And welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the podfather of your favorite hebdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d be forced to endure the pain of rhabdomyolysis. If you broke me down with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer Kate to introduce it. Hey Tony, this week we have the value of nonprofit journalism for your work. Monica Bauerle reveals lessons to learn from when Mother Jones, the magazine, had its nonprofit status revoked in the 1980s during the Reagan administration. She also shares her thinking on how to proactively protect your nonprofit, how to avoid feeling intimidated, and the importance of local journalism and building relationships with local reporters. Monica is CEO of the Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit investigative news outlet. On Tony’s take 2. Rest in peace, Charlie Kirk. Here is the value of nonprofit journalism for your work. It’s a genuine pleasure to welcome Monica Bauerle to nonprofit Radio. Monica is CEO of the Center for Investigative Reporting. A nonprofit multimedia investigative news organization producing Mother Jones, the magazine started in 1976. Reveal the radio show and podcast and the podcast more to the story new this year. She’s held her role since 2024 when Mother Jones merged with the Center for Investigative Reporting. You’ll find Monica on Blue Sky at Monica B. And you’ll find nonprofit investigative journalism at Mother Jones.com. Revealnews.org and their podcast, more to the story. Welcome to nonprofit Radio, Monica. Thanks for having me, Tony. It’s a, it’s a genuine pleasure. I’ve admired, uh, I’ve known Mother Jones the best, um, and the Center for Investigative Reporting. I, I’ve just admired their work from afar for years. So I’m, you know, some people say, well, so like I’m excited to have you with us because my excitement is just over spilling, and, but I’m genuinely excited. I am excited. I’ve been looking forward to this. We put it all together in just a couple of days with the help of, uh, your very savvy coms guy, Sean, and, um, so I am excited to have you. Representing The Center for Investigative Reporting, um, and Mother Jones and David Corn and, uh, we, we just, we, he doesn’t know it, but we go back a long ways. So, uh, one way because I admire his work and, and I’ve just admired the outlets, uh, for years. I was hoping you would have some stories about David that I could, you know, spring on him at some point. Uh, no, I think I do. I think I I think I have a sighting of him at a uh Where was, where were we in, uh, this was in Portland, Oregon. I was at a nonprofit conference was the nonprofit technology conference, uh, and NTC last year and he was not at that conference because his work is not nonprofit technology he’s not a technologist, but um. He was at a meeting that that took place before the the N10 meeting after hours so people saw him walking out and they were all excited. I didn’t get to see him. I didn’t get to see David, but he was at a reception that preceded our reception entering the room, but I didn’t get there early enough to see him leaving. Uh, so that’s the closest I came, um. Yeah, it’s just, you know, I mean, you know, the outlets, I just, you’re, I’m a fanboy. What can I say? I’m just admitting, uh, and I’m also a recent donor to uh Mother Jones, so, uh. I guess I should reveal all that, even though I’m not a journalist, but I still feel like I should reveal that uh I am a recent donor to Mother Jones. Thank you so much, Tony. That means, that means the world. Uh, because of the special, special environment that uh that we’re in. So let’s do, let’s do some history, because you, you have a lot of, you have a lot of information that can help our listeners in small and mid-size nonprofits. This I did not know, uh, my, my relationship with uh Mother Jones doesn’t go back this far, but under the Reagan administration. The IRS revoked, didn’t just threaten to revoke, revoked. Your 501c3 status when it was just when you were Mother Jones, please tell that story. Yeah, I found myself going back to that story, um, recently. This was obviously also before my time at Mother Jones, but I had always heard of it, and, you know, this is a year when a lot of nonprofit organizations have really been worried about what kind of action could be taken against them by a hostile federal government and the IRS is a really obvious tool given how important the nonprofit status is. Um, to an organization and so I thought, well, Mother Jones, you know, is here, um, now, um, as part of our newly formed Center for Investigative Reporting. We’ve been here for 50 years just about and so clearly we survived this encounter with the IRS in the 80s. Let me go back to that and see if there’s some lessons and maybe hope to be drawn, um. For organizations now. And the primary lesson that I took from it is that as with so many other things, um, you know, we have been here before in different ways, history doesn’t repeat itself but it rhymes, but literally in the um Reagan years, there was uh there was an attempt to defund what they call defund the left, um, Richard Viguerie, who was one of the godfathers of the modern um right. He said what the federal government needs to do is remove the nonprofit designation from organizations that do things that we disapprove of such as registering voters, especially black and brown voters, you know, how, how dare you do that? Organizations that advance um the rights of women, etc. etc. And um Mother Jones specifically had been going through a routine audit that started in the Carter administration, you know, the magazine was just a baby magazine at that time. They were, uh, it was 3 years old, um, but it had already become one of, um, I think actually the, um, Biggest um progressive leaning magazine in America. There was a real appetite