May 20, 2004

Deadline Set For 'Communique' Funding

Six Months Remaining With Current Resources

Given the continuing lack of success in locating attainable funding sources to try to maintain PORTLAND COMMUNIQUE as our sole activity, a deadline has now been put into place. If remaining off-chance avenues for grants and the like do not pan out, the November general election will mark the point at which things change.

Sometime between the general election on November 4, 2004, and the two-year anniversary of this site on December 21, 2004, we will be significantly scaling back our activity here in order to return to the world of normal employment.

Should that event come to pass, and we are back amongst the ranks of the gainfully employed somewhere, we certainly intend to continue with the standard weblog habit of second-hand news commentary, but the experiment in more directly-involved first-hand reporting will be drastically curtailed if not almost entirely eliminated.

Note: This is not a plea for donations and contributions. At issue is not reader appreciation or a little wiggle room in the bank account.

Rather, at issue is that it's not economically feasible to operate this site as we have been unless we somehow manage to find funding which equates to the salary of a full-time job. What money we've been operating with thus far is done with as of this coming November. In other words, this isn't about supplementing what we've been using in order to make things easier, but about altogether replacing (at the very least) what we've been using.

(In fact, because our Internet Service Provider yesterday charged us for equipment we didn't need -- despite our having returned it to them and our being told that we would not in fact be charged for it -- our bank account was dumped into the red. So even short-term, donations and contributions woudn't do anything for us other than subtract from that debit, which will remain until our ISP's billing system gets around to properly returning the over-charge to our bank. It's becoming one of those weeks. But anyway.)

Some readers have suggested that there is some sort of business model which would support what we do here. Putting aside the fact that we already have one failed business in our past, we have never seen any evidence that anyone truly can sustain themselves by writing a weblog. As near as we can tell, the only way to support something like this would be through grant money, and as much of it as there is out there, it's exceedingly difficult to find such funding sources which actually apply to what it is we do here.

There are still some avenues left to pursue, although less than a handful, in the next few months (including an essay contest whose winners aren't announced until September). But now that we have an official deadline, we figured it was important for everyone to know.

In the meantime and the immediate short-term, we have a meeting of the Central Eastside Urban Renewal Advisory Committee to attend in case there's any decent discussion about the rumored Home Depot development.

Posted at 03:04 PM | PermalinkComments (28) | TrackBacks (3)
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Comments (28)

  1. Keith on 20 May 2004

    Maybe a target funding amount would be helpful along with the deadline? It seems to work for OPB. :)

  2. tiffany on 20 May 2004

    is there any way to affiliate yourself with other local media, or would that be something you just wouldn't want to do?

    radio stations, newspapers, and the like will put out for online-only content that brings them traffic. seems like you could find someone to let you do what you do, bite the hand that feeds if need be, and would just be completely hands-off. sure, who wants to be on the awful site that is Oregonlive.com? but what if the Mercury could hook you up with some co-operative advertising venture or something?

  3. Elaine of Kalilily on 20 May 2004

    You also had some radio experience back in college. I wonder if a radio station (maybe a public one) might see this weblog joined with a radio commentary/talk show about local politics as something they would pay for. Maybe someone in your city club network has radio contacts?

  4. pdxkona on 20 May 2004

    The radio option has been offered. Free production space time in return for one off option use, wherein he could then resell pieces to Public Radio International or Democracy Now or somesuch. Too bad we don't have a 'California Report' here in Oregon.

    Or the thought has been that he could become a 'Jim Hightower' for the Northwest.

    Things like 'Search for Common Ground' Fellowships are usually for specific peices, i.e.-http://www.sfcg.org/aboutuspressdetail.cfm?locus=Press&name=programs&programid=529

    Of course the grant issue involves those lovely letter and numbers- 501C3. And rightly so. Yet pretty easy to attain really.

  5. The One True b!X on 20 May 2004

    There's an open question on the non-profit status, however, in that I take partisan positions, which non-profits are not supposed to do.

  6. Max on 20 May 2004

    Or...do what I learned in grassroots fundraising training.
    Sign people up for recurring donations. 200 people at $10/month = enough money to keep the site up. Get a donor to donate the DSL, the website hosting, etc.

