The Continent covers all of Africa, with 30,000 subscribers in 160 countries — and it has done all this with the support of philanthropic funding, which represents 95% of its funding.

Sipho Kings, publisher and co-founder of The Continent, spoke at the INMA Africa Media Revenue Summit about how to get philanthropic funding — and how to keep it once you have secured it. At the heart of Kings’ answer to this giant question of how to get philanthropic funding is a very simple answer: Make a good product. 

Simple, but not easy. Kings acknowledged the practical aspects of making a good product can be difficult, and he shared some of the things The Continent team has learned in its five year history. 

“The way we’ve gone about this has allowed us to survive this collapse in U.S. funding,” Kings said. 

The Continent is a PDF newspaper designed to read on smart devices, mostly mobile. It is delivered via WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, and e-mail. This is important across Africa, where some countries may experience a loss of internet or cell phone towers; people can still share the PDF through Airdrop or a USB stick.

“Our growth to 30,000 subscribers has been entirely organic. And every single person who reads an edition of The Continent reads it because someone else sent it to them,” Kings said. “Its the OG social network. And all of that has come about through [philanthropic] funding.” 

The Continent’s funders include the Ford Foundation, OSF, and Luminate. Most of them renew their funding. Kings explained the strategy used to achieve this.

First, they set up multi-year funding grants. “Two of our funders have been with us very near the beginning during the COVID pandemic and all the trauma that came with it. So, we have a lot of experience with a business model with doing philanthropic [funding].”

Kings said the model presented two giant questions that had to be dealt with:

1. How does a media organisation get philanthropic funding?

2. How do they keep it? 

He addressed each of these questions separately, sharing what his team has learned.

Getting philanthropic funding

The Continent learned four key things necessary to secure such funding. 

1. Make a good product. Driving organic interest is key. For The Continent, almost all the funders have come about because someone at that company subscribed to the newspaper. 

“They worked with a big foundation and they thought, I really like this product, I want to support it,” Kings said. “And then they reached out to us and then we had conversations, we got funding.”

He added that this has meant hard work and trade-offs along the way. For example, they don't have an HR manager or a grant writer. Every time they get some money, they put it back into the newspaper. 

“If you have a really, really good product, it should do a lot of the sales work for you.”

2. Know your story. Everyone is looking for money, especially with the collapse of U.S. funding. It’s vital to know your niche, your unique selling point. Understand that thoroughly and stick to it. 

Kings said that in the beginning it was difficult because The Continent is a very different kind of product, and so many people didn’t get it. “And now people are starting to understand, especially funders and advertisers, because we just keep repeating the message.” 

3. Network. The big philanthropic organisations are made up of people — and they’re the ones who will champion your product and mission. They’re the ones who find the levers to pull inside their own organisation to get money. 

Kings shared a practical tip. Identify the organisations that correlate with the kind of work that you do, or geographic region, and find the person who’s responsible. Then you can target them in a professional way, through events and other networking opportunities.

“Just be there, invest in the time and chat to them, let them know about you, and then develop that relationship. Because again, this is all about people.”

4. Establish a non-profit home with audited books. In the early stages The Continent partnered with a fiscal host — a non-profit organisation that had a track record. Funders will typically ask for two to five years of audited financials and a fiscal host can be beneficial at start-up.

The Continent operated this way for three years until it had proven its concept and established its own track record. At that point, it set up as its own non-profit. 

“Now we have audited financials and people trust us. And you can run that alongside a for-profit, do all the work that needs to be done there,” Kings added. “But it’s a viable business model and quite a few newsrooms, especially in South Africa, have a non-profit that works with their for-profit. It's not a controversial way of doing things.”

Keeping philanthropic funding 

Kings shared the five things The Continent learned about retaining funding once it’s in place.

1. Accountability is non-negotiable. Funders may want to support journalism and connect with a newsroom they would like to invest in, but if the verifiable track record and transparency aren’t there, it likely won’t get funded. 

“What you’re doing is helping people trust you. You’re giving them arguments to trust you. It’s also really good because it helps your internal systems. If you know what’s happening with your money, you can make informed decisions, you can run your organiaation better. 

2. Be honest about what you can deliver. The Continent experienced a few instances where its funding application was rejected because the organisation didn’t feel it was ambitious enough. Ambitious goals are good, but even more important is honesty around them. 

“We would rather not have the money than promise a lot of stuff and then fail to deliver,” Kings said. “Trust is the lifeblood for reader revenue, and it’s the same with philanthropic funding. If you keep promising to do things and you don’t achieve them, you’re going to get a bad reputation, your organisation won’t get money.” 

Be very realistic about what you can do, and convey that with transparency. 

3. Be willing to push back. This can become a necessity if a funder comes along and asks for too much or pushes ethical boundaries. They typically have the power in the relationship, and if this happens, it’s really important to push back. 

Keep in mind that if you’re that far along in the conversation, it’s because the funders value what you’re doing. They value your journalism, they value your newspaper, which means you have leverage. 

“If you know your story, you can push back and then get grant agreements where you can deliver what you promised ethically and without exhausting you and getting rid of all your hope and joy.”

4. Keep track of impact. Your job is to give that person at the bottom of the funding organisation an argument for why you should be supported. And they give it to their boss and their boss and their boss, all the way up to the board. 

It’s extremely helpful to document all the ways that your journalism has an impact. For example, if a journalist goes on a radio show and talks in a language that your newspaper doesn’t, that's an impact. If your journalism helps overthrow a government, that’s an impact. All of those things help make the argument to support your journalism. 

The way The Continent keeps track of its impact is through a very simple Slack channel. 

5. Remember philanthropic funding organisations are made up of people. “We’ve had people working at organisations that are restructured,” Kings said. “They’ve lost their jobs or they’ve moved sideways. It’s the right thing to do, to just be nice to another human being.”

Additionally, keep in mind that the philanthropic world is small, and people move around. Being professional and nice, even if it doesn’t work out at the current time, could pay off dividends later if the contact ends up at another organisation with access to new funding. 

“These nine very basic things have helped us. Obviously the rest is a lot of hard work and running a philanthropic organisation is stressful. It’s like any other business model, but in a lot of particularly African countries, this is one of the only ways that we’re going to fund journalism.”

The money is there, Kings added. Even with the collapse of U.S. aid, which eliminated some 60% of journalism funding, there are still a lot of other options. For example, it’s predicted that the E.U. is going to start putting more money into journalism. 

“The money’s there,” he concluded. “Go ask for it, look for it.”

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