The structures of an effective field

What we can learn from the nonprofit news sector

Editor’s note: I’m obsessed with this piece. What INN does to support nonprofit news organizations lacks a parallel in the US democracy space.

Want talk about how to apply what’s in this piece to our field? Send me a note at Gabe@Democracy-Notes.org.

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Since 2018, the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) has tracked revenue, audience, and staffing trends in the nonprofit news sector across North America through its annual members’ Index Survey. The INN Index has become a vital tool in capturing nonprofit news organizations’ emerging revenue models, missions, and distribution strategies. Yet, there was still untapped potential in our 6-year dataset: the power to identify data-driven peer groups for hundreds of nonprofit news outlets.

In 2023, INN launched Pods, an initiative to provide nonprofit news organizations better benchmarking data and facilitate targeted peer connections. Over 360 INN member outlets were segmented into 16 peer groups, using Index data on their geographic scope of coverage, audience, revenue, and staff size. The success of this model is that it efficiently and effectively matches folks with the “right” people and resources relevant to their current stage of growth. 

Here’s how it works: the mechanics of INN Pods

We identified the geographic scope of an outlet’s coverage—whether National/Global, State/Regional, Local, or Hyperlocal—as a crucial factor influencing revenue streams, staffing capacity, and audience strategy. To better understand these dynamics, we incorporated four growth stages—Startup, Small Sustainer, Mid-level Sustainer, and Large Sustainer—into our analysis. 

• Startup: Startups are outlets within their first three years since launch.

• Small sustainer: Small sustainers are outlets beyond their startup years whose revenue and staffing capacity are relatively small. They’re stabilizing existing revenue, growing audiences, and experimenting with new revenue streams.

• Mid-level sustainer: Mid-level sustainers are outlets whose revenue and staffing capacity are mid-size. Mid-level sustainers make up about a third of non-startup members in each geographic scope. Many of these outlets have established one or two steady revenue streams.

• Large sustainer: Large sustainers include well-established outlets that have comparatively higher revenue and staff size, serving larger markets than many other nonprofit news organizations.

By cross-referencing these growth stages with geographic scope, outlets are grouped into 16 distinct Pods.

Here’s what we’ve learned: 

• As the nonprofit news sector evolves, the demand for knowledge exchange grows. Practitioners are eager to share their successes and experiments, but those learnings are most useful when shared with peer organizations.

• While identifying broad trends is important, using data at a more granular level enables members to see how they compare to their peers and act on those insights. This small group, data-driven approach is particularly beneficial for nonprofit news startups aiming to fill in the gaps left behind by legacy media, as it helps them set growth targets and strategies based on industry benchmarks.

• Beyond the data, INN members want to connect with mentors most likely to “get it” and give actionable advice. 

The level of member engagement and enthusiasm for this initiative demonstrates the strength and potential of collaboration within the nonprofit sector. Over 90% members complete our annual Index survey and participate in Pods, more than 300 representatives attended our in-person event this year, and many more joined virtual programming throughout the year. We believe other sectors within the pro-democracy space may benefit from engaging in similar collaborative efforts.

Ha Minh Ta is a Research Associate at the Institute for Nonprofit News.

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