Impact Stories

During the second half of July 2021, Santa Cruz Local, a two-year-old outlet, launched a reader revenue campaign to support its reporting on homelessness. Within two weeks, staff members raised about $20,000 from roughly 100 local readers, their most successful fundraising campaign to date. Solutions journalism featured prominently in their phone and email solicitations to readers. Kara Meyberg Guzman, CEO and co-founder, said supporters who contributed to this coverage frequently mentioned its focus on responses to homelessness (solutions journalism), holding local government to account and featuring underrepresented people with nuance and complexity.

Egab, an online platform that enables local journalists across the Middle East and Africa to pitch stories in any format or language to editors of regional and international media outlets, received $100,000 from the Google News Initiative's Innovation Challenge. The platform specializes in solutions journalism and emphasized this editorial approach in its application for a grant, adding that several of the news organizations that have published Egab-originated stories say their audience surveys have shown that audiences engage more with solutions-oriented content.

The Narwhal, a Canadian-based publication that features solutions stories related to climate and the environment, is opening a new bureau in Ontario with help from a $300,000 grant from the McConnell Foundation. In announcing the grant, the foundation said research suggests that “more nuanced and complex journalistic narratives, which feature and elevate the voices and experiences of those most affected by climate change, can enable richer understanding between relevant actors and help us move towards solutions-oriented actions.”

In 2019, the freelance journalist Peter Yeung reported the solutions story “How One Community Brought Child Mortality Down From 154 To 7 Per 1,000 Live Births,” which featured Muso, a nonprofit health provider in Mali. Two years later, the organization received $15 million in funding from MacKenzie Scott, its largest gift to date. Ari Johnson, the nonprofit’s CEO, credited Yeung, saying: “Your coverage of our research brought global attention to the global child mortality crisis and to how solvable it could be. Thank you for your coverage and the part you play in this celebratory moment.”

The Seattle Times added a fourth reporting project on behavioral and mental health modeled after its very successful Education Lab, Traffic Lab and Project Homeless initiatives, each of which has a small team supported with grants and sponsorships. All include solutions-focused coverage as part of their work. The new project is supported by a grant of nearly $1.1 million from Ballmer Group, a national philanthropic organization.

After it was featured in a solutions story produced by the Northeast Ohio Solutions Journalism Collaborative, an organization hosting COVID-19 vaccination clinics in historically Black churches in Cleveland received a $250,000 grant from a local funder (https://www.clevelandfoundation.org/news_items/may-4-covid-phase2-update/). The head of the initiative attributed the timing of the funding to the story, saying it raised the initiative’s profile. The
story was republished by several local media organizations in the collaborative.