LION News Revenue Fellowship

"Sustainability is the intersection of operational resilience, financial health and journalistic impact." - LION News Revenue Fellowship

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In August 2021, we were awarded a LION News Revenue Fellowship, which comes with funding and assistance in hiring and mentoring a full-time person in a revenue generating role. The goal is for this person's work to yield enough in the first year to pay for their own salary!

They plan to support revenue generation from three sources:

readers
significant donors
advertisers

Applicants will need to select one of those revenue streams to prioritize. Their news revenue fellow will focus on growing that revenue stream. Additionally, throughout the two-year program, fellows will learn about and explore opportunities related to all three revenue streams.

Details below:

QUARTERLY METRICS DASHBOARD WORKFLOW

This RGF Metrics Dashboard must be filled out quarterly in order to receive our funding.

**note you are always filling out the spreadsheet for LAST quarter. So, if you're submitting in June, you're doing Q1 data.

Open the dashboard and navigate to the "Matter" tab
Here is where you can find various data to input:
- Organizational Capacity
  - - usually I just do it from memory, but if needed, our Airtable base can be used to count board members, etc.
- Financial Health
  - - YTD Earned Revenue
      - Pull up the "GMM Financial Revenue Data Master" spreadsheet
        Become familiar with the different tabs. There are tabs for CYs (calendar years), FYs (fiscal years), earned income, memberships, etc.
      - Go into Salesforce
        Click the reports tab
        Click "all reports"
        Click "regular donations report"
        Edit the report
        Click "filters" and edit "close date" to the period of time for the donations you need
        Click "run"
        Click "export"
        Upload to this Drive folder
        Open and clean up the spreadsheet:
        In the "recurring donation" / "type of donation" column
        any blank = one-time donations -- label as such
        any one with "donor name donation amount recurring" is a monthly donation -- label as such
        Sort the spreadsheet by the "recurring donation" field so that all one-time donations are in a row
        Then sort by "amount" so it's primary sort is recurring type and then by amount
        Sum up all the donations in the following categories:
        Small one-time donations
        Large one-time donations
        Memberships (monthly donations)
        Copy the records from that spreadsheet to the "GMM Financial Revenue Data Master" spreadsheet
        Add the records to the following tabs:
        all donations
        CY (current year)
        Bonus points if you add them to all the other applicable tabs
        Check if we had any earned income for that time period and add it to the spreadsheets
        List grant funding
        As of now we just have the LION grant and NewsMatch comes in March)
        (can be found in Huntington or Aplos accounting software)
Financials
- Go into Aplos and ensure all recent transactions are properly labeled (see guidance here)
- Choose report "income statement"
- Choose appropriate time period
- Enter totals for expenses into the spreadsheet
Audience size
- Web users:
  - go to Google Analytics and choose that time period and divide by 3 months to get average monthly
- Total paying members:
  - copy list of donors from the recurring donations from above list you made and copy to a temporary tab and remove all duplicates to get your number
- Total newseltter subscribers:
  - log into Mailchimp
- Twitter/Facebook/IG:
  - look at our accounts
  - ideally, you mark the calendar for the beginning of each quarter to record exact number at turn of quarter for later reporting

ALLOCATION + REPORTING DETAILS

Local Independent Online News Publishers, Inc. (“the Intermediary Funder”) is pleased to award you a sub-grant in the amount of $89,000 for the purpose of paying the personnel costs of a Facebook Revenue Growth Fellow. Eligible personnel costs include job board postings, salary, benefits, payroll taxes, and professional development expenses. Please note that you will decide the specific use of the grant funds, and the Intermediate Funder will not control those decisions.

PAYMENT SCHEDULE

The Intermediary Funder will make quarterly payments as follows:

● Payments for sub-grant Year 1

○ $13,500 issued in December 2021, March 2022, June 2022, and September 2022

● Payments for sub-grant Year 2

○ $8,750 issued in December 2022, March 2023, June 2023, and September 2023

*note these dates have been added to Asana

PUBLICITY

You will allow the Intermediary Funder to review and approve the text of any proposed publicity

concerning this sub-grant prior to its release. the Intermediary Funder may include information

regarding this sub-grant, including the amount and purpose of the sub-grant, any photographs

you may have provided, your logo or trademark, or other information or materials about your

organization and its activities, in the Intermediary Funder’s periodic reports to the primary

funder, public reports, newsletters, and news releases.

REPORTING

You are required to keep a record of all receipts and expenditures relating to this sub-grant and to provide the Intermediary Funder with a written report summarizing the project promptly following the end of the period during which you are to use all sub-grant funds. The Intermediary Funder may also require interim reports. Your reports should describe your progress in achieving the purposes of the sub-grant and include a detailed accounting of the uses or expenditure of all sub-grant funds. You also agree to provide any other information reasonably requested by the Intermediary Funder. If your organization obtains any audited financial statements covering any part of the period of this sub-grant, please provide a copy to the Intermediary Funder as well.

You are required to provide the Intermediary Funder with immediate written notification of: (1) your inability to expend the sub-grant for the purposes described in the grant award letter, or (2) any expenditure from this sub-grant made for any purpose other than those for which the grant was intended.

Reporting Schedule:

The Sub-Grantee will submit the following:

● Copy of accepted and signed offer letter to the Facebook Revenue Growth Fellow (due upon signature)

● Financial Reports due 3/31/2022, 1/31/2023

○ Reports from payroll system showing salary, benefits, and taxes paid by employer on behalf of the employee during the reporting period

● Final Report due 1/31/2023

○ Reports from payroll system showing salary, benefits, and taxes paid by employer on behalf of the employee during the reporting period

● Narrative reporting

Submit information on employee progress and program participation as requested by the Intermediary Funder

TIMELINE

OPERATIONAL READINESS HANDBOOK

The LION Operational Readiness Handbook

OUR SUSTAINABILITY AUDIT RUBRIC

Final- Matter News Sustainability Audit Rubric .pdf

OUR ALLOCATION + REPORTING REQUIREMENTS

RGF Allocation.pdf

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