Lenfest News Philanthropy Network announces grants to support year-end fundraising experiments

The Lenfest News Philanthropy Network is today announcing the 11 news organizations receiving support to experiment with their year-end fundraising efforts as part of The Lenfest Institute for Journalism’s News Catalyst Grant program.

The grantees, which include both non- and for-profit media, will conduct experiments on innovative approaches to end-of-year fundraising — including direct mail fundraising, SMS messaging, live events, and more. The 11 organizations will each receive a grant of up to $20,000

Catalyst Grants are made possible through the generous support of the Google News Initiative and the Knight-Lenfest Local News Transformation Fund.

The grantees and their projects include:

• Ashland.news, a digital news site serving Ashland, Ore., will mail a year-end print edition to all households in two ZIP Codes to attract new readers, sponsors, and donors.
• Borderless Magazine, which covers immigrant communities in Chicago, will expand its field canvassing strategy to include fundraising efforts. Its goal is to see whether those who sign up for its newsletter in-person are more likely to donate compared to online signups.
• Documented, which covers immigrant communities in New York, plans to grow its year-end fundraising efforts through events, multilingual campaigns targeting small-dollar donors, and campaigns targeting advisory board members and their networks.
• El Tímpano, which serves Latino and Mayan immigrants in the Bay Area, will host intimate house parties for current and prospective major donors to learn more about the organization’s work.
• QCity Metro, a hyperlocal news site serving the Black community in Charlotte, plans to expand its existing year-end campaign strategy, which typically centered on print appeals, to include video content showcasing its impact over the past 16 years.
• inewsource, which serves the San Diego area, will use new tools to better understand reader habits and create email segmentations and messaging based on these analytics.
• Louisville Public Media in Louisville, KY, will use marketing and analytics tools to send direct mail solicitations to the homes of loyal online readers.
• Mountain Xpress, which covers Asheville and western North Carolina, is embarking on a multimedia fundraising campaign, including direct mail, print and radio ads, and newsletters.
• Public Media Network, a community media organization in Kalamazoo, Mich., plans to leverage both digital platforms and SMS messaging to segment viewers and encourage them to donate based on their engagement.
• Richland Source, which covers Mansfield and Richland County, Ohio, will use analytics to target engaged readers who have not yet become members and send them direct mail solicitations for membership.
• The Two River Times is a 30-year-old newspaper that recently transitioned to nonprofit status. It covers Red Bank, N.J. and the surrounding towns, and it is planning to send information about how and why people should support nonprofit news in print to every household in its coverage area and to every digital newsletter subscriber.

“November and December are often the most important time of the year for news fundraisers. We’re excited to work with the Lenfest News Philanthropy Network Catalyst Grantees as they experiment with and learn about new opportunities to grow philanthropic opportunities for local news,” said Lenfest Institute Chief Advancement Officer Annie McCain Madonia.

To help the broader journalism community, the grantees will work with the Network upon conclusion of their experiments to publish case studies on lessons learned.

These 11 projects were chosen from a pool of applications from across The Lenfest News Philanthropy Network, a community of more than 2,600 members led by The Lenfest Institute for Journalism to support and build capacity for fundraising and development professionals in journalism. To learn more about the Network and sign up for regular updates on its programming, click here.