Hey there, 

We’re working on a few new issues of Solution Set, and we’ll be back in your inbox later this month with fresh reporting. In the meantime, as we wrap up summer, we wanted to let you know about a couple of new projects from The Lenfest Institute and our partners that you might be interested in. 

In partnership with The Membership Puzzle Project, we’ve created a self-service email newsletter course all about membership. It’s built on lessons from The Membership Guide, and contains highly practical advice for how to launch, implement, and grow a membership program in your newsroom. You can subscribe here, or keep scrolling to learn more. (Also if you haven’t checked it out yet, MPP wrapped up its work this week and shared some lessons about what it learned here.) 

We’re also hard at work planning the first-ever News Philanthropy Summit, a fully virtual conference dedicated to fundraising in news. The Summit is an outgrowth of the News Philanthropy Network, a community of practice for news fundraisers. Scroll down to learn more about how you can pitch a session or let us know you’re interested in attending. The Summit is Nov. 3 and 4. 

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Sign up for the Membership Guide Newsletter Course

We are excited to announce that the team behind the Membership Guide has released a self-guided newsletter course dedicated to membership. The course is a new way to access information about membership and learn the most useful details in the Membership Guide. 

You can subscribe here. 

If you subscribe, you’ll receive two emails a week over the next several weeks. You’ll get 14 issues in total. By the time you’re finished with the course, you will have a clear roadmap for how you can most effectively use the Membership Guide to launch, grow, or iterate on your membership program. 

The Membership Guide is a tactical, practical guide to membership models in news published by the Membership Puzzle Project in partnership with The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. 

The Guide itself is like a little course in membership, taking  you through key steps, identifying best practices, and warning of common mistakes. It gathers into one place all of the lessons people have learned as they have built successful membership programs — including, of course, the errors and wrong turns that are part of any experiment.

Sign up to get the first lesson delivered to your inbox!! 

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Announcing the Inaugural News Philanthropy Network Summit

The Lenfest News Philanthropy Network is pleased to announce the inaugural News Philanthropy Summit, a new conference completely dedicated to fundraising in news. 

The Summit will be fully virtual this year, and we hope you’ll join us for two days of learning and networking from November 3-4, 2021.

Like all News Philanthropy Network events, the Summit will be free to attend and is open to all — regardless of where you live and whether you work for a nonprofit or for-profit news organization.

There are 3 different ways you will be able to participate in the Summit:

• Pitch a session: What should we discuss at the Summit? Is there a topic you’d like to present on or learn about? Do you have a particular experience you want to share? Let us know by filling out this form. The deadline to submit session proposals is Next Friday, Sept. 10 at 11:59 p.m. EDT. 
• Attend the Summit: You can sign up here and we’ll send you updates as we get closer to the event  if you want to make sure you know when registration is open later this fall. 
• Share the news: The News Philanthropy Summit is free and open to all, so please feel free to pass along this information to friends and colleagues who may be interested in joining the Network and attending the Summit. 

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Thanks again, and please feel free to reach out with any questions about The Membership Guide or the Newsletter Course.

Please also feel free to reach out with any tips, story ideas, or other questions about life or local journalism.