for the kind of investigative journalism that it was doing, and so, um, the team sent over all the information that the IRS asked for and waited and then Reagan took office and they started getting these increasingly aggressive requests for information, um, and It dragged out like donors or what, what, what, what types of how deep was the inquiry? like what were they, what were they seeking? Well, you know, some of this is, you know, some of this I had to extract from some dusty filing boxes, but some of it is also lost to history, but what I could see was, um, it was really about whether because Mother Jones, um, at the time there were not a lot of nonprofit news organizations. There was public radio and television. And there were a handful of nonprofit magazines, uh, National Geographic, Harper’s, you know, organizations like that, but it was not yet a really common thing. And so the IRS was saying, well, look at this, you’re selling subscriptions. Um, isn’t that, uh, doesn’t that make you not qualify as a nonprofit organization? And so, um, the magazine team and at that point they hired a lawyer, um, whose name, um. Is Tom Silier, one of the godfathers of, you know, nonprofit law in the country, um, now I’ve said Godfather twice. It must be, uh, you rub it I said Podfather. I, I said podfather. Well, it’s it’s, it’s inspired me. Uh, so they, um, they would send over the information, they would show, uh, essentially the IRS ended up claiming that this was a profit-making enterprise and so they sent over a lot of information saying, are you kidding? We lose hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. We’re, we’re paying our staff a fraction of what staff would be paid. At a fancy glossy magazine, we are, uh, the mainstays of magazine advertising at that time were car ads and cigarette ads, and right out of the gate, Mother Jones had invested, uh, had had investigated the Ford Pinto and the tobacco industry, so, you know, bye-bye to that revenue, um. But the um the IRS eventually determined that um Mother Jones was uh not a nonprofit, did not qualify for a nonprofit designation even though it had previously already received it and um pulled that designation. And so the second lesson um that I took from this episode is that’s not the end of the story. Um, there is an appeals process. Um, it is not easy. You would rather not have to go through it, but Mother Jones, in fact, appealed to a higher level of decision making within the IRS, um, and actually prevailed at that point, um, and the letter that the, um, I think it was the, you know, office for the Western Region essentially wrote back was it, you know, we do notice that um everything you’re doing is antithetical to making a profit like making uh the car and tobacco companies mad. So, um, we prevailed at that point. This was, um, 3 or 4 years into the process, so there had been quite a bit of legal expenses. There had been, you know, an incredible amount of staff time put into it. Um, the editor in chief at that time was also audited personally 3 years in a row, so it was a lot of, you know, probably put a couple of premature gray hairs on her head. But the appeal did prevail and had it not, there would have also been an option to appeal in the courts. So this is not a, you know, once and done kind of process. There is, there are rules around it and um you can make a nonprofit organization sweat and struggle and pay, but you can’t make it go away overnight. So there’s a lesson of tenacity, uh, not surrender. Uh, there’s also a personal aspect to it. You said the, the CEO was personally audited or audited? Yeah, the editor in chief was and uh I only learned this when I spoke with her recently, she said, oh yeah, by the way, I had to go through 3 years of separate audits and there’s no way to prove that this was targeted, but what a coincidence. Yeah, yeah. The likelihood of an individual being Uh, a audited is is. Even then was very, very small and coincident with the With the organizational inquiry, yeah, yeah. Um, of course, the concern today is that You know that that higher level of appeal, uh, starting within Whether it’s IRS or Department of Justice or FBI where wherever you might be appealing to, um, is not gonna, is not gonna be as objective as it would have been in sounds like this was all early 1980s. It sounds like this played out like 79 to 1983, 84, somewhere around there, yeah, um. I guess I should reveal too at that time, oh, at first I was a student, but then in 1984 I joined the Air Force, so I was actually part of the, uh, you know, I mean, I was a military member of the Reagan administration, um. Thanks for your service, Tony. So, uh, thank you, Monica. Um. So, but my, my, our concern today, now, 40 years later, is that uh you’re not gonna get a level-headed appeal and then even if it ends up in the courts. You know, we’re so divided, uh, I’m just. I’m not saying I wouldn’t be optimistic, but, and I, not certainly not saying that I wouldn’t pursue all potential appeals, but it just feels like. More of an uphill climb than it would have been in the early 1980s. For sure and um I will say even back then um the advice of the lawyers representing Mother Jones actually was don’t put too much hope in the IRS bureaucracy because the climate is such that they’re not gonna want to stick their neck out and you know, find in favor of you, you probably will have to go to court, so it was a pleasant surprise when they prevailed at the appeals level. And I think there are too, um, maybe we shouldn’t assume that everybody in these vast bureaucracies is equally willing to um carry out a political vendetta should that be the case, um. And, you know, certainly taking your case to the courts is Um, is a roll of the dice, but it’s a roll of the dice within a system that still does exist and that still has, um, Rules and laws