Posts about philanthropy

Listen: They do exist

March 10, 2014 by Jeff Jarvis
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My two recent posts about philanthropy and the news touched a nerve among not-for-profit news gatherers, leading to a podcast conversation with Scott Lewis, head of Voice of San Diego (starting at about :22), and a response by Steve Waldman. Laura Walker, the CEO of New York Public Radio, also asked to respond here. Laura is a brilliant businesswoman who could run rings around any for-profit media executive. She also made a big announcement today about a $10 million grant to fund digital innovation. I don’t usually hand this space over to anyone else, but I happily give it to Laura here:

logo-wnycYour post “Philanthropy and News” and related tweets have sparked an important conversation about the role of philanthropy in journalism. I wholeheartedly agree with you that philanthropy should help build sustainable models in journalism that have diverse revenue streams. As you often point out, business thinking and revenue generation are critical to the future of our industry.

But, I don’t agree at all with your statement: “Every time a rich person gives to a news nonprofit, a journalism startup loses its wings.” Philanthropic giving to nonprofit news doesn’t compete with investment in for-profit news startups. It’s not “an either/or” scenario as to who will survive. More importantly, philanthropic support for journalism has provided seed funding for successful models of nonprofit journalism, including public radio. Models of success do exist!

Here’s how I see it:

• Philanthropic grants are not taking away capital from startups. The motivations and reasons for venture funding are fundamentally different from philanthropy. Both can be an investment in the future of news and work together to enhance overall quality in journalism.

• Investment in nonprofit journalism can be an investment in sustainable journalism. Already today, philanthropy is seed funding important work and sustainability in journalism; just look at public radio, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. To be sure, many nonprofit journalism enterprises have failed, and many don’t have business leadership. Just as with a for-profit investment, it is critical that philanthropic investors “kick the tires” on the leadership of nonprofits to make sure that a business plan has been created and sustainability can be achieved.

• Hands down, the most successful sustainable nonprofit model is public radio, and it is too often overlooked by you and others. Public radio, with some 1,200 reporters including NPR and stations around the country, has diverse revenue streams, uses venture philanthropy, and through collaboration offers national scale, local relevance and powerful enterprise journalism.

Let’s take New York Public Radio as an example:

Diverse Revenue Streams

• Our journalism and radio programs are sustained through the contributions of 175,000+ members, corporate underwriting, events, fees from other public radio stations, as well as institutional giving and major donor gifts.

• Institutional giving and major donor gifts are just pieces of a diversified revenue model that is built to promote long-term sustainability and impact.

Venture Philanthropy

• Philanthropy often seeds new ideas and helps create an infrastructure for them.Then, we sustain these efforts over time in concert with other diverse revenue sources. Philanthropic contributions from the Charles H. Revson Foundation, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Ford Foundation, Jerome L. Greene Foundation, Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and others have acted as venture funding to seed projects like our Stop and Frisk coverage, our Data News unit,Radiolab, The Takeaway, and our New Jersey news unit, as well as the creation of digital apps that are designed for how people consume news today.

• This approach fuels just the type of innovation you are calling for and has resulted in journalism that has won many awards, including three Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Awards and seven George Foster Peabody Awards in the last several years.

Collaboration

• “Philanthropy and News” also highlighted the need for collaboration within the news ecosystem – to both innovate and best serve audiences. At its heart, the public radio system is based on a collaborative reporting model – stations working with NPR and other national outlets to cover breaking news and to offer an expansive national report.

• Then, there are projects and efforts within the system like Fronteras along the border, The Takeaway and the New Jersey News Commons, in which our New Jersey Public Radio service plays a leading role, working with NJ Spotlight, Montclair State University’s journalism program and other news providers, small and large, new and established.

• Sometimes we compete and sometimes we collaborate, but as a recent J-Lab study noted: “Public media outlets play an important role for news startups. A partnership with a public broadcaster amplifies their journalism and validates their efforts in ways that can help their sustainability.”