    Use paypal as a front-end for the donations. Perhaps become a 501c3, lose the ability to endorse, but not the ability to advocate for positions or criticize candidates, but allow people to take a tax-write off.

    b!x, people, myself included, love this site and would be happy to take some sort of "financial stewardship" over it.

    Grants are iffy. Over 80% of all contributions to non-profits comes in the form of personal contributions.

    Make a fundraising plan and ASK FOR MONEY. You cannot make money if you don't ask. If b!x asked me for $50 for support of his site, I would say yes. Lots of people might say no, but many would say yes.

  7. Stacie on 20 May 2004

    It is possible to retain the ability to do political endorsements as a non-profit, just not as a 501c3. I believe that the classification is a c5 organization that operates as a PAC, but I could be wrong as I do not have the materials right in front of me at this time.

  8. Stacie on 20 May 2004

    Correction - PAC's are 527 organizations.

  9. The One True b!X on 20 May 2004

    While I would prefer not to lose the ability to endorse, if it came down to a choice between a comparatively straightforward non-profit option or a more convoluted choice which brought the hand of campaign finance regulations into play, I would tend to think I'd go for the former.

  10. Adrian Russell-Falla on 21 May 2004

    your traffic numbers indicate you have built a substantial franchise.

    the demographics of that franchise -- with all of City Hall panting to read your latest, along with every other Portland "insider" -- and the sheer energy of your journalistic zeal, mean that you can help sell newspapers, increase radio listenerships, boost viewership, and bring people to web sites. with the O.'s circulation in freefall, you better believe you can toss Sandra Mims Rowe a helluva lifeline.

    you can sell access (reprint) rights to mainstream pubs. you can generate well-written thoughtful and provocative copy for them cheaper than the fully-burdened / all-benefits-included hit of putting an additional reporter on their political staffs, especially since you're clearly more diligent than most of the regular issue.

    sell this reprint right to several local outlets. let them bid up for exclusivity if you like -- just extract a pretty extra penny for that privilege. remember that a radio exclusive does not preclude a TV exclusive does not preclude a newspaper exclusive, and limit the duration of any contract so that you are not locked into a deal you can improve a little later with a fresh negotiation round.

    just get a marketing consultant to give you an estimate of the cost of reproducing your readership franchise from scratch from inside the O., WWeek, the Mercury etc. use that as a pricing reference ("what the market will bear")

    best,

    Adrian Russell-Falla

  11. Elaine of Kalilily on 21 May 2004

    That idea about a marketing consultant is a really good one. There must be someone out there who would volunteer his/her expertise, no?

  12. Elaine of Kalilily on 21 May 2004

    How about a City Club-sponsored "Save the Communique" campaign -- they find a volunteer marketing consultant and/or business advisor for you and form a committee of sustainers (who donate $50 a month each, provide free DLS, and use their influence to set up the kinds of media partnerships so brilliantly suggeted by Rusell-Falla.) That leaves you free to continue creating the Communique dream but gives you the support system that you need to do it.

  13. Julie Massa on 21 May 2004

    I'm going to refrain from offering another solution (although I think the last solution posted sounds pretty interesting). Setting a deadline was crucial because it will wake Communique readers up and rouse us to take action. Portland Communique is far too important to this community to let you quietly fade away.

    This news gives me motivation and focus to act on behalf of something I believe in. Please follow the following link to the IRS 501(c)(3) tax code site outlining nonprofit political activity: http://www.irs.gov/charities/charitable/article/0,,id=120703,00.html

    This outlines the limitations of the nonprofit solution. I'm going to do more research and will write more later.

  14. Ashley on 21 May 2004

    I'd be willing to do one of those 5 or 10 dollar a month contributions through my checking account. I sure use your service as much if not more than OPB. And hey, b!X, I'm reading you from the beach in Florida, just like I told you I would. Keep up the good work!

  15. Jeff on 21 May 2004

    You could go with the old-fashioned media model--get your hits up and sell ad space. It's rare, but a few bloggers manage to have hits sufficient to provide them with a reasonable income through blogads and others. I'm not sure what kind of total you have to hit, but that's one possibility. If it were your goal, you could think of ways to drive traffic--6 months is plenty of time to grow them substantially.

    My sense is that you are already doing what you want; aside from grants, other options may compromise what you see the Communique doing.

    Have you consider guest bloggers? If you could get a few local luminaries to post occasionally--particularly if they had different constituences (Thomas Lauderdale?), you might drive traffic substantially. I wouldn' be surprised if folks would be willing to pitch in like that to keep the communique alive.

