. “It’s an opportunity to innovate,” she says. “We don't know what the new normal is, but this is our chance to take different kinds of risks.”