We both agree that building sustainability in journalism is essential. We should learn from all the models before us – the ones that failed, the successful ones that currently exist, and the experiments being taken up by for-profit startups and fueled by philanthropy in the nonprofit sector. For an example of sustainable nonprofit journalism, just listen to your radio.

The price of eggs

March 1, 2014 by Jeff Jarvis
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Glenn Greenwald has responded to Pando Daily’s story about the Omidyar Network and Ukraine with the force and speed we have come to expect. Good. Now I also wish he and his colleagues would turn around, ignore Pando, and create a statement of principles, a compact with the public. Greenwald begins that in his last paragraph of the Pando post:

But what I do know is that I would never temper, limit, suppress or change my views for anyone’s benefits – as anyone I’ve worked with will be happy to tell you – and my views on such interference in other countries isn’t going to remotely change no matter the actual facts here. I also know that I’m free to express those views without the slightest fear. And I have zero doubt that that’s true of every other writer at The Intercept. That’s what journalistic independence means.

That is still reactive to Pando. I would like to see a positive statement of principles: What we stand for. What we guarantee you we will always do and never do. What we will disclose to you….

You could say that we already have journalistic principles, plenty of them, produced by no end of journalism practitioners, professors, and blatherers like me. Very true.

But as Greenwald and others reinvent journalism, it is good to rethink and reassert principles. It is a useful exercise for any journalistic organization: for a reimagined New York Times or a newly invented First Look or Pando or even Gawker. What do you stand for? What assurances to you give us, the public you serve, that we can and should trust you? What can we expect of you?

Greenwald’s principles would not match those of fusty old American journalistic institutions. Start with the obvious: He takes stands. He has a perspective. He measures his value by his impact. (And I endorse those principles.) That is his raison d’être. What is theirs?

Now Greenwald also says that the views and actions of his funder don’t matter because he promises he won’t let them matter (see: principles above) and besides, all rich people have views and entanglements and — to paraphrase a classic Woody Allen joke — we need the eggs. Well…..

There are limits. I pulled my last book, Public Parts, from Harper Collins because I was being critical of and did not want to be subject to the control of Rupert Murdoch. There are others I would not work for and some I am sure Greenwald would not work for (even if they would hire him). I worked for others I should have liked — like Time Inc. — but threatened to resign when I disapproved of what they did. I know my limits.

So there is another step needed here: We need to hear from the funders, the moguls, to give us first transparency and then assurances.

Now in Pierre Omidyar’s case, I pointed out yesterday as Greenwald did today that it took only .3 milliseconds in a Google search to find that the Omidyar Network had funded civil society groups in Ukraine; they sent out a press release about it in 2011. I’m not sure what Pando’s revelation was, except perhaps to make the connection with USAID, though that’s also discoverable. Given Omidyar’s and his network’s vast activities, it’s hard to say that they could create a single transparency document (like simple me). Instead, it is better that they operate under a principle of revealing their financial involvements and making them transparent to Google search.

But what we could have is assurances from both sides of a financial transaction: not only the journalists assure us of their independence, as Greenwald does, but also that the funders guarantee that independence. It would be good for Greenwald et al to write the statement of principles and for Omidyar to endorse it.

When I wrote a post about philanthropy’s relationship to news this week, I had a sixth guideline I should have left in: Charity brings strings. Journalists like to think that they can get manna from heaven to rescue them from the nasty commerce of marketing and advertising, of earning audience and revenue, of sustainability. But as the Guardian’s Alan Rusbridger has pointed out, it was advertising that freed journalism from the control of political entities and gave them independence.

Now journalists are seeking patronage once more. They need to take those checks with eyes wide open and they need to have a conversation with the public about the implications for them and the journalism they serve to us.

Philanthropy and the news

February 26, 2014 by Jeff Jarvis
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On a trip to Silicon Valley with my new dean, Sarah Bartlett, I heard technology people express concern about the state of news. That is good of them, for they have had a role in the disruption of news — and I’m glad they have. Now they need to consider taking the fruits of their technology and the innovation, efficiency, productivity, profitability, and wealth it has created and turn some of it and their attention toward the good of society and perhaps, with it, journalism.

