Financial stability is a big challenge for many news and information projects. After that initial burst of foundation funding, how do you keep the project going?

MinnPost, a Community Information Challenge winner in the first round, has been an aggressive leader in developing a variety of funding streams – mixing commercial approaches such as advertising and sponsorships with fundraisers and foundation support.

This week, the site announced it ran a surplus in 2010 after several years of deficits.

“A $17,594 surplus on spending of $1.261 million may not sound like much. But this is tremendous vindication for our business model, because it resulted from 18 percent revenue growth, not budget-cutting,” the site’s founders, Joel and Laurie Kramer said in a letter to users.

Congratulations to MinnPost. More details here.