The Media Impact Forum recently gathered funders from across the industry in North America and beyond in New York City. Hosted by Media Impact Funders, this dynamic two-day event featured compelling presentations and discussions on current trends, issues and opportunities in the field. Industry leaders exchanged inspiring stories, experiences and insights, addressing the key challenges and opportunities of today.
Through these rich discussions, the FT Strategies team identified five emerging priorities for media funders:
Media Sustainability and Capacity Building
The rise in philanthropic funding for journalism is encouraging, and in order to ensure success in the future it is vital to focus on enhancing capabilities and sustainable business models within the media sector. By doing so, the effectiveness of such funding can be maximised, ensuring it contributes meaningfully to the industry's long-term viability.
...in order to ensure success in the future it is vital to focus on enhancing capabilities and sustainable business models within the media sector.
Strategic Alignment on Media Funding
Establishing a shared strategy that includes supporting sound business models, elevating journalistic standards and fostering continuous innovation is fundamental for the sustained success and integrity of journalism. This approach ensures that media initiatives are not only effective in the short term but maintain their relevance and impact over time.
Streamlining the Grant Application Process
Media organisations, with needs ranging from digital transformation to technological upgrades and audience growth, often find the grant application process challenging. The existing system can be complex and time-consuming, requiring significant effort to complete. Refining and optimising these processes can alleviate the pressure on resources-constrained organisations, allowing them to focus on growth, transformation and innovation.
Defining Measurable Impact
While anecdotal successes in media funding are noteworthy, the truly impactful initiatives are those that demonstrate quantifiable commercial and audience growth. This underscores the significance of measuring impact, including the use of the appropriate metrics and KPIs, to evaluate the performance of media funding and organisational operations alike. Establishing these metrics across funders and media organisations presents an opportunity to hold all stakeholders accountable and consistently track impact.
While anecdotal successes in media funding are noteworthy, the truly impactful initiatives are those that demonstrate quantifiable commercial and audience growth.
Need for Cross-Sector Collaboration
In order to tackle the significant challenges facing the media organisations, it is essential for all stakeholders—including funders, regulators, technology companies, professional service firms, academia, as well as the media companies themselves—to collaborate closely. Leveraging their unique strengths collectively enhances the promotion of sustainable journalism and a healthy information ecosystem.
At FT Strategies, we are dedicated to advancing the field of media and journalism through innovative strategies and insightful research. If you would like to learn more about our work, please get in touch with us here.
About the author
George has over a decade of experience in strategy consulting and in-house advisory. Leading strategy development, service design and digital transformation teams, he has advised senior leadership across both the public and private sectors. He has an ACII and a Masters from the London School of Economics.
