Pod črto manual: How to start working with private donors

Welcome to Pod črto KnowHow series of manuals where we share our know-how with the international community of journalists and media. 

The story of our investigative media outlet goes back to 2014 and to the first 60 readers who were willing to support our idea—pledging a total of around €2,000 in donations. It was spring 2014 and at that time we had just a few articles showcasing our work. There was no media outlet yet, no official entity that could collect donations—and no team.

With the support that our readers pledged to us, we then turned to private donors, mostly entrepreneurs and former start-up founders themselves.

What we were trying to develop is a media model that will work for a media outlet that works in languages spoken by a small number of people, covering regional/national issues in countries where philanthropy in the media sector is not well developed and where readers are not used to supporting media with donations.

Nowadays, POD ČRTO’s business model has three main streams of revenue: individual donations, donations from private donors
(businesses and entrepreneurs) and grants.

For our 10th anniversary, we wanted to share what we have learnt so far as a way of giving back to the journalism community.

Content of the publication:

•  Our story: How it all began
• Development of our own media model
• Working with private sector donors
• Getting in touch with potential donors
• Pitching to donors
• Agreement between donors and your organisation
• How to keep in touch with your donors
• How to adapt our approach for your organisation

This fundraising playbook might give you a few starting ideas for working with donors from the private sector in your organisation.

You can tweak them or you might even decide that working with readers and private donors in such a capacity is absolutely not for you (or at least not yet).

If you decide to test some of the ideas from this publication, we advise a gradual approach. If you need additional support, do get in touch.

We’ll be happy to hear from you at: info@podcrto.si