Welcome to the April edition of Bottom Line!

In this newsletter you will find:

✅ The preliminary findings of our fundraising case studies

✅ Typical costs and a checklist for proposal budgets

✅ Funding opportunities for Asia

✅ Profiles for the Australian Dept. of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Asia Foundation

✅ A list of fundraising-related articles, videos, and upcoming events

GFMD Fundraising Case Studies

How do small and medium-sized members navigate the fundraising process?

I recently embarked on a series of case studies to document the strategies used and the challenges faced. Here’s a (very) compact summary of what I’ve found so far:
 

Strategies

• Diversification is key. Our interviewees stressed the importance of not relying solely on donor funding and presented various ideas for business development as a means of providing core support for their organisations.
  
  According to research by non-profit media analysts SembraMedia, media organisations with fewer than two revenue sources are more likely to be in the bottom third of revenue earners in most markets, while those with more than six revenue sources do not always see an increase in revenue among organisations of the same size. "The ideal number in most markets seems to be between two and six distinct revenue sources." 
  
  Their newly published Project Oasis report, a  year-long research project on sustainability, innovation, and impact of independent digital native news organisations across Europe, confirms this trend.
   
• Get to know your potential funders. Our interviewees cited direct contact as being key to their fundraising efforts. Make sure you attend local conferences and events in order to meet donors and stakeholders. See the module on Donor Engagement in the Fundraising Guide for tips and advice on how to map potential donors.
   
• Don’t compromise yourself to get funding. Stay true to your mission and competencies, be it public interest media, investigative journalism, press freedom advocacy or community media support. Don’t get stuck pursuing projects that will steal resources from your primary work.

 

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Challenges

• Donors tend to prioritise short-term programmatic funding over long-term core funding - this is not sustainable for an organisation’s daily operations or for their long-term survival
   
• Donors who fund content do not always understand the need to also fund organisational and professional development
   
• We still live in a world where donors measure success through quantitative indicators such as the number of likes and shares related to content or the number of stories, videos, and podcasts produced. (And yet, according to the Project Oasis report, there is a direct relationship between the number of page views a news website attracts and its annual revenue.)
   
• Funders may be subject to changing national political priorities that can impact the amount of funding available, directing money that was earmarked for one country or region to hotspots elsewhere, rather than securing new funds to address these unforeseen crises
   
• Media in rural areas are disadvantaged in comparison to urban centres in terms of attracting support, advertising, and governmental and philanthropic funding
   
• Bureaucratic reporting requirements are an increasing burden to small organisations. The more donors you have, the more reports that need to be filled out, with one respondent submitting well over 100 reports, accounts, budgets, and meeting summaries over a one-year period
   
• Sometimes the amount of funding being offered is not worth the amount of resources that need to be spent in order to fulfil reporting and administrative requirements
   
• Some donors take issues with the idea of independent media identifying as a for-profit company, not understanding that relying on grants is not a sustainable business model for a media organisation 
   

Recommendations

The ideal donor:

• is flexible and willing to find practical solutions to problems on the ground

• makes themselves available to direct communication with their grantees

• understands the field of journalism and the practical and administrative needs of media and mediadev organisations

• prioritises core funding over programmatic funding

 

Do the points listed above sound familiar or are there important points missing? Would you like to contribute with your own experiences of the fundraising process? Please send your comments or suggestions to me in an email. All information submitted will be anonymised and kept confidential.

The findings from our surveys and interviews will help GFMD to provide donors and international partners with best practice recommendations for the fundraising process and will be included in our efforts to influence donor policies and strategies.

Checklist