We asked the public to crowdfund reporting on the Washington state legislature
Here’s what happened.

Since year last year InvestigateWest has been working on a project to deliver crowdfunded coverage of the Washington State Legislature. In 2015, we raised $2,985 from 53 backers on Beacon Reader for the Statehouse News Project. This year, we raised $6,170 from 72 backers.
Project backers get regular story alerts and in-depth, unbiased reporting on issues that other news outlets aren’t covering. Our first year, we delivered a dozen stories on environmental legislation and spending. In coverage of budget cuts to key Puget Sound restoration projects, reductions in wildfire spending ahead of a historic fire season, financial shenanigans with a toxics-cleanup account, oil train safety, and more, backers each found something that mattered to them personally. “Better than all the other stuff coming out of Olympia,” one wrote in a survey after the legislative session ended. In the same survey, 80 percent said they would back the project again.
Now in its second year, the Statehouse News Proejct is providing the public in-depth reporting on environment and health care legislation, in a dozen-plus new stories published during the short session.
We need to be doing this. The number of journalists covering the Washington state capital keeps falling. Pew Research reported on declining numbers nationwide in 2014. What that means is less public information about the legislative process, less attention on the actions of lawmakers, and increasing influence of special interests at the state level, where so much policymaking happens.
The Statehouse News Project is an ecosystem solution to what really is an ecosystem problem. It’s an appeal to those people who are most likely to take notice of the growing reporting gap on a topic like the environment, starting with the business leaders and community advocates who have a personal or professional stake in what happens around that issue in Olympia. That’s our audience.
For them, we have a clear, urgent pitch: “We will report on key issues that no one else is covering until the Legislature passes a budget.”
Unlike some journalism crowdfunding campaigns, project backers know what they’re getting. And critically, they know that if the campaign isn’t successful, they won’t get it. This is journalism that has to be done now or won’t be done at all, which makes it an ideal match with the crowdfunding model.
And there’s an added benefit: It only takes a few scores of people backing a crowdfunding campaign to improve access to high-quality statehouse news for tens of thousands. InvestigateWest’s stories are running this year in The News Tribune, The Olympian, and The Daily Herald, which have a combined circulation of more than 110,000, and on Crosscut.com, newly part of Cascade Public Media.
Crowdfunding can be a full-time job. But we designed the Statehouse News Project to be as streamlined as possible to run year after year.
That starts with keeping our rewards simple: Backers are the first to get our stories. At higher levels, we offer an extra thank-you and an invitation to lunch with our business leadership or editorial staff. We think this makes the point that journalism itself is valuable and worth supporting, and that our reporters are members of the community too. Meanwhile, the campaign actually begins well before we start to ask for donations. Several months in advance, we are talking with our target audience and asking for input. We are asking news editors what they will need us to cover. When we the campaign officially launches, we email and let them know it’s time to contribute.
During the 15-day campaign, we are on Facebook every day with targeted ads. That ad spend, for us at least, pays for itself in the amount of pledges it drives.
We go out to our mailing list four times. The first appeal jumpstarts the project on day one and is followed by timely updates when we close in key goals like 50 percent or 90 percent. As with any successful crowdfunding campaign, we know who several of our large backers will be and use them strategically to get us off to a fast start or to put us over the finish line in the closing days and hours. (Ben DeJarnette’s article on MediaShift has more details on our strategy.)

Until now, the Statehouse News Project has been operating with philanthropic support from the Bullitt Foundation and Social Venture Partners Seattle. NBCUniversal Comcast also contributed. The crowdfunding campaigns have pretty much covered our actual costs for reporting and editing, but not my time as project lead. That will be covered by related revenue streams, like paid access to our Olympia desk to our news partners. Four paying partners signed up this year. And now that we have a highly engaged and growing community that cares deeply about particular issues, verifiable through site and social analytics data, InvestigateWest can recruit its first class of business sponsors for 2017.
With journalism crowdfunding growing and state-level reporting under such financial pressure, InvestigateWest built the Statehouse News Project to be a model that can be replicated in other states. I am documenting our work and want to put together an operating manual for others to use. If you’re interested in talking, please get in touch.