You know Outride.rs. Now meet the Outriders

You probably came across that word couple of times last year: “Outriders”. Outriders Summit, Outriders Meetups, Outriders Brief, Outriders Data or Outriders Network.

Well, probably there will be more to come, but before it happens — we want to explain them to you, or rather present something, actually.

A year ago, the crowdfunding campaign for the “Outriders project” came to an end. I’ve never particularly liked that word — “the project” — as there are large and small projects, but they all have one common feature: they end, sooner or later. Or they should end, at least. And we do not want the Outriders to come to an end. Therefore, we spent the whole 2018 working hard so that it wouldn’t happen.

I wrote about that more emotional and frustrating side of that successful process in the entry titled “Looking back at 2018”. I just didn’t want to focus only on simple quotations like “it will be so great in the future, and it was great back in the past”. Yes, that’s true — I can’t wait thinking of the events in 2019, but the road up to this point was tedious.

First of all, you have to start with the analysis of the reality in which the outride.rs operates and adopt the most pessimistic variant of making plans:

• Culture/media crowdfunding campaigns — campaigns for the organisational entity — are just beginning to develop.
• Acquiring PLN 4–6 million just for the start of the activity (as in case of media from Germany or the Netherlands which are “competitive” and similar to the Outriders ) is impossible today.
• Over 90% of all grants for media are spent in the USA, 5–7% in Europe (but most of it in Western European countries).
• There isn’t a kind of custom in Poland that public/wealthy persons support the media as part of their philanthropic activities publicly (I am not writing about the individuals but about the scale of the phenomenon).

In addition, there are some of our assumptions that additionally “obstruct” the whole matter:

• Our target is financing the website fully thanks to the readers’ support.
• No negative campaigns
• No adverts
• Our ambition is that our global partners choose us because of our quality and innovative approach and not because of the way of thinking “it’s so bad in Poland, let’s help them.”
• We are a non-profit company (It rules out the help of polish venture capital. Anyway, it would be pretty risky as they are not familiar with our business model).
• We do not want to engage ourselves in the “Polish political war”.

Well, it ain’t so bad, is it? One could break down, really.

Probably You could. However, we have never been incurable optimists while creating Outriders. Before the start of our project, we spent three months analysing the conditions mentioned above. We talked to many media financing organisations, as well as the media that were successful (they achieved stability). We focused on planning everything well.

Why am I writing about building an organisation? Most journalistic organisations end when they focus only on creating the content. It is a global specificity, not only Polish one. To create an entity where more than three people work, completely different competencies are needed — strategic, fundraising, marketing, communication, financial, accounting, HR, etc., Moreover, they must meet high standards.

We estimate that getting full financial liquidity based on our readers’ financial support will take the next 24 months (up to 36 months). We have planned activities that have been going on since November 2018, and for example, our Brief has been developing since the end of January 2018. Over the past 10–12 months, we have created various projects, both journalistic and media-related, which are now entering scaling. Some have been closed (10%). We managed to achieve a significant milestone thanks to them — we will transfer all the funds we get from you to create content on outride.rs in the next 18 months. Moreover, we can finance organisational activity using other sources. We will use the Connect platform for detailed communication of this process. The platform will start operating at the same time with the campaign “Connecting”. We want to thank you all who decided to help us with that campaign.

Thanks to this, we can maximise the effects most vital to you, and not consume sources on things that are important, but not visible with the naked eye.

So, step by step.

The Outriders believe that journalism allows explaining the complexities of this world. And that’s why we work.

Our mission is accomplished through:

• Outride.rs — a website that responds to local problems, showing a global perspective.
• Outriders Network — a platform used for the exchange of knowledge between journalists, reporters and makers from around the world.
• Outriders Studio — helping other organisations create media projects.
• Wachlarz — a community of travellers and reporters for whom we organise a festival, workshops and meetings.

It is safe to say our organisation is based on four legs. Each of them is more and stronger each day. Thanks to them, we get to know different aspects of media functioning that help us achieve a superior goal.

It’s quite a lot when you take under consideration that our activity started 16 months ago. It is a significant moment for us — we know why, for what and we know how we want to continue working.