Few days pass without one of us hearing from readers. They tell us about stories that touched their lives, prompted them to think differently about something, informed their work or provided information about a community that they didn’t know.
They appreciate our nonpartisan approach. Mostly, we hear gratitude for telling their stories. They feel heard.
You’re very welcome.
You can easily see the excellent work that our team of editors and writers produce every day. What isn’t as visible is the equally excellent work our dedicated operations team performs to keep Cardinal News in business.
Their work is being noticed by peers across the country. Next week, finance director Tonya Hart and I will present a session during the LION Sustainability Summit in St. Louis called, “Your budget tells a story: Make it a good one.”
Tonya volunteered her accounting and financial acumen as we grew from a simple startup to a complex, growing business, and finally joined us as a full-time employee this spring. For three years, as she held a job in the private sector, she spent her off hours learning nonprofit accounting, working with me on finding ways to finance our strategy, and remaining always focused on our mission.
Our financial statements are considered by our peers to be exemplary. We were asked to talk about how we build our budgets to tell the story of Cardinal and how we plan for growth.
While we are in St. Louis, Tonya and I also will attend the LION Sustainability Awards Ceremony. Cardinal News has been nominated for three awards: LION Business of the Year, Financial Health and Product of the Year.
LION — local independent online news — has more than 575 members. Each is a news organization finding a sustainable way to serve its communities.
To be nominated for LION Business of the Year is an honor, as we must demonstrate consistency across three pillars of sustainability: operational resilience, financial health and journalistic impact.
You see our journalism and its impact every day.
You don’t see Tonya’s analytics, or the work of Dutchie Jessee, our development director, who created and manages our membership program; Sherry Quinley, our sponsorship manager and Virginia Press Association Salesperson of the Year, who is building a successful program by helping businesses connect with our audiences, and Zac Shelton, our audience engagement and content manager, who has brought phenomenal growth across our products by connecting our stories with audiences in the ways they want to consume them.
One of those products is our podcast, The Cardinal: News of Virginia, that launched in January. We knew from listening to you that you wanted to hear more of the background about our stories from our reporters.
In November, we pulled together the Pod Squad, made a list of equipment, hit up the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, and met with the editors to discuss content. During that meeting, Sherry tapped away on her phone. As we were wrapping up, she announced she had the first sponsor for a product that had yet to launch. We tapped into Dutchie’s public radio experience to host the pod, and are grateful to all on the news team who take turns sharing their stories.
Downloads grow each month, and we have surpassed our yearly goals for growth on YouTube where you can watch the pods and on TikTok.
Our podcast is up for both the LION’s product of the year award, and the INNovater Award given by INN, Independent Nonprofit News, the other national association for organizations like Cardinal. The award recognizes an innovative idea or practice that has a positive financial impact on the newsroom and helps the newsroom serve its community.
We have been nominated for a second INN award called the Breaking Barriers Award for our Cardinal 250: Virginia’s Stories, A Nation’s Birth project.
Cardinal has experienced substantial growth and recognition in our four short years. We will tell you more about that, and what comes next, during our anniversary celebration in September.
Our success is due to readers like you. We truly mean it when we say we cannot do this without you. We tried something new for us this month, a campaign to ask those who read or listen to our free stories to make their first donation of any amount.
Thousands of people interact with us every day without contributing, meaning our goal of 75 new donors seemed modest.
With only a few days left, we are a few donors shy of our goal. If you haven’t given, please do. While our content is always available to all to read, it is costly to produce. We hope that those who can give, do so.
We called this our Be Heard campaign to recognize our role in telling your stories and elevating your voice. Raise the volume with your first donation. Thank you.