But not as philanthropists. That was my plea to them. We in journalism need them to bring their innovation and investment to news, to teach us how to see and exploit new opportunities to improve news and sustain it. More on the role of technologists another day.

Today, I want to talk about the role of philanthropy. As I was thinking about my trip to the Bay Area — and in the midst of a magnum opus Twitter conversation about the future of news sparked and stoked by Marc Andreessen — I tweeted this:

My good friend Jay Rosen got angry with me, accusing me of being hostile to nonprofit news.

Not true, I replied. I am expressing a preference. Given a source of capital and given the state of innovation in news and media — this is 1472 in Gutenberg years — I prefer to see that precious resource go first to sustainability. Don’t buy a hungry man a fish — or a news-starved community another article. Don’t just teach them to fish. Build the damned fishing boats.

A few months ago, I went to an event in Washington for nonprofit news organizations put on by the Knight Foundation and Pew. Again and again, we heard that the problem with too many of these good organizations is that they put no resource into development — whether fundraising or sponsorship or events. I often hear journalists say that every dollar they get should go straight into reporting; anything else feels practically immoral to them. But so is letting their good work die and disappear: no more fish, no fishing boats, just fishwrap.

I also hear journalists say that they don’t want to concern themselves with the business of journalism. Clearly, I disagree. That is precisely why I started the Tow-Knight Center in Entrepreneurial Journalism.

In New Jersey, I have been doing a lot of work alongside the Dodge Foundation, Montclair State, and others to try to build the foundation for a sustainable news ecosystem that can grow and improve. We are working with sites to make them profitable by improving the services they sell to local merchants, by experimenting with new revenue streams like events, by building a network to share content and audience and — soon, I hope — advertising. We just received $2 million from Knight and one of their wise conditions was that we not spend the money on operations — on buying more stories — but instead on building infrastructure. That is why we are hiring a sustainability director to manage just that. (Know anyone who’d be great at the job?)

So I do see a role for philanthropy in news, an important role. But I’ll caution journalists — as will every foundation I know — that there is not enough money in the endowments of all the foundations interested in supporting news to pay for the work that needs to be done. Similarly, charity and patronage from individuals and companies can do much, whether that is supporting the work of public radio or now crowdfunding a worthy project from a journalist. But neither can that do it all. Charity runs out. That resource is precious and should go where it is most needed.

So now I’ll have the temerity to propose not rules but suggested guidelines for the use and role of philanthropy in news:

1. Philanthropy should support that which the market will not support. And it should wait patiently to determine what that is. In other words, just because something is not being done now does not mean that philanthropy should swoop in and take it over if the market may find opportunity in it.

2. Philanthropy should not compete with the market. We heard this some years ago when a new non-for-profit news entity sprouted in San Francisco and an executive at the crippled Chronicle complained that it could kill the paper. Thank goodness for the paper, the charity was worse run than it and the paper outlasted it.

3. Philanthropy should help build the economic sustainability and independence of news. Here’s the most self-serving thing I will say from my perch in a university: This includes training the next generation of news innovators. It also includes investing in infrastructure and innovation, new methods and models. Innovation in news requires patient capital that will fund not losses but instead experiments and daring failures. Philanthropy can do that.

4. Philanthropy — and journalism , too — should measure its success by the outcomes it accomplishes. Journalists have something to learn from foundations here: It’s not enough to produce content and build audience. Journalism has to help communities better themselves. That starts with listening to the public and its needs.

5. Charity is finite. Yes, you can start a news organization on charity. Yes, we could support a great deal of the investigative reporting we have philanthropically. But I am more ambitious than that; the need is greater. The souce for investigative reporting is (1) whistleblowers and (2) beat reporting. We need to support beats at scale. That’s why I’m doing the work I’m doing in New Jersey and why I’m starting a new training program for beat businesses in a box. Charity doesn’t scale. Sustainability does.