and rules and laws that affect a wide range of organizations, you know, that’s, I think the other piece that’s worth remembering is there are nonprofits. Representing every, uh, every type of political and ideological and, you know, mission provenance, and so. There are many, many, um, there are, you know, for example, conservative news organizations, um, that don’t want an IRS to go after them for political reasons just as much as they might not want the IRS to go after um a perhaps more progressively inclined organization, so. Uh, it’s not that easy to pick out, um, one set of nonprofits and not, um, have others take notice and think, well, am I at risk if this becomes, um, standard. Yeah, absolutely. Um, so then, given that history, How do you overcome the? Uh, the, the fear of, you know, uh, capitulating or, you know, of censoring the, the investigative work of creating you know prior restraints on your own speech. Uh, because there’s, there’s a history, so I, I know you’re not, but how do you, how do you overcome those. Fears, concerns. For, for us at the Center for Investigative Reporting and Mother Jones and Reveal, it’s just in our DNA it’s what we do and if we started dialing back, um, that really goes to the core of what people expect of us. The, the credibility that we have as journalists is that we report without fear or favor that we follow the story where it leads, uh, and so, If we start defanging, compromising, uh, that commitment, then we might as well shut down. Um, then there’s really, you know, we have compromised the core of our mission. Fair enough. Uh, Have you done anything to Proactively protect. Your, the, the institutions, um, you know, you make sure organic documents are. I’s dotted and T’s crossed, make sure that, uh, compliance with, you know, whatever state regist state registration and fundraising and solicitation and I’m just scratching the surface. You’re in you’re based in California. California is renowned as a high regulatory state. Nonprofits, uh, not an exception to that. Have you just sort of created the. You know, the, the, the, uh, the safety zone around these things that could potentially be used to uh to pick at you. That’s right. That’s, um, I think really the biggest lesson. For us, having been in the, you know, our, our work is making powerful people mad by reporting the truth that some people might not want out. And so we have been in the crosshairs for a long, long time and we have had to make sure that our financials are buttoned up, that our fact checking is rigorous, that we are um really paying attention to compliance in all 50 states. And that’s something that organizations that are a little less on the front lines, um, in that respect have really had to grapple with recently and one of the things that we have been doing, drawing on all that experience is offering our services to other primarily nonprofit media, but I’m starting to talk to um nonprofits in other fields just to help them get their um. Their head around how they need to, what they need to button up, where they need to be careful, um, how many years they need to hang on to their key financial documents for, um, because you don’t wanna be, you know, Al Capone who gets taken down for taxes, um, in fact, you don’t want to be Al Capone you don’t wanna be Al Capone first of all, yeah, you don’t wanna be Al Capone, but you don’t want to be a, you know, a righteous, um. Well-meaning law-abiding nonprofit that gets taken down for a mistake and avoiding those. Charitable solicitation documents in Wisconsin are are are a year old, or were signed by the treasurer and, and not the CFO or something like this. All right, yes, exactly. All right. Um, yeah, we’re gonna get to services that, that you have for, for nonprofits, especially newer nonprofits. We, I do want to talk some about that. um. So yeah, you have to make sure things are buttoned up. We’ve, we’ve had episodes on, on the show, uh, about that, about what to do with, with, um, you have a very smart. Nonprofit attorney in San Francisco. I don’t know if you know Gene Takagi, but yes, you do. He is the I love Gene’s blog. You know it, nonprofitlawblog.com, wildly popular. He’s the, uh, he’s the legal contributor for nonprofit radio. So he’s on every few months talking about legal topics, and he just joined us recently for our 750th show last month. But Gene has been with the show as a legal contributor for Uh, I don’t know, since like show number 7 or 10 or something like that, and we just had show number 750. Um, we love Gene. So I’m glad, I’m glad you know him, and he’s in your backyard. Um. The um So he’s talked some about, uh, he’s helped our listeners understand what to do to be proactive. It’s time for Tony’s take too. Thank you, Kate. We are recording this on Wednesday, the 10th of September. In the evening, uh, this is the day that Charlie Kirk was killed just around 2 o’clock or so Eastern time. It’s awful. Uh, I wanna, I’m gonna read the first paragraph of his Wikipedia entry to start. Charles James Kirk, October 14th, 1993 to September 10th, 2025. was an American right wing political activist, author, and media personality. He co-founded the conservative organization Turning Point USA in 2012 and was its executive director. He was the chief executive officer of Turning Point Action, Turning Point Academy, and Turning Point Faith, President of Turning Point Endowment, and a member of the Council for National Policy. Uh, I had a very different, completely unrelated Tony’s Take-Two planned, but I, I, I’ve moved just in the past couple of hours to uh to talk about. This Senseless, awful act of violence, um. This is just not what I want our country to be, that people are Attacked and in this case murdered. For their opinions. He was at a university in Utah, speaking on behalf of Turning Point USA, um. From his conservative