  16. Tom Turnbull on 21 May 2004

    b!X, what is your $ bogie? The appropriate "business model" really depends on how much $ you need to generate. There are several good ideas here, from reader donations to syndication. You have a quality product that people rely on. There is indeed a way to make a living here...probably several.

  17. The One True b!X on 21 May 2004

    Well, let's start with what Max said: "200 people at $10/month = enough money to keep the site up."

    As a general rule. I've been operating on half of what that totals out to, supplemented ocassionally by reader contributions. At that level (and reader would probably remember some references to this, heh), there inevitably is some bill juggling going on from one month to the next.

    So what Max's formula totals out to is probably accurate.

  18. The One True b!X on 21 May 2004

    On another note (since I mentioned it in this item), I do have that report from the Central Eastside URAC to post, but I'm waiting on a piece of information from PDC before I can cobble it together properly.

  19. The One True b!X on 21 May 2004

    One of the first things we'll test as a group here is Max's formula. Next week, I'll be putting up on online reader survey which will include (among other things) questions to gauge how many readers would be willing to commit to a monthly contribution and at what level. Over the next several days, I'll be assembling what other sorts of questions might be useful to have on such a survey. So keep an eye out for that next week. It should help provide another piece of the context puzzle for this conversation.

  20. The One True b!X on 21 May 2004

    It's early, and I'm still having my coffee, so I can't think too deeply at the moment. But as a random amusing sideline to this, I've been pumping various items into the recently-discovered Google War website, which compares the number of hits for any pair of search terms. It has no real scientific value, of course, but I find it intriguing anyway.

    "Portland Communique" - 18,100
    "The Oregonian" - 109,000

    "Portland Communique" - 18,100
    "Willamette Week" - 68,800

    "Portland Communique" - 18.100
    "Portland Mercury" - 51,800

    "Portland Communique" - 18,100
    "Portland Alliance" - 866

    "Portland Communique" - 18,100
    "streetroots" - 222

    "Portland Communique" - 18,100
    "Southeast Examiner" - 160

  21. The One True b!X on 21 May 2004

    Also, I find the "local luminary" guest-posts an intriguing idea and will grill my mind on that.

  22. gene on 21 May 2004

    If you are currently spending money on website hosting please contact me. I have a small webhosting outfit here in Portland and would be more than happy to host your site for free in exchange for a shoutout.

    I'd have to know a bit more about your monthly bandwidth requirements to make sure I could handle the traffic, but please let me know if I can help.

    --
    gene

  23. Scott on 21 May 2004

    b!X:

    Portland has an excellent resource in TACS (Technical Assistance for Community Services). They are their own non-profit dedicated to helping others get started and flourish.

    Having been through the process myself at previous non-profits, it takes a lot of work but is well worth it.

    You would probably need a lawyer (Jack?) and an accountant to get started but with your readership, I don't see a problem in getting those donated. I'm happy to help as I can, email me if you want to chat.

  24. The One True b!X on 21 May 2004

    By the way, on a related note since I've been asked about it: Current ads on this site expire at the end of this month. So beginning June 1, we will be moving to Blogads, whose people are more responsive, and where Textads' issue with ads sometimes not appearing doesn't exist, and where ads can include (imagine!) a 150x200 image.

  25. M on 21 May 2004

    There's the possibility that you could just get a grant. Markos Moulitsas of the top progressive blog online, DailyKos.com, is attempting to set up a blogger fund:

    "For the past several months I've been working to setup an organization that can help fund bloggers, much the same way that the right wing funds its young writers through think tank fellowships. My efforts are making progress, but resolution is still a bits off."

  26. Lynn Siprelle on 21 May 2004

    B!x, if other offers of hosting don't pan out I can also provide a free home for Communique; I'd be honored. And folks, you can always buy an ad here and say pretty much anything you bloody well please in it. That's what I do; when it comes due, I just re-up. It's about the price of an Oregonian subscription and I get more from Communique. So that's where the $$ are going right now.

  27. The One True b!X on 22 May 2004

    FYI, I am also actively investigating methods for providing a full-text RSS feed for a fee, in addition to the excerpt-only RSS feed currently offered here for free.

  28. reader on 02 Jun 2004

    cya

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