27 January 2020

Applications open for the Journalism Funders Forum Mentorship Programme

The Journalism Funders Forum has opened up applications for the its Mentorship Programme, a professional programme aimed at staff in the philanthropic sector that will seek to to shape the media funding landscape by pairing mentees within the sector with expert mentors from the media field.

The JFF Mentorship Programme places staff from philanthropic foundations that are new to (or have an interest in) the media funding space in meaningful and impactful mentoring relationships with seasoned peers. The aim is to shape the media funding sector by exerting a positive influence on the mentees’ careers and thereby improving the ecosystem by supporting transparency about the industry’s inner workings.

Throughout the programme, which can last from 6-9 months, the mentees benefit from professional development through one-on-one coaching sessions to advance knowledge and expertise in the field of media funding in one (or more) of the following areas:

  • Introduction to the journalism ecosystem: What are the pain points and opportunities;
  • How/where to start funding journalism: funding journalism through project grants and/or organisational grants, investments and capacity building in journalism;
  • Successful approaches to funding journalism and media;
  • Obstacles/challenges encountered in funding journalism and how to overcome them within one’s organisation;
  • Strategic learnings on what to fund and what not to fund;
  • Assessing whether your funding is working: Outcomes, impact, and change in journalism;
  • Finding your potential grantees;
  • Discussing openness and transparency in journalism funding;
  • Designing clear/accessible application processes and building diverse application assessment teams;
  • Funding innovation and experimentation in the field of journalism;
  • Developing strategies on specific areas of interest: Funding investigative journalism;
  • Difficulties/Experience with funding individual investigative projects;
  • Setting up the right infrastructure on a national level in order to create a healthy climate for (investigative) journalists to operate in (how to fund, what’s difficult, etc.)
  • Pooled funding;
  • Supporting media to engage with citizens;
  • Managing ‘reputational’ risks to funding journalism;
  • Role as ideological shareholder, in relation to investing in media

Applications close on 14 February with the programme beginning in mid-March.

For more information or to apply visit the Journalism Funders Forum website.