Congrats on all of the progress your organization has made the last 18 months! As part of your AJP Mid-Point Finance & Operations Assessment (FOA), AJP and BDO FMA are requesting information on your organization’s financial health and performance, as well as your financial management, human resources and governance practices. AJP understands that building financial resilience is a journey that takes time to move towards and can often be rooted in historical access to resources and education, and organizations in their portfolio will be at different places on their journey.

We hope you use this process as an opportunity to celebrate your wins, reprioritize your Success Plans, create a baseline for governance and human resource functions, and identify additional capacity building support as needed. Note, this is not intended to be an evaluation of you as an organization, but rather to gain an understanding of the kinds of progress that have been made while receiving support from AJP and BDO FMA since your grant started.

We strongly recommend you take this with your leadership team (e.g., CEO, head of editorial/programs, head of revenue, finance/operations lead) to get to collective responses, rather than just relying one person’s perspective. If your team is limited in size, consider including your Board Treasurer or President.

To help us learn from this process and prepare other CNOs in the future, we will ask at the end of this submission for you to share how much time it took for you to complete the self-assessment and short-answer questions, along with gather the requested documents.

Please note that as a CNO you will have an opportunity to review the analysis BDO FMA prepares before the final version is sent to AJP. Please complete all questions and document submissions by June 23, 2021. BDO FMA will be in touch to schedule a follow-up conversation in July to inform the analysis. Please let MV Banks (mbanks@bdo.com) and Tony Bowen (abowen@bdo.com) know if you have any questions or concerns.

If you are working on an initiative that you think we should know about, please reach out via this form. Our team can’t respond to every inquiry we receive, but we always appreciate hearing about initiatives from those working to strengthen the local news field.

If you haven't already, please read AJP's "What We Fund" page to ensure that you are a fit for AJP's criteria and current grantmaking priorities.

AJP was founded to reinvigorate local news through the power of venture philanthropy, focusing on building organizational capacity for Civic News Organizations (CNOs) to generate new revenue. Thus, the CNOs in AJP’s portfolio will understand that money and financial resilience matters to sustaining a successful local news operation. Thus, AJP is requesting information on your organization’s financial management, human resources (HR) and governance practices. AJP understands that building financial resilience is a journey that takes time to move towards and can often be routed in historical access to resources and education, and organizations in their portfolio will be at different places on their journey.

As an organization embedded within a university, we understand that you may receive some of your financial management and HR support from the university to bolster your operations and may not have full control over all pieces of the financial management, HR, and governance process and practices. Therefore, we’ve customized documents we’re requesting from you with several open-ended questions for you to reflect and complete. Before proceeding, please take a look at the criteria for our financial and operations infrastructure review.

We are excited to work with you on the next step toward a possible grant! As a reminder, the main purpose of AJP grants is to grow a local news organization’s revenue and operating capacity to help those organizations serve new communities with original reporting and journalism. We typically make 3-year grants that include two full years of funding for new roles hired during the first year of the grant.

Proposal Due: October 16, 2020 

Revised Proposal Due: November 13, 2020

We are excited to work with you on the next step toward a possible grant! As a reminder, the main purpose of AJP grants is to grow a local news organization’s revenue and operating capacity to help those organizations serve new communities with original reporting and journalism. We typically make 3-year grants that include two full years of funding for new roles hired during the first year of the grant.
Due: October 23, 2020 

We are excited to work with you on the next step toward a possible grant! As a reminder, the main purpose of AJP grants is to grow a local news organization’s revenue and operating capacity to help those organizations serve new communities with original reporting and journalism. We typically make 3-year grants that include two full years of funding for new roles hired during the first year of the grant.

Proposal draft & FMA self-assessment and document requests due: January 25th, 2021
Revised proposal due: February 22nd, 2021

We are excited to work with you on the next step toward a possible grant! As a reminder, the main purpose of AJP grants is to grow a local news organization’s revenue and operating capacity to help those organizations serve new communities with original reporting and journalism. We typically make 3-year grants that include two full years of funding for new roles hired during the first year of the grant.

Proposal draft & FMA self-assessment and document requests due: January 25th, 2021
Revised proposal due: February 22nd, 2021

We are excited to work with you on the next step toward a possible grant! As a reminder, the main purpose of AJP grants is to grow a local news organization’s revenue and operating capacity to help those organizations serve new communities with original reporting and journalism. We typically make 3-year grants that include two full years of funding for new roles hired during the first year of the grant.

Proposal draft & FMA self-assessment and document requests due: Feb. 8, 2021
Revised proposal due: March 1, 2021

We are excited to work with you on the next step toward a possible grant! As a reminder, the main purpose of AJP grants is to grow a local news organization’s revenue and operating capacity to help those organizations serve new communities with original reporting and journalism. We typically make 3-year grants that include two full years of funding for new roles hired during the first year of the grant.

Proposal draft & FMA self-assessment and document requests due: March 1, 2021
Revised proposal due: March 12, 2021

We are excited to work with you on the next step toward a possible grant! As a reminder, the main purpose of AJP grants is to grow a local news organization’s revenue and operating capacity to help those organizations serve new communities with original reporting and journalism. We typically make 3-year grants that include two full years of funding for new roles hired during the first year of the grant.

Proposal draft & FMA self-assessment and document requests due: May 14th, 2021
Revised proposal due: May 28th, 2021

We are excited to work with you on the next step toward a possible grant! As a reminder, the main purpose of AJP grants is to grow a local news organization’s revenue and operating capacity to help those organizations serve new communities with original reporting and journalism. We typically make 3-year grants that include two full years of funding for new roles hired during the first year of the grant.

Proposal due: July 16th, 2021

We are excited to work with you on the next step toward a possible grant! As a reminder, the main purpose of AJP grants is to grow local news organizations' revenue and operating capacity to help those organizations serve new communities with original reporting. We typically make three-year grants that include two full years of funding for new roles hired during the first year of the grant.

Proposal due: October 4th, 2021 at 9am ET