How do you fund a nonprofit newsroom without advertisers or rich donors?
Raising enough money to pay writers and keep operations going is nearly impossible through subscriptions or grants, which are notoriously difficult to secure. Without reliable funding or stable board members who won't suddenly pull out, independent publishers are left struggling to build working-class media outside the control of shareholders and advertisers.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1Establishing long-term relationships and building a pattern of being awarded grants year after year
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“No grant is easy.”source ↗
“Getting one is a miracle.”source ↗
“My biggest hurdle is either generating money from subscriptions or just finding funding to even pay writers.”source ↗
“I haven’t been able to raise enough funds to register as a social benefit org controlled by a 1% golden share of a foundation or even found reliable people to be board members who don’t randomly pull out.”source ↗
“How the dang do I do this? I just want news by the working class for the working class that isn’t controlled by shareholders or advertisers.”source ↗
“I’m sorry, but as an ED and the one who grant writes, that is an easy grant to get *comparatively.*”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
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- 12Funding my business out of my own pocket
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