Building Civic Partnerships as a Revenue Strategy for Community Media
Instructor: Madeleine Bair, Founder, El Tímpano
For the past five years, El Tímpano has developed a novel way to sustain and even expand its public-service journalism: civic partnerships. Through this model, nonprofits, government agencies, and other mission-aligned organizations contract El Tímpano to distribute vital information to "hard to reach" communities. El Tímpano began this work in 2020 with a $6,000 grant to support census outreach. In 2025, civic partnerships brought in approximately $350,000, making it El Tímpano's second-largest source of revenue.
In this session you'll learn how to:
The basics of a civic partnerships strategy and how to determine if it's right for you
How to retain editorial independence while earning revenue from civic and nonprofit agencies
The steps to develop a civic partnerships strategy in your organization