The Engaged Journalism Accelerator is committed to creating more resilient and more impactful relationships between news organisations and the communities they serve.
Over the duration of the programme, we will fund up to 15 organisations in Europe with a proven record of sustaining a loyal community and a willingness to develop a resilient business model. Each will receive between €35,000 - €50,000.
Suitable organisations may be looking to finance expansion, develop strategy or new revenue streams, improve product development capabilities or increase loyalty among their community. Our grants can be used to introduce expertise, processes or technology to support this.
The Accelerator does not aim to fund one-off storytelling projects or temporary audience engagement initiatives.
Key dates
October 2018
- announcement of news organisations that have been successful in receiving a grant through a closed call for applications, launched in September 2018
- announcement of the open call for applications for the second round of Accelerator funding, and deadline for submitting proposals
January 2019
- announcement of up to 12 news organisations that have been successful in receiving a grant through the open call for applications
The grants
The grants are aimed at emerging engaged journalism organisations in Europe with proven community loyalty, and that are developing or pivoting to a resilient business model. These are growing organisations that need support in financing expansion, business and product development, and enhancing and managing loyalty, as they strive to be financially and structurally resilient. Grant funds are available for bringing in new expertise, processes or technology to support this.
Open call - important information
We are now accepting applications, as part of an open call, for the second round of Accelerator funding.
Applicants are asked to submit a proposal that describes a core activity or objective that, through participation in the Accelerator, will help their organisation to achieve its potential.
We are particularly interested in receiving applications that involve:
- participatory revenue models beyond memberships and subscriptions
- user analysis and research
- internal training and culture change programmes
- community listening experiences and events
- editorial openness and transparency initiatives
- strategic development (including Theory of Change)
Applicants are initially required to outline what the requested grant funding will be used for, rather than a specific breakdown about specific costings or activities that the grant will be spent on.
Overview
The European Journalism Centre (referred to as EJC) is a Dutch non-profit organisation that believes journalists play a key role in improving people’s lives through access to information, data and perspectives that build bridges. We connect journalists to new people, skills and ideas, and support careers, news organisations and the wider industry.
The Accelerator is the EJC’s most recently launched grant programme. It was launched in April 2018, is entirely run by the EJC, and is supported by a €1.7 million fund from the News Integrity Initiative and Civil. The EJC is partnering with the News Integrity Initiative and Civil in order to support, connect and inspire European news organisations practicing engaged journalism to overcome core challenges, and become resilient for the long term.
The programme
In October 2018 we selected four news organisations to receive grant funding through a closed ‘Call for Proposals’. Subsequently, we are selecting a further number of organisations through this open ‘Call for Applications’. We anticipate that learnings, experiences, challenges and progress from the first cohort of Grantees can be shared with Grantees of the open call. For both the closed and open call, organisations are required to meet robust selection criteria in order to be shortlisted and granted funding.
Core activity/ objective: Applicants will submit an application comprising a proposal that describes a core activity/ objective that they believe the Accelerator will help their organisation to achieve most potential. Organisations awarded grant funding will complete delivery this activity/ objective by week commencing 9 September 2019. (To note, from September until programme end in December 2019, Grantees will continue to participate in other aspects of the Accelerator; some of which are outlined below in the ‘Accelerator timeline for open call participants’.)
Experiments: Grantees will also undertake at least two short experiments (also by week commencing 9 September 2019) that they think will be complementary to helping their organisation achieve impact. This can include experimenting with activities, approaches, platforms, tools or technologies etc.
Progress, learnings and impact: Grantees will be asked to record and share progress, learnings and impact achieved and report it at the end of each month, with the EJC and other programme participants. This information will be published along with other intelligence and data generated by the Accelerator, for the purposes of informing the end-of-programme evaluation, and sharing learnings and research with other engaged journalism practitioners and the wider industry. All business-sensitive information provided will be anonymised.
Events: Grantees will participate in a series of Accelerator events from Q1 2019 (February/ March) to October 2019, which will support networking, knowledge exchange, training and peer-to-peer learning opportunities. These will be opportunities for Accelerator Grantees, other practitioners of engaged journalism and practitioners in other relevant fields to come together, share ideas, experiences and solutions.
The mission of the programme is to accelerate the skills, people, ideas and knowledge transfer of news organisations in order to help create positive, more resilient and more impactful relationships between them and the communities they serve. Our vision is to inspire and enable all news organisations across Europe to empower communities and their conversations, and create long-term solutions that can positively impact journalism and society.
We expect to provide grant funding for between eight – 12 news organisations as part of the open call. Organisations will each receive between €35k - €50k of funding and will participate in programme activities until December 2019.
For more information click "LINK TO ORIGINAL" below.
This opportunity has expired. It was originally published here:
https://engagedjournalism.com/funding?fbclid=IwAR3n8DiLZ5aI7q8--S9YgUyZjcSF-Qd_2Na4QHC1EzRSjnJrvlnqHGMxPHg