INTIATIVE DESCRIPTION

Knight Foundation commissioned Community Wealth Ventures (CWV) to conduct a multi-phase project to review and support local nonprofit news ventures. The goal of the project is to provide opportunities for assessment and shared learning to help participating organizations advance in the areas of sustainability and revenue generation and to contribute to the field of knowledge regarding sustaining journalism enterprises. The project focused on a group of eight nonprofit local news ventures: Crosscut, Chi-Town Daily News, MinnPost, New Haven Independent, St. Louis Beacon, Texas Tribune, Voice of San Diego and The Bay Citizen. 

Key Questions

• What are the varying revenue streams and cost structures for each local nonprofits news ventures?

• What approaches and tactics has each organization used to strengthen its sustainability, and what have been the success and challenges?

• How can Knight Foundation improve its efforts to strengthen the sustainability of local nonprofits news ventures?

Assessment Purpose and Approach: The project included an iterative research and analysis process focused on assessing the current state of the local nonprofit news ventures. The analysis was based on data collected from: CWV‘s Capacity Assessment completed by multiple leaders of each organization; telephone interviews with each organization‘s leadership team with questions about mission, business strategy, sustainability, financial details, and capacity; an intensive document review of strategic plans, historical financials, projected financials, marketing collateral and site analytics. CWV also engaged experts and industry leaders throughout the project as advisors.

Assessment Partner:  Community Wealth Ventures

PROJECT FINDINGS

The project, which launched at the beginning of 2010, was recently completed. Findings will be shared publicly in June 2011.