Faced with financial difficulties, the British daily newspaper ‘The Guardian’, three years after winning the Pulitzer Prize that spurred its international expansion, has fully embraced a new revenue strategy – philanthropy. The company has established a nonprofit organization in the U.S., theguardian.org, which is reaching out to philanthropic organizations with a request for financial support for reporting on human rights and climate change, writes New York Times.
Rachel White, president of the nonprofit theguardian.org, stated that the organization’s charitable status will facilitate donations from those organizations and individuals who would be in a conflict of interest by funding a profit-making entity.
theguardian.org was granted tax-exempt status in October 2016 and has been securing partnerships since December. Since then, theguardian.org has secured over one million dollars from the Skoll Foundation, founded by Jeff Skoll, the first president of eBay; Humanity United, which is part of the Omidyar Group founded by eBay’s founder Pierre Omidyar; and the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, founded by the hotel entrepreneur.
White pointed out that the Skoll and Hilton foundations, as philanthropic organizations, “want to support quality discourse.”
“At a time when the media business has faced various upheavals and has been confronted with many public grievances, the foundations have made a special effort to save us,” White said, further explaining their desire for more media coverage on the topics they address.
The Guardian’s new nonprofit approach is also directed at readers, who are instead of being charged for reading articles, merely informed at the bottom of articles to subscribe or make a financial contribution to the editorial team.
The Guardian has already utilized contributions from nonprofit organizations, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Ford Foundation, and Rockefeller Foundation. Philanthropic partnerships make up a relatively small portion of the $276 million annual revenue, about £3.8 million or $4.9 million. However, over the past 12 months, the Guardian has entered into agreements in which foundations commit to donating a total of $6 million through multi-year funding.
It is worth noting that the Guardian, which won the Pulitzer for reporting on information provided by Edward Snowden and gained popularity in the U.S. as a result, had to cut costs to mitigate losses. These amounted to £44.7 million in the fiscal year ending in April 2017. Since they were £68.7 million in the previous fiscal year, the cuts have borne fruit.