perspective, he was under a tent that said prove me wrong. So he was open to people challenging his opinions. In fact, he was waiting. To debate, uh, a, a liberal progressive guy, uh, when he was murdered, that it was, it was all part of the program and they just hadn’t gotten to that yet. Uh, so, you know, there he is, opening himself to criticism and challenge and debate, which is, which is what we do. In the United States, we do criticize. Opposite opinions, differing opinions, and we challenge them and we debate them. We don’t, we, well. Obviously we do. We shouldn’t be. Killing each other Or in any way attacking each other. Over our opinions. Um You know, this week’s show, uh, Charlie Kirk would probably disagree with a lot of what Monica Bauerlein is saying, what Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting reports, has reported. But He wouldn’t advocate violence against Mother Jones, I’m sure, um. It’s, it’s kind of uncanny for me. I don’t wanna make this about myself, but Just this past Saturday, I bought a ticket to America Fest in Phoenix, Arizona in December. America Fest is a Right-wing conservative event that Turning Point USA hosts a couple of times a year. And I wanted to hear what Charlie Kirk and Tucker Carlson and Glenn Beck and others have to say. Uh, I don’t agree with it. You know, you know, we don’t do politics on nonprofit radio, but, you know, my Leaning is probably obvious. Uh, I don’t agree. I it’s not like I was going to have my mind changed, but I wanted to hear these guys firsthand without, uh, you know, I, I just wanted to see them live. So I’m still going and I, I imagine it’ll be a, a, a different kind of event they’ll be celebrating Charlie Kirk’s life, um, in, in this event in December, um. Which, which uh he deserves. Uh, you know, he leaves two young children, uh, he leaves a wife. And I, I wish this had not happened. I, this. You know, I said earlier, uh, we don’t, I was about to say we don’t kill people, we don’t attack people, but Uh, for their opinions, uh, that’s obviously wrong. Uh, we do. It’s just happened. Again, You know, there, there were, um, there were legislators in Minneapolis, Minnesota, uh uh uh targeted recently in their homes. Um, there was the assassination attempt against Donald Trump. Um, The judges attacked, um, you know, they’re. There are other instances that are not coming to mind, but. This is just not where we should be. And I Deeply regret that This is the awful place where we are, and I, I hope, I hope it stops. So, Charlie Kirk, rest in peace. That is Tony’s take too. OK Um, I don’t think any children should have to sit and watch their father be shot just for Having everyone has the right to speak and voice their opinions and their concerns, that’s what makes America so great, um, and so his two children should not, they were there, his children, his children and his wife were there and they should not have had to see that at all. They should not have had to go through that, um, but we also can’t forget that today there was a school shooting at Evergreen High School in Colorado. Um, do not let those stories get buried underneath all this either. Um, there is a big problem with gun violence in our In our country and so hopefully moving on the administration that we have now um can do something about this and not just start pointing fingers at one side or the other um the problem is gun violence not who’s right, who’s wrong. Well, you’re, you’re right, uh, that we, we don’t want to see finger pointing, uh. You know, it doesn’t matter who the, who the Killer is, um, you know. It’s not who did it, it’s who, like everyone has access to it, and we need to start limiting access, in my opinion. I’m sorry, I feel like your nonprofit is like not political. You can cut that if you want. Go ahead. Um, we’ve got boo but loads more time. Here’s the rest of the value of nonprofit journalism for your work with Monica Bauerle. You want to talk some, uh, and I do too, about the, the value of nonprofit journalism. In our, in our environment and, and then we’ll get to local, you know, local relationships, but just a broader, bigger picture please about the, the important role of, of nonprofit journalism. Uh, where do I begin? My favorite topic, um, but I think what I would say in a nutshell is we have had the good fortune in America that for some time, not by any stretch forever, um, the marketplace, the commercial marketplace functioned in such a way that for-profit media were able in many cases to do really high quality journalism. This has to do with the fact that Newspapers, radio stations, television stations largely had a monopoly in their markets and so they could charge you um for that subscription and more importantly, they could charge advertisers, you know, if you were a car dealership and you wanted people to know about you, you had to buy advertising in that local newspaper, that local radio station. And some of that money went to pay for local newsrooms that in many cases did excellent work the same on a national level. That’s how you got, you know, investigative and public service teams at national newspapers and broadcasters. That entire model um has been going down the tubes since the 90s, uh first with the advent of Craigslist, um that pulled the rug, the rug out from underclassified advertising. And then with the advent of large digital platforms like Google and Facebook, that can tell that local car dealership, um we can actually target your ad exactly to the people who are searching for a new car right now. So why don’t you take all the. That um budget to our platform and that is exactly what happened. Um those platforms ended up with 90 to 95% of the advertising budgets. They also work at scale. There’s a, there’s a lot there and so. Commercial for-profit publishing is essentially a dying industry in this country. It’s