Donations
When it comes to local news, readers want to support efforts for news coverage of their community. In many smaller communities there is usually only one, if any, publisher covering the people and events in that area and people rely on this news source to stay informed. Of the three publishers who were part of the first round of this accelerator, donations are one of their largest sources of revenue.
Oil City News did not previously have a donate option on their site prior to starting this accelerator, but following our recommendation they started receiving their first round of donations from loyal readers. And it continues to grow today.
GiveWP is a great option for accepting donations, as it is plugin based and connects to all major payment gateways including Stripe, PayPal, and Square. We recommend making your button/call-to-action to donate prominent and consistently visible, such as within the primary site navigation like the examples below.
Obituaries
Obituary listings are an important offering for communities. Some publishers choose to offer these listings for free, whereas others representing larger locales, charge a modest fee.
Through this accelerator we identified a service called Memoriams by Ancestry that can help streamline the submission and editorial workflow for publishing obit listings. It also allows you to join a network of other publishers accessible to funeral homes in the surrounding area for ease of listing across multiple outlets. Memoriams was endorsed by the Local Media Consortium, as this platform captures those obituaries that might otherwise be lost to the media industry — $19 million in 2018.
Whether you have a robust obituary catalog already established or are just considering adding this service to your site, this accelerator identified obituaries as a sustainable and scalable revenue tactic.