One big surprise in the last 5 years has been discovering that there are really no good funding options for journalism/tech. We’ve bootstrapped from day 1 and always planned to be totally self-sufficient. But initially we did think that there might be grant funding or support that we might be able to benefit from. It turns out: No. Absolutely none.
I thought between the Knight Foundation and the Mozilla Foundation and the Ford Foundation and the Google News Initiatives — there might be a path to getting a lil’ help. However, they all seem to be limited to helping only projects in their own countries (mostly the US) and selecting who is awarded grants appears to be often more about who you know, than what you do.
I’m still curious about this. Are we missing something? Are there organisations who do grant-funding who we should be talking to? Or is there a viable form of ICO which would support our company structure, to engage our own community directly, without being sketchy? Like a follow-up to the Kickstarter, maybe something like Brewdog.
Would love any advice. Given that we’re profitable, we don’t especially need funding, but we have very large ambitions and very limited resources. We’d love to do more. Send me a note on Twitter if you have ideas.