still hanging on, in some cases hanging on as, you know, what we think of as zombie news organizations that still, you know, they might still deliver a hunk of dead trees to your house. Um, there is still some content in there, but it’s being put together by a skeleton crew. It might not even be, you know, it might at this point be generated by people somewhere else, um. In another country by AI. And so the only, there are some exceptions, but by and large that for-profit model is dead. And we do have a nonprofit model for news that is of long standing, including public radio and television. Uh, as well as nonprofit news organizations like the Center for Investigative Reporting that put together, um, some commercial revenue. We, for example, we still sell subscriptions, um, but that’s not enough to pay for quality journalism, so we also rely on philanthropic support from mostly individual people who may give, um, you know, $5 a year. Uh, $50 at the end of the year, $2 a month in a wide range, and from, uh, larger philanthropically inclined gifts. Um, so that model has now created hundreds and hundreds, I think a total of 500 or so nonprofit news organizations around the country, and those are just the ones that are members of the Institute for Nonprofit news. So if any of your listeners are interested in finding a local nonprofit news organization in their community or a nonprofit news organization that covers the things that they care about such as climate, uh, they can go to the Institute for Nonprofit news and find one. These are great news organizations. They’re mostly um brand new within the last 10, maybe 20 years, many of them as recent as a year or 2 or 5 years old. And so the challenge of growing those organizations. Fast enough to replace uh what is being lost in commercial news is huge. It’s not growing fast enough. Americans are by and large not used to supporting news in the same way that they might support the arts or social services, but that’s where we’re gonna have to end up in order to have a functioning. Accurate news ecosystem in the country because if we don’t and you know I’ll, I’ll set up after that, the only really commercially viable way to produce news there are primarily 21 is providing really specialized information for people who can afford to pay for it, um, and the other is basically mass produced crap, um, that is, you know, pennies. pennies to the page and that generates, you know, very small amounts of advertising revenue. That’s why you get a lot of uh websites advertised to you when you’re on the internet that look like they’re providing news, but it’s really, you know, increasingly just artificial intelligence generated. Garbage. Um, so those are the options that we have. All right, well, we don’t need any, uh any shout outs or examples of the, uh, the AI created crap, but in the other, the other uh instance, the, the, the highly personalized and specialized, just what are, what are a couple of examples of those? Well, when you think about, you know, who has money to pay uh for news that they think can advance, um, primarily their professional interests, um, for example, you have a lot of specialized news that um speaks to people in the finance industry. I mean, the Wall Street Journal is a general interest newspaper, but you know, when you have an audience of people who work as, you know, who work in that industry, you probably have a revenue model, um. There are specialized trade publications that might speak to, um, you know, people in a particular industry where your office pays for a subscription because that’s valuable to you, um, and you might be somebody who really loves, um, all things cats and you might be paying for a substack newsletter that tells you a lot about what’s going on in the world of cats. Uh, those are some. Sure, yeah, substacks grown just within the past year. Yeah. Grown enormously. OK. I see that that’s, that’s an example as well as the others you mentioned. All right. And some of your listeners, for example, might be subscribing to a philanthropy publication. Um, those are also special interests that have a business model because there are people professionally interested in getting that information. Yeah, Chronicle of Philanthropy is probably the uh the most renowned. Uh, do you know Stacy Palmer, the CEO there? I know, I know of. I’ve met Stacy. OK, she, she was a guest a couple of weeks ago. Oh fantastic. Um, you know, for a long time she was editor in chief and then she, when they created their nonprofit, she became the CEO of the nonprofit and they hired Andrew Simon as the The uh editor, editor uh uh on the, on that side, and they were both on uh a few weeks ago. And that’s a great example, Tony, of uh an organization that has found that being a nonprofit that basically quality journalism is not a profit-making enterprise and that you might as well face that fact and uh commit to being a nonprofit and accountable to your readers and supporters. They’re also doing interesting work with uh the AP. They have a, they’re doing training for reporters to help them better understand and therefore better cover the nonprofit community so that it’s not all about the fraud, you know, the, the, the Navy veterans fraud charity, uh, um, helping them understand how to do better research, etc. So it’s they’re, they’re trying to broaden the understanding of the community. In the in the broader investigative journalism community, um, you have advice too about, uh, bringing this to the local level about creating relationships with local reporters. So I was heartened to hear that there are 500, uh, uh, independent nonprofit. Journalism sites. I, I wouldn’t have guessed there were that many. So I, I, I, I do take your point that we’re not creating them fast enough. To, uh, to offset the hemorrhaging on the commercial side of local reporting