Deadline: 15-Feb-23
The American Journalism Project, with support from the Google News Initiative, is launching a local news incubator. The program is intended to support entrepreneurs who want to explore launching a new nonprofit local news organization to serve their communities.
Inspired by the success of Capital B and Mountain State Spotlight, which used pre-launch grants and startup support to build successful news organizations, this program is intended to accelerate the progress in launching local nonprofit news organizations that have outstanding talent and capital from the start. The goal is to guide the launch of ambitious and resilient nonprofit news organizations with seed capital and support to complete a robust research and development stage and fundraising campaign.
Benefits
- For this cohort, they will select up to four individuals or pairs. Founders will receive $400,000 to pursue their startup full time and spend 18 months researching, developing an editorial strategy to fill the local news and information needs they identify in a given market, fundraising, coalition-building and preparing to launch an organization.
Support Offered
- They anticipate ventures will begin with a moldable vision for what their concept will be, but with a clear sense of the geography they intend to serve. Founders will then shape their vision based on research, community listening, and business model viability. Founders can come with more vision to their product, but they will be expected to fully participate in the programming — in part to benefit others in the cohort — and be willing to adjust their vision if the process points them in a new or opposite direction.
- As much as possible, products and learnings from their support of incubated ventures will be leveraged for and shared with others in the portfolio, and vice versa.
- Available support includes:
- Recruiting a co-founder / second employee
- Research to identify information needs
- Program and business model design
- Movement building and fundraising
- Launch logistics
How can Participants use the Funding?
- Salaries for two people
- Research costs (e.g. vendors, licenses, community listening)
- Incorporation costs (e.g. legal)
- Operational costs (e.g. rent)
Eligibility Criteria
- Individuals and small teams with ideas for new local news organizations can apply for this 18-month incubator, which will provide both startup capital and expert counsel.
- This incubator is intended for pre-launch entrepreneurs. They are open to considering entrepreneurs who have created a beta product or are still in very early stages of their organizational development.
- Based on AJPs learnings from working with some very early stage organizations, they expect ventures will take this length of time to develop their concepts, cases for support, complete the long process of bringing early local philanthropies along, incorporate, file for 501(c)3 statues and launch an editorial product.
For more information, visit AJP.