Eric Newton, senior adviser to the president at Knight

In Michael Depp’s recent article from NetNewsCheck, Eric Newton, senior adviser to the president of Knight Foundation, talks about the key component to a non-profit’s success: business entrepreneurialism. The last decade has brought major changes in the media landscape as news organizations have tried to adapt to the digital age. During this tumultuous time, non-profits have emerged as sources of hard-hitting investigative journalism. However, some continue to have serious financial difficulties.

“It would be a major strategic error for nonprofit news organizations to think that most of their money should come from foundations in perpetuity,” Newton told NetNewsCheck “That said, it is a reasonable business model based on the experience of established nonprofit media to expect that they could raise from 10-25 % of their annual budgets from foundations.”

Nonprofit media organizations need to devote time and resources to their financial sustainability as well as their journalism. “A lot will die off, a lot will merge with traditional media, a lot will remain small,” Newton concluded in the article. “You have to be almost as scrappy in nonprofit media today as you have to be to make it as a new media start-up. The clever ones will make it. The nimble ones will make it.”