and investigative work, which is just so critical. Yeah, I mean it’s just, we, we have to, what is it uh uh comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, um. You know, investigative journalism, it’s just so central and but so time consuming. I mean, it can be years, uh, uh, years of I, I, I mean, you know better than I, who I, who am I telling you? Who am I telling? Um, I’m, I’m sharing the little bit that I know that it can be, it could be years investigating something and having it come to fruition or not, or not even. I mean, every, every investigation, just like every criminal investigation doesn’t lead to, uh, a revelation, you know, they don’t, they don’t all create the Me Too movement. You know it Tony Harvey Weinstein, so you know, just the, the work is just so central, but often fruitless and thankless for the for the stories that don’t end up being stories. And let me put in a plug too for, you know, like you said, just a sort of shoe leather grind of covering stories that might not be investigative in nature, but somebody has to go down to City Hall and ask the questions. Somebody has to figure out. You know, what’s going on um with a local developers, you know, there’s just so many stories that don’t get done when you have, when you don’t have boots on the ground and one of the uh challenges for a lot of these local nonprofit news organizations is they might be 2 or 3 people, they might be one person, and um so I really would urge your listeners to find. The local or national or um topic oriented news organizations that covers the work that they care about and just check them out. The content is always gonna be free and then you can always make a decision down the road about um whether you want to support them, but even just engaging with the content, letting them know that you’re there and that you care about the work that they do is so valuable. And let’s say more about creating these relationships with local reporters, um. You know, exposing them to your work and, and, but getting them to know you before you are pitching a story, you know, like we don’t, you know, first date, you know, you’re not asking for a hand in marriage. So help us create these relationships with burdened, uh, underresourced. But still story hungry, I mean, these journalists still have to produce stories uh and content, but creating that relationship before you’re, you’re asking for something. Mhm. That’s such a great question. Uh, and Let me just, uh, Share with you what it looks like from the perspective of a local journalist, which is where I started in my career. Everybody wants you to cover what they do. Everybody wants you to pick up their press release, um, everybody, uh, basically wants publicity for their organization and as a journalist you’re thinking about well what is it that. The people who um go to my website who read my content actually care about. They might not care about a press release, um, but they might and they might not care about, you know, uh uh an appointment of a new CEO, but what they care about is, here’s an organization. In my universe, in my community that does something that is making a difference, that is changing things that might even be relevant to me personally, or, or that is in the middle of an important story for this community that they can help me unlock um. So That’s, I think the mismatch sometimes can be as a nonprofit leader, a non-profit person, you’re looking at how can I get the media to cover. The work that I do, um, the organization that I represent, and as a journalist, you’re looking for, can you tell me a story of how something is changing, uh, that my, that my audience will care about. And every nonprofit has a story of how things are changing, um, you know, they might be, and they’re usually in the middle of really interesting stories. So let’s say, you know, you’re a food bank and you’re finding, I’m, you know, this is a pure hypothetical, but let’s say you’re a food bank and at this moment in time you’re finding that people are much more hesitant to come to you. Um, because there’s, um, because they’re afraid of immigration enforcement and some of them might be undocumented. Um, just that fact that you are seeing these repercussions is something that’s gonna be of interest to a reporter. Um, you might also be, again, this is your hypothetical, but, you know, maybe you’ve thought about, um, is there a way that we can get our services to people who are afraid of coming to our location. Uh, that’s an incredible story. Now you’ve not only identified. A new phenomenon, um, but you also are sharing a solution that is giving people some inspiration and hope. So those are the kinds of stories, um, That reporters will connect with and the best way that I know um to get to make those connections with those reporters is of course first to follow their work. If you work in a community, you are naturally going to be interested in the um work of a local or topic specific newsroom anyway. You are, you know, if you work um. Uh, let me give you an example. If you work, uh, in San Francisco, in the Mission neighborhood, you’re going to want to follow the work of Mission Local, which is a nonprofit newsroom there, because, uh, that is a newsroom that serves the same community that you serve. So once you’re following them and you see the kinds of stories that they cover, and you see the names of the reporters, they’re only going to be a handful because, you know, those newsrooms are all very small, um. All of those reporters are gonna want to hear from you. The bylines will probably be linked to an email or they might be on a social platform that you’re also on that you can message them on. So it helps immensely to say I follow your work, I saw your story on X, um, I have something related that I would love to share, um. Mm And That might feel like a