Philanthropy is precious, important, useful. It is a gift to use well and wisely. It isn’t an excuse not do do our jobs. And our job is to rebuild journalism into a service that will last.

Cross-posted to Medium and HuffingtonPost.

Googley philanthropy

September 28, 2009 by Jeff Jarvis
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I’m getting ready for a talk this week at Philanthropy New York about giving and What Would Google Do? So I’d like your help on brainstorming what Googley philanthropy looks like. How would a transparent, networked, collaborative, even open-sourced, process-oriented, beta philanthropy as a platform operate?

Not being wealthy, I don’t know a lot about how philanthropies operate, though I have begun begging seeking funds in my new life at CUNY and so I am eager to learn more. That’s why I’m looking forward to the conversation and brainstorming at the event and here. So let’s examine a few of these notions.

A philanthropy is not about giving away money but about accomplishing goals and the internet and social connections give it new and more effective and efficient ways to do that. That’s why I think it makes sense for a charity to be transparent. In its challenge grants, the Knight Foundation urges applicants to open up their ideas to get more input. I’d think that even the MacArthur genius grants would benefit from open nominations. With transparency, givers open themselves up to getting more information, new ideas and suggestions, links to new and possibly better grantees from a public that will gather around them.

Mind you, I’m not suggesting for a second that philanthropy should become democratic. The philanthropist or foundation is responsible for the optimal use of its always-scarce resources and so it must decide where its money goes to meet is own goals and conditions. But I do think that – as with journalism, marketing, government, and most any industry – more information from interested people can only help. That’s why I’d like to see philanthropies open up their goals and processes using the web and social media: blogs, Facebook, Twitter (where I see a fair number of philanthropists and foundations already).

Once transparent, it’s a short step to becoming collaborative. The charity can ask the public for help in finding ways to meet a goal – and not just through seeking funding. It can use the internet to mobilize people to work together. Why will people go to the effort? For the same reason that the charities are giving money: because they care. Once more, I’ll call on the vision of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of time given to Wikipedia by people who care. This is what makes philanthropy ideal for online, I’d say.

Collaboration can take the form of ideas and the form of effort. Of course, it can also take the form of money. Challenge grants are common: At CUNY, we’re working to meet a $3 million challenge grant from the Tow Foundation right now; Knight does likewise for community foundations to encourage them to invest in local journalism; on every NPR fundraiser, there’s a matching challenge used to motivate the public to give more. Challenges work in some cases better than others but online presents a new opportunity to have grantees raise money from their publics when that’s helpful.

But even aside from challenges, there are advantages in collaborative fundraising online. A foundation can create an infrastructure that lets people piggyback onto its giving, structure, and management: ‘We gave $3 million to this effort and if you agree, you can give, too, and we’ll make sure your money is as well spent as ours.’ The charity becomes a mutual fund. In that sense, then, the foundation can extend its value not just with its money but with its expertise and structure. Except then, when the money comes from the public, the public becomes the boss and the charity merely helps organize and executes its desires.

Openness and collaboration at the start of the process – seeking and giving funds – can also extend to the end: sharing lessons learned, good and bad, from giving. About a year ago, one foundation I know sent out a report detailing its mistakes. I thought it was gutsy (though potentially a bit embarrassing for the grantees – that’s the risk). But that kind of openness about lessons learned can be valuable to others. So why wait until the end? What about being transparent during the process of a project, so adjustments can be made? That becomes beta philanthropy.

At the end, a foundation, charity, or philanthropy should act like a platform. They do now in the sense that they make good work possible with funding. But how else can they enable others to do the same good work and how can they thus extend their resources with knowledge, networking (from introductions to more formal structures), vetting, teaching, management, and more?

How do you think philanthropy can work differently given the tools of our new age?

: LATER: Here’s info on attending the talk Thursday morning. And here is Philanthropy New York’s blog.