{"id":33558,"date":"2025-11-03T20:14:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T20:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/33558\/"},"modified":"2025-11-03T20:14:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T20:14:08","slug":"you-can-help-us-continue-providing-quality-local-news-and-double-your-donation-during-our-first-newsmatch-campaign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/33558\/","title":{"rendered":"You can help us continue providing quality local news \u2013 and double your donation \u2013 during our first NewsMatch campaign"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lubbock Lights celebrated its second anniversary last month. We\u2019re fulfilling our goal of giving you interesting, important and in-depth local news stories with no agenda.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve created a successful \u2013 if tiny \u2013 local news organization.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what people are saying about Lubbock Lights<\/p>\n

I really like Lubbock Lights! They cover LOCAL news stories no one else is doing and they do it in depth, fairly presenting all sides of the issue. I\u2019ve been involved in some things they\u2019ve reported on, so I know they provided fair coverage, which gives me faith in their reporting when they report on things I\u2019m not familiar with.
George McMahan<\/p>\n

As a professional and as a mom, I want to stay connected to what\u2019s really happening in our community, not just the headlines. Lubbock Lights\u2019 coverage is thoughtful, reliable and full of interesting stories impacting our city. It helps me feel informed, engaged and proud to call Lubbock home.
Andrea Tirey<\/p>\n

In an era where truly thorough and unbiased local reporting is increasingly rare and difficult to achieve, Lubbock Lights excels. They provide relevant, timely, and traditional news coverage that is exceptionally easy to read, follow and understand. Their commitment to the community is invaluable.\u00a0
Murvat Musa<\/p>\n

Lubbock Lights provides the in-depth coverage of local events that often is not available through other news sources. I look forward to reading it.
Alan Henry<\/p>\n

I follow Lubbock Lights because their articles are founded in solid and meaningful journalism skills, now lost by so many other \u201cnews\u201d outlets.\u00a0Their articles are researched with extreme care, attention to detail, and with relevant follow-up ongoing as events and stories continue their path. They are pros in investigative journalism. They ALWAYS follow up!
LeeAnn Dumbauld<\/p>\n

Financially, though, we need your help to become sustainable, growing from tiny to, well, small or modest.<\/p>\n

The goal is to do more of what we\u2019ve been doing \u2013 filling a local news gap \u2013 stories other local media isn\u2019t doing or more in-depth stories than the newspaper has staff or TV has time to do. We don\u2019t consider ourselves competition for other local media, which is why we also offer our stories to them.<\/p>\n

Starting tomorrow, we begin a NewsMatch fundraising campaign to build a donor base.<\/p>\n

NewsMatch is a program offered by the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) and we\u2019re members.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ll give us $15,000 if we can match it through your donations up to $1,000 between now and the end of the year for a total of $30,000.<\/p>\n

But we\u2019re aiming higher than $30,000.<\/p>\n

NewsMatch allows members to add to the $15,000 they\u2019ll give us. We\u2019ve raised $4,000. So now, we\u2019re asking y\u2019all to match $19,000 \u2013 but working to raise some more money and we\u2019ll announce that as the campaign continues.<\/p>\n

If you want to donate now \u2013 and thanks! \u2013 here\u2019s the link<\/a> to our donation page. We appreciate any donation, but love recurring donations.<\/p>\n

Speaking of recurring donations:<\/p>\n

Any new recurring monthly donation beginning during the campaign period from now until the end of the year will be matched by NewsMatch at the 12-month value of that donation up to $1,000. For example, a new donor starting a donation of $10\/month in December will be matched at $120 ($10 x 12). If a new person makes a donation of $500 a month, NewsMatch would only match up to $1,000.<\/p>\n

We can get a $1,000 bonus from NewsMatch for 50 first-time donors of any amount.<\/p>\n

For those of you who\u2019ve signed up for our Saturday newsletter, you\u2019ll get weekly campaign emails starting tomorrow, ending December 31. <\/p>\n

You can opt out of the emails. If you don\u2019t want to donate, we still want to keep you on our email list so you can get our weekly newsletter summing up what we\u2019ve done that week.<\/p>\n

And yes, we\u2019re a 501c3 organization.<\/p>\n

If we match $19,000 to reach $38,000, or a higher number, that\u2019s great, but not enough to be sustainable.<\/p>\n

So let me explain our business plan.<\/p>\n

Many nonprofit websites grew financially three ways (in this order):<\/p>\n

Foundation support<\/p>\n

Donor base<\/p>\n

Sponsor advertising<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve heard there are millions of foundation dollars to support what we do, but as I made inquiries, it wasn\u2019t easy to get. Plus, a friend of mine at another nonprofit news site on the east coast said foundations are great if you can get them, but it\u2019s not always easy to keep them.<\/p>\n

So we reversed that list above \u2013 wanting most of our revenue to come from sponsor advertising. We appreciate our sponsor support since our first year. You can see their messages on our site.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve had some much-appreciated donor support, but it\u2019s a smaller amount compared to our sponsor advertisements.<\/p>\n

Our revenue now is around $80,000 a year and our goal for 2026 is to get to $400,000 with 80 percent of it coming from sponsor advertising.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s some context:<\/p>\n

The median Institute for Nonprofit News member generated $532,000 in annual revenue last year, up from $477,000 in 2023, according to a recent INN report.<\/p>\n

So we\u2019re asking donors and sponsors to get us to a place that\u2019s still less than the median nonprofit site. It\u2019s also tiny compared to the $2.5 million budget I had almost 20 years ago as editor of the Avalanche-Journal.<\/p>\n

During these first two years of Lubbock Lights, we\u2019ve discovered a lot of organizations, like INN, helping nonprofit local news websites. Hundreds of nonprofit newsrooms are growing across the country to address local news gaps following newspaper staff cuts over the past few decades.<\/p>\n

To help support sponsor advertising, we switched to a new website platform in May from Newspack, allowing more ad positions than our previous site. And we recently started working with Broadstreet, a company designed to help nonprofit news sites offer more interesting advertising options. You can see two of those on our site right now \u2013 the UMB Bank ad in the \u201cTop Banner\u201d position and the Hub Funding Solutions \u201cLocal Authority\u201d on the right side of our site.<\/p>\n

Another important point of our business plan is to not have more than about 5 percent of revenue coming from one business or individual, helping us stay independent.<\/p>\n

As we grow, we want to hire on a development director. As interesting as it\u2019s been to learn how build sustainability, it\u2019s not my background. We need a professional fundraiser to help us get closer to that median number and hopefully higher.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll grow as we can support it. We don\u2019t believe in getting out ahead of our skis.<\/p>\n

But the days of local newsrooms having 45 people (which I also had here less than 20 years ago) may never return. Having a leaner newsroom doing more in-depth local news is sustainable.<\/p>\n

We appreciate your help.<\/p>\n

\n\tRelated\n<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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