Nonprofits embrace profits

The adage “nonprofit is a tax code, not a business model” has been around as long as nonprofits themselves. But 2024 is poised to be a pivotal year for the income streams of nonprofit journalism organizations in Europe, which, in the face of shifting market forces, will accelerate the diversification of their revenue.

It’s tough out there. The clamor for the philanthropic attention of Europe’s foundations is intensifying, especially since OSF’s well-documented retreat. The vacuum left by Luminate’s departure continues to be felt. Many prominent European family foundations have been restrategizing. Grantseekers tell me they feel huge pressure to invent networks and infrastructure projects to capture the latest funding zeitgeist.

Additionally, the ever-illuminating 2023 Digital News Report from the Reuters Institute suggests a plateau in online news payments, indicating that the public is increasingly content with free news sources. Membership models aren’t a silver bullet either, then — they need investment, business analytics chops, and lots of time to take hold (especially in a world where folks are becoming increasingly accustomed to the lavish perks and engagement strategies of YouTube and Patreon creators). Strained household budgets underscore the need for nonprofits to explore new revenue avenues.

2024 will therefore see the quickened rise of innovative, unfamiliar, and even uncomfortable revenue streams for Europe’s nonprofits.

Direct engagement with high net-worth individuals and family funds will become a thing, just as it has been in the charity sector for time immemorial. This strategy requires a shift from traditional proposal writing to networking and relationship-building. We’ll see more awards, more galas, more charity dinners. It will mean more work for CEOs and executive directors who will now need to be exceptional conversationalists in public and private.

Nonprofits are likely to venture even further than they have already into organizing events, training sessions, and master classes (FWIW: The going rate for a week-long, 40-hour, in-person workshop is about €2,500 per person, if you have the expertise and visibility of a Bellingcat). In 2024, nonprofits will leverage their own personal platforms, expertise, and approaches by delivering city tours, intelligence briefings, and government policy consultancies, and by playing host to cultural events. We’ll see more journalism teams like Are We Europe turn side-hustles into award-winning content studios.

Journalism nonprofits will create digital products and technology too. Perhaps inspired by Correctiv’s editing AI, Wolf-Schneider-KI, nonprofits may choose — should they possess the firepower and culture — to invest in proprietary technology solutions. In doing so, they may choose a tricky path, but one with lots of potential upside.

And speaking of investment, Pluralis is one of the bright spots for European media in recent times. If nonprofits can write an ambitious business plan, launch a commercial arm, and convincingly align themselves with both the European Union’s Sustainable Development Goals and a modest return on investment, there’s no reason media can’t turn Europe’s growing impact investment scene’s attention away from cleantech and scaled education and toward one of the key pillars of democracy: a free and independent media.

Yet among all of this, it’s an old idea made new that holds the most promise: Advertising. As Jean-Luc Godard said, “It’s not where you take things from — it’s where you take them to.”

In the U.K., ad revenue accounted for 52% of revenue for independent media in 2023, up from 45% in 2022. European data is patchy, but native advertising is projected to be a $402 billion global industry by 2025 (that’s 5X in five years). The European creator ad spend alone was worth €1.3 billion (and that was back in 2020). There’s a huge shift in brand thinking happening at the moment. Brands have a strong and increasing preference for working with what the trade quaintly calls “nano influencers” (with between 1,000 and 10,000 followers) and “micro influencers” (10,000 to 100,000 followers). Market research tells us those brands’ most important factor for picking an advertising partner is a credible editorial environment. In terms of audience size, audience engagement, and content quality, independent media is perfectly placed.

In 2024 we’ll see more diverse content production to ride this wave: Newsletters, magazines, podcasts, web series, documentaries, interactives, and more. Some of this will be paid for by the audience (by the way, we no longer need 1,000 true fans, but 100). Most of it will be unpaywalled offerings that bear the mark of brands. The emergence of myriad B Corps is about to create a new market for lucrative partnerships and sponsorships. And — whisper it, for it will make some unhappy — we will likely see corporate social responsibility initiatives team up with independent local media outlets on takeovers and campaigns.

Capitalizing on all these opportunities will not be easy. Nonprofits need to develop a smart, intentional revenue strategy, understand their communities, assess their strengths, and employ robust prioritization and experimentation methodologies. They need to navigate ethical complexities and foster radical transparency to build comfort with new revenue streams among audiences and their own teams because, fundamentally, this may well be less about market opportunity and more about mindset. Recognizing the necessity of innovative financial sustainability for long-term impact has always been the key to a truly independent media in my mind. It’s time for nonprofits to embrace profit.