lot of work, but it’s only one more step from ingesting the information that you probably need anyway about your community. It’s that one more step of identifying who is this reporter, and can I let them know that I’m already familiar with their work so that I’m not one of the 999 unsolicited press releases that show up in that person’s inbox. Press releases, you’ve mentioned those a couple of times. Uh, do those, do those work anymore? Are, are they, is there, is there any value in them? It depends on who you are. Um, I would say, you know, if your story is potentially of interest. To, well, there are a couple of reasons. You might just want a press release because press releases end up being on the internet, um, via organizations like PR Newswire, and you might just want to have created a record. It’s like making a, it’s like creating a blog post you may. I wanted to send out a press release about your new CEO and it’s really just so that in the future, you know, for example, any funder that might be interested in your organization can find that press release about your CEO. That’s a legitimate reason. It’s not really, uh, designed for the press, um. If you’re looking to gain breasts, I think the only releases that are effective. are ones that are going to be of Interest to a broad number of news outlets because your, your odds of any one reporter, any one news organization seeing your particular press release are pretty slim. So, um, you know, let’s say they’re 1 in 100, you’re gonna wanna make sure that there’s at least 100 that are potentially interested. So that rules out most local work I would say, um. If you’re in a local community and you have news to announce, you’re probably better off if there’s probably only 2 or 3 reporters max who are covering the kind of work that you do say you’re a housing organization, um, there’s not a city in America with the exception of, you know, maybe our 2 or 3 largest cities that is going to have, uh, more than 1 or 2 housing reporters, so you just want to find those people, um, and send the information to them directly. OK, OK. And then, how about just the relationship, uh again, just Without, without having something to pitch in the moment, but just having. Awareness in your, uh, at the local, the local paper, uh, I’m thinking of the one, I live in a small town in North Carolina and two towns over, there’s, there’s a, there’s a little outlet. Um, it, it shares a. It shares a building with a yarn shop, just kind of like creates a creates an image of a sleepy, you know, small news outlet, uh, but they’re. You know, their, uh, their paper boxes are, are throughout, throughout the, I don’t know, throughout my part of the county anyway, so they’re, you know, producing, they’re, they’re producing the paper, what you call it the, the, the dead tree, you know, the dead tree model, there’s that, uh, and they’re online, of course, too, but there’s just the fact that they’re with a yarn shop is like kind of like, uh, just creates an image of something small and small and and uh and sleepy. But still homespun homespun, very good homespun. So just, just to having them, local, local outlet be aware of your work. And, and how you could potentially relate to a bigger story, um, just, just so they know what you do without, without any. Idea now for what, what we might do together. Yeah. I think reaching out and just letting them know that you follow their work um and this is what this is what you do and if they ever are interested, reporters need sources, um, so. Um, You know, Tony, you Let’s take you as an example, um, you know, you are a local expert on nonprofits and philanthropy. Um, if you contact, um, somebody in that newsroom and say, you know, I know you probably don’t do that much coverage of the sector that I’m in, but I just wanna let you know I’m here. I love your work, and if you ever need, um, somebody to talk to for a story on a nonprofit here locally, I’m happy to help out. Um, that’s gold for a journalist. That’s really helpful. OK. I may go to the yarn shop and uh Tidewater news, and it’s tidewater news. Um, Let let’s shift to what uh. The Center for Investigative Reporting is doing for, for nonprofits. You, you’ve got some services. I think especially for newer. Nonprofits, how can we reach these services? What are, what are they? Uh, so the genesis of this is we have, uh, because we have been in the crosshairs for some time, uh, we have always had to be pretty buttoned up on our non-program side, you know, our finance team, our HR team, uh, etc. have all had to be top notch and so we, uh. Used to get a lot of requests uh from folks who wanted advice, who wanted to help us out, help them out with a project, who wanted to us to help them find somebody who could handle um their finance, their accounting, their budgeting, etc. so we finally said maybe, maybe they actually need us um to do this for them for a fee and uh so we started offering um. A service where we handle, it’s not, you know, we’re not a huge consultancy but we feel that with it started with media organizations um and as a fellow nonprofit news organization we just understand the challenges and the issues that those organizations are dealing with better I think than a, you know, local bookkeeper or a third party accounting service, um, and. Um, we also handle some of the things that these organizations need to do like figuring out their newsletter strategy or figuring out, uh, if they happen to have a print magazine like we do, um, that’s a big challenge. We can, um, sometimes run that for them. And what we’ve seen in the past year or so is that it’s not just media organizations that have these challenges of, you know, making sure their financials are audit ready, making sure that they’re in compliance with labor law in all the states that they operate in, making sure that they