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As a news founder, covering your community is sometimes easier than asking for money
In late October, the news outlet I founded, The Riverside Record, launched its first-ever fundraising campaign with the help of the Institute of Nonprofit News’ Newsmatch program.
Fundraising doesn’t come naturally to me. I’d much rather be out in the community covering many holiday events and hearing what’s important to folks who live and work in Riverside County, Calif. — especially those who don’t feel like their information needs are being met. But the only way I can continue to do that vital work is to actively ask folks for their donations.
And I’m not alone.
Andrew Hazzard, a climate reporter at Sahan Journal, wrote this in a recent fundraising appeal: “Reader support for Sahan Journal is critical to keeping our reporting staff out in the field. “With your help, we can continue this important work.”
At Capital B, a Black-led, national news organization, which launched earlier this year, editorial director Simone Sebastian highlighted the newsroom’s most impactful reporting to make its appeal to readers. “We’ve produced follow-up pieces and will continue to report on the [Jackson, Mississippi] water crisis because we know it matters to our readers,” she wrote. “This work takes a lot of time and money to produce. But these stories need to be told.”
And in a recent fundraising appeal, The Objective's editor and co-founder, Gabe Schneider, wrote that the outlet's funds primarily go to paying its contributors. “Considering all of the work we’ve published these past two years, I’m confident that with dedicated staff, we could go well beyond doubling our efforts,” he wrote.
The work of fundraising can often feel like an uphill battle, especially for leaders of color. In 2020, social entrepreneurship funding organization Echoing Green and nonprofit consultancy Bridgespan collaborated on a study looking at racial inequities in philanthropic funding. The study found that, on average, the revenues of early-stage Black-led organizations are 24% smaller than the revenues of their white-led counterparts. When it comes to funding, the unrestricted net assets of Black-led organizations are 76% smaller than their white-led peer organizations.
“When it comes to funders, I think there's a lot of focus on scalable solutions, which is great to an extent,” Schneider told me in a recent email. “But at the same time, I see a huge lack of focus on smaller BIPOC-founded community outlets that are struggling.”
Schneider continued: “It's hard to watch this dynamic when there is a steady stream of white-led media start-ups that obtain start-up capital without anyone batting an eye. Donations, memberships, and subscriptions are great ways to sustain an outlet. And it's nice when training programs are offered. But community-focused outlets, especially outlets that are experimenting, need [a] runway to test out their work and their model.”
The other part of this funding puzzle is that Black and Brown-led newsrooms tend to focus their coverage on underserved communities, and asking these communities for funding isn’t always practical.
“I don't think there's explicit harm in making the ask, but the expectation that communities that have been failed by journalism in the past should give what resources they have to journalism doesn't really make sense,” Schneider said. “The current prospects for journalism to run as a business, as it once did, [don’t] make sense when considering smaller cities or counties.”
Another issue Schneider brought up when talking about funding — and it’s one I have also run into — is that funders tend to emphasize grants geared toward specific coverage or projects. If a newsroom is already doing that work, that’s a great way to bring in extra revenue to support it. But, at the end of the day, what small newsrooms need are unrestricted funds that can be used to keep the lights on while reporters are out there doing the work in their communities. It’s why a significant pillar of URL Media’s model is to share advertising revenues with both the for-profit and nonprofit Black and Brown newsrooms in our network, putting financial sustainability more within reach for these high-performing publications.
Please consider making a donation — or purchasing a subscription or membership — to BIPOC-led news media organizations this holiday season. Your generosity will have an immediate impact on their ability to continue to operate. —Alicia Ramirez
Uplift. Respect. Love.
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