Christina Shih - contract/services broadly - christina@fundjournalism.org

Anne Marie - Salesforce - annemarie@fundjournalism.org

Stacy Fernández - programmatic - stacy.fernandez@fundjournalism.org

Phase 1

Signed -> Setup

You’ve signed your contract! Now close your eyes and picture two trains running on parallel tracks. One train represents program and strategy development. The other represents tech implementation. They will be running side by side in the beginning. Eventually, they’ll join together in time for your launch.

Program and Strategy Development

NRH AudienceInsights Survey: If your contract includes your audience survey, you’ll send this to your readers to get a sense of their needs, interests, and demographics. This survey will help you understand your audience, their propensity to give, and their loyalty. The results will also help inform us as we develop your marketing materials.

Our team will go over the results (depending on your contract). We’ll also use this onboarding as a way to facilitate communication with our team, as well as other members of your launch cohort. That way, we can talk through opportunities and challenges we’ll face together.

Campaign Copy: After you join, we’ll begin working on your campaign copy. Our team will work with you on edits to make sure it tells a compelling, persuasive story—that’s optimized for donations. Depending on your contract, we will help you upload this to Mailchimp.

Find examples of welcome, renewal and other automations, you can review our templates here.

Tech Implementation

Right off the bat, we’re working on your tech implementation. If you don’t have them already, you’ll need to set up your own Salesforce, Stripe, and MailChimp accounts, and invite us as admins. We’ll also need access to your Google Analytics account and WordPress site so we can begin setting up your benchmarking (KPI) reports.

Salesforce Setup: We will help you with this. To get started, email your organization’s tax exemption letter or fiscal sponsorship letter to support@fundjournalism.org.

Tech Configuration: What does configuration look like exactly?

• Salesforce: Your Salesforce database will serve as the “source of truth” or central location of all of your donor data. As part of the Hub’s service, we’ll administer your Salesforce database, making sure it’s functional, up-to-date, and secure. This is a good deal because Salesforce administration can get really expensive! As we begin your setup, we’ll help you import existing data into SF; migrate recurring donations from another processor; and configure the database itself, building fields, membership rules and reports.

• WordPress: If you use WordPress, we’ll help you set it up to use our donation pages.

• Stripe: Stripe is the service we use to process credit card transactions. Having Stripe before you join the Hub doesn’t necessarily mean it will work with our tools, but we can help you make it work.

• MailChimp: Mailchimp is our recommend email marketing service. We’ll help you configure the MailChimp connector by customizing your MC merge fields; we’ll also help you edit and input campaign copy, depending on the service you’ve signed up for.

It may seem like we’re quiet while we set up your tech – but rest assured, we’re testing and troubleshooting extensively to make sure everything is working properly!

Salesforce Training

We have online, self-paced training resources to help you learn the essentials of Salesforce. We require that each launched organization have one staffer who has completed the must-do trainings, which take about 30 minutes. The goal of the training is to help you familiarize yourself with navigating Salesforce so you don’t make mistakes—not becoming a Salesforce expert. That’s why we’re here! 😀

You might feel exhausted. We can take a deep breath now. But know that the real work is only beginning. Membership isn’t an immediate windfall; it is a long-term plan and requires your attention, patience, and diligence.

Don’t worry! We’re here to help you every step of the way. You’ll receive a monthly benchmark (Key Performance Indicator) report to let you know how you’re doing, with an eye toward always improving the numbers. These are like your compass, guiding you in the right direction.

The News Revenue Hub is committed to providing a welcoming and harassment-free environment for participants of all races, gender identities, sexual orientations, physical abilities, physical appearances, and beliefs.

We’ve published this code of conduct not because we expect bad behavior from our community—which, in our experience, is overwhelmingly generous and civil—but because we believe a clear code of conduct is one necessary part of building a respectful community space.

News Revenue Hub participants agree to:

• Be considerate in speech and actions, and actively seek to acknowledge and respect the boundaries of fellow participants.

• Refrain from demeaning, discriminatory, or harassing behavior and speech. Harassment includes, but is not limited to: deliberate intimidation; stalking; unwanted photography or recording; sustained or willful disruption of talks or other events; inappropriate physical contact; use of sexual or discriminatory imagery, comments, or jokes; and unwelcome sexual attention. If you feel that someone has harassed you or otherwise treated you inappropriately, please alert any member of the Hub leadership team. Reports can be made via Slack, email, in person, or audio/video meeting at any time.

• Take care of each other. Alert a member of the News Revenue Hub team if you notice a dangerous situation, someone in distress, or violations of this code of conduct, even if they seem inconsequential.

If any participant engages in harassing behavior, News Revenue Hub organizers may take any lawful action we deem appropriate, including but not limited to warning the offender or asking the offender to leave the News Revenue Hub. (If you feel you have been unfairly accused of violating this code of conduct, you should email safety@fundjournalism.org with a concise description of your grievance; any grievances filed will be considered by the entire News Revenue Hub team.)

This code of conduct covers the entirety of your work with News Revenue Hub. The News Revenue Hub staff is available at safety@fundjournalism.org if you see or experience an issue.

We welcome your feedback on this and every other aspect of our work, and we thank you for striving with us to make it a safe, enjoyable, and friendly experience for everyone who participates.

#️⃣ Channels

• If you haven't already, tell us about yourself in our Slack #intros channel!

• We also have a variety of other channels that may interest you, including #humblebrags, #stuffwelike, #techstatus, and #kidsathome.

• Your org's channel is where discussions specific to your org should take place. Centralizing everything there helps our project managers understand your needs.

Onboarding: This refers to the time we spend discovering and configuring your tech, customizing your marketing materials, auditing what you have now, and more.

Tech: This refers to the custom Hub infrastructure that supports our work. Our tech makes sure donations are processed correctly and kept in sync with Salesforce and MailChimp. These important connections give you the ability to send targeted messaging to your constituents.

Welcome series: Having a big email list is not very useful if your readers don’t hear from you much, or worse, they don’t have a sense of who you are. Enter the welcome series. After someone signs up for your MailChimp list, they start receiving a series of “get to know you” emails. This automated series introduces subscribers to your mission, your products, and your membership goals. After a couple of these useful and informative emails, the welcome series turns into a series of evergreen appeals that are only sent to your non-members.

Renewal Series: All one-time donors have a membership expiration date 12 months from the date they made their one-time donation. Even though these donors set up a one-time donation, we want to retain them year over year. Obviously it’s easier if they set up a recurring donation, so we’ll send them a series of simple renewal messages that encourage them to rejoin. These emails will display donation defauklts based on their giving history, so you don’t lose money on renewals; and ideally, see an increase in revenue from these renewing donors. Notes: Recurring donors whose cards fail will receive a set of notices from Salesforce after their failure. If they don’t fix the problem, they’ll enter our renewal series.