understand this is an area of expertise that um. Obviously news organizations have, but that is relevant to other organizations, making sure that they understand libel law, you know, if you put out a report that you publish on the internet or that you send out via your newsletter, you need to be thinking, have I looked at whether this is defaming potentially defaming anybody, um. You know, we just saw a huge defamation verdict against Greenpeace. Um, that is, you know, we all we see regular slap litigation strategic lawsuits against public participation against local nonprofits and activists. Those are often grounded in defamation law and um so we obviously can’t be somebody’s lawyer, but we can bring some expertise in how you Waterproof uh your content ahead of time so that you don’t end up in trouble, um, for libel or slander. So the work is beyond media nonprofits now. Exactly. So we have started offering this to other nonprofits, um, who deal with some of the cha the same challenges that uh that media nonprofits do. OK, and we can find help, you mentioned human resources. Uh, the, um, uh, media, I’m sorry, marketing communications. Is it, what, what, what categories can we find help in? Primarily, and, you know, I will say this is, this is still something that we are exploring how we can be the most useful. It’s not, you know, we are not one of those large third party vendors that just has a suite of, you know, Uh, services to choose from and that is gonna give you an upsell we’re really trying to tailor what we do, uh, to the partners that we’re working with. Um, the primary areas in which we have expertise that really is ready to go are, you know, finance, accounting, budgeting, financial planning, um, is one big area, um. Uh, compliance, um, on every front is another big area, and we have some trainings available on things like media law that we can also help people out with that usually come with some of the other services. And where do we access these? Uh, we, um, are just in the process of, uh, sharing this information more widely. What I would recommend is in the Um, What I would actually recommend uh right now to your listeners is, um, just, uh, Email me directly. Uh, that’s going to be Monica at CIR.org. Uh, we will have a more public facing, uh, set of materials available, but, um, at the moment we really wanna work with people one on one to make sure, um. That we can help them and it’s uh Monica with a K, so Monica at CIR.org. OK. All right. And let’s close with um Your own, uh, little infomercial, please about uh. Mother Jones and Reveal, and the new podcast, more to the story. Share what, uh, I mean, I, I know Mother Jones. Uh, I don’t, I’m not familiar with the other uh the other channels, the other outlets, but, uh, share what, what folks are gonna find. What I, uh, thank you so much. What I have found recently is that a lot of people are really dialing back their news consumption, their, you know, finding the news that is coming at them from all sides, depressing, overwhelming, uh, exhausting, um, you know, you name, uh, you name the adjective. Um, what we do is we try to not hit you. With content 24/7. Um, you know, we do publish new content every day, but we might do it 2 or 3 times a day and not, you know, 20 times a day. And a lot of what and those are going to be um updates on stories that are happening that are. The most important or the ones that people aren’t gonna see elsewhere. But then the core of our work really is, uh, deeper reporting, investigations, um, immersive stories that are for those times when, you know, you’re not ready to go doom scrolling for 3 hours. That’s not good for anybody’s health, but you’re ready to spend a half hour or an hour listening to somebody, um, telling you a really important story that’s via our podcast and our radio show. Um, both of which, um, people can find by searching for reveal podcast, um, and people might also already be hearing the show on their local public radio stations. That’s also happening via our print magazine, you know, it comes to you just 6 times a year, so it’s not this. Onslaught of information. It’s 6 times a year. We’ve, it’s almost like a subscription package, right? We’ve thought about, you know, sending you Uh, 56, 12 articles that we have really thought deeply about that are, uh, written compellingly that have amazing photography and that tell you something deeper about the world that you’re living in. All of that content is also on our. Site we don’t have a paywall. You, uh, we wanna make sure that it’s available for everybody for free and people who choose to support the work, um, do that and we are, you know, that means the world that’s the lifeblood of our journalism but that’s what we try to do is, you know, bring you in depth and investigative reporting that is missing, um. From the news landscape that you see elsewhere and that is not assaulting you 24/7. Well thank you for your work, Monica. Thank you so much. Monica Bauerle, Monica with a K. You’ll find her on Blue Sky at Monica B. And uh you’ll find Mother Jones at Mother Jones.com and reveal at revealnews.org. And again, the podcast, the newer, the newest podcast is More to the story. Thanks very much for sharing all this, Monica. Thanks for your work. Thanks so much for your work, Tony. What an incredible news source for the nonprofit community. Yeah, thank you. Next week, Amy Sample War and Gene Takagi together to share what they’re hearing about cybersecurity, AI, the state of the sector, and more. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you. Find it at Tony Martignetti.com. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer Kate Martignetti. The show’s social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation, Scotty. Be with us next week for nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Go out and be great.