Newsroom founders rarely have the time or resources they need to go to conferences, get training or join important associations. That’s why we launched the Spark Fund in the spring, giving grants to 14 newsrooms to help them with professional and leadership development.
And now we are excited to announce our second round of grantees for the Spark Fund. This round of Spark Fund opportunities was funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation as part of its three-year $2.275 million grant to Tiny News and its members. TNC is actively raising money from other sources to help support the Spark Fund for years to come. Tiny News has also given grants from the Immediate Needs Fund for members through funding from MacArthur Foundation.
“It’s great to see Tiny News Collective providing a second round of grants for professional and leadership development for the diverse newsrooms that are a part of TNC,” said Silvia Rivera, MacArthur’s director of local news. “I’m confident that the Spark Fund will lead to even stronger newsroom leaders across the country, helping them serve communities with important news and information long into the future.”
For the Spark Fund, TNC members applied for grants to cover the costs of conference travel, organization membership, classes or certifications, or working with an executive coach. Members were encouraged to think expansively about how they viewed leadership and professional development.
“Budgeting for professional development is not something that many startup founders are able to do when they are building from scratch. But that is exactly the time when they need more support to help their ideas come to fruition,” said Amy L. Kovac-Ashley, executive director of the Tiny News Collective. “We are so pleased to be able to offer these grants to our members — to expose them to journalism and business learning opportunities for growth during the critical launch and startup phase.”
Tiny News is delighted to fund 13 newsrooms from the Spark Fund this fall, each receiving $750 to $1,000 for a total of $12,750:
These grants will help support training for members in areas such as podcasting, photography and accounting. The funding also helped members attend conferences put on by the Online News Association, LION Publishers and the News Product Alliance. Grantees will share their knowledge with the Collective, and we will share some of their lessons publicly.
“These grant funds are valuable because they gave me the opportunity for the kind of professional development that I wasn’t thinking about when we wrote our budget earlier this year,” said Emily Christensen, co-founder at The SHOUT in Wichita, who used the funds for bookkeeping training. “It allows us to focus most of our funds on paying our contributors while also filling a critical knowledge gap for this business co-owner.”
Congratulations to our grantee newsrooms! 💖
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