Capital Plan, 2015-2017

Executive Summary

Who we are: The Solutions Journalism Network (SJN) is an independent, non-profit organization founded in 2012 by three leading journalists – David Bornstein, Tina Rosenberg and Courtney Martin – who have assembled a team with deep and diverse news industry experience.

Our Theory of Change: SJN is leading a shift in journalism that will enable society to adapt to the challenges of the 21st century. We are legitimizing and spreading a new form of journalism – solutions journalism: rigorous and compelling reporting about responses to problems. Solutions journalism provides a feedback system that allows society to see credible possibilities and respond more successfully to emerging challenges.

How it works: SJN offers reporters and editors a rationale and an approach that addresses core editorial and business needs, and engages audiences. We provide training, tools, access to research, and catalytic support for solutions journalism to be built into daily work. We seek to transform journalistic practice and aspiration, so news organizations see value self- investing in this approach. As journalists and newsrooms undergo a conversion to this practice, we connect them in a network to disseminate the approach to others, uphold standards, and continually refine the practice.

What we have accomplished: SJN has brought this approach to more than 30 news outlets and trained or mentored more than 800 journalists. Through our efforts, we have established “solutions journalism” as a new category of journalism that is attracting significant attention. We have conducted early research to evaluate the distinctive value of solutions journalism to news organizations. Our co-branded Education Lab project with the Seattle Times has generated national attention and produced high-impact reporting and key knowledge to guide other newsrooms. Our story funds have seeded 20 projects over a variety of issue areas and geographies. And our “positive-deviant” health data initiative has introduced a novel methodology for identifying solutions stories in 12 major newsrooms.

Our 3-year plan: SJN will build out our programs in 3 areas: • Education: SJN will develop interactive online courses, training tools for professional and student journalists, and university-based journalism school courses; • Practice change: SJN will lead newsrooms through a process involving orientations, mentoring, research connections and, when advantageous, targeted financial support to drive self-sustaining changes. Our first Solutions Engine is focused on public health, with an emphasis on violence prevention and reduction. • Mass spread: We are designing an online hub and offline activities that leverage our curriculum and newsroom work, extending practice change to a broad network. Total investment required: We are raising $7.5 million in funding to reach and transform practice among 100 newsrooms and 5,000 journalists by year-end 2017.

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I. Introduction

The news focuses on what’s going wrong in the world, showcasing problems but often omitting responses that show results. This negative feedback model has unintended, but serious consequences for society. The Solutions Journalism Network (SJN) addresses this situation by spreading a groundbreaking new approach—solutions journalism.

SJN aspires to lead a practice change in journalism. We believe that rigorous and compelling reporting about responses to social problems can strengthen society by increasing the circulation of knowledge necessary for citizens to engage powerfully with issues in their communities. By spotlighting not just problems, but the landscape of Less tunnel. More light. responses emerging to solve them – and by revealing caring and ingenuity The whole story in addition to indifference and incompetence – journalists offer a more faithful view of the world and a more accurate sense of possibility. They expand the space in society for agency, as well as human connection, concern and engagement. In the words of one of our reporter partners, solutions journalism provides “hope with teeth.”

Solutions journalism works by augmenting the press’ traditional watchdog role with a new complimentary role: spotlighting ways that society is adapting to emerging challenges. Consciousness precedes being: Before people can build a better world, they must believe that one is possible, and they must be aware of the tools and ideas that are available. Solutions journalism is necessary for citizens, public officials, investors and funders to make good decisions about how to deploy their talents and resources.

SJN is advancing this shift by offering journalists a rationale and method that addresses core editorial, business and audience Journalists must needs. We show how this practice can yield serious and more circulate knowledge engaging news. We advance the application of solutions about problems and reporting in newsrooms by offering tools, training, and potential responses— resources for journalists to embed this approach in daily work. and help people see the strengths and SJN is laying a foundation for national impact, bringing this limitations of different approach to dozens of news outlets while conducting research approaches. to understand the most cost-effective way to achieve sustainable practice change and the most powerful way to communicate value to news organizations. We’re constructing a platform over the coming three years that will enable SJN to spread this practice quickly and efficiently through a network of journalist practitioners and leaders and news organizations. We expect to achieve impact at three levels:

. Journalist practice change: Reporters and editors embrace solutions journalism and sustain the approach after exposure and initial guided practice.

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. Changed relationship between news organization and audience: Stories with a solutions component engage readers and viewers in ways that are demonstrably more powerful and mutually beneficial than stories that dwell mainly on problems. . Changed relationship between audience and issue: Solutions journalism generates better public conversations that can improve citizenship, leading to greater social engagement and problem solving. We are attempting to measure this effect systematically, although such metrics historically have proven challenging to obtain.

This prospectus describes our plan to drive this change forward and proposes a rationale for investment. We are raising $7.5 million in funding to reach and transform practice among 100 newsrooms and 5,000 journalists by year-end 2017. We plan to leverage this platform to spread solutions journalism nationally.

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II. The Case for Solutions Journalism

The news has a blind spot. Journalists report on the world’s problems, but regularly fail to highlight and explain helpful responses, even when they show evidence of effectiveness. As James Fallows of The Atlantic has written: “The average journalist, normally so directed and morally self-confident, shrinks instinctively from considering solutions.”

As a result, people know far more about what’s wrong with society than what’s being done to improve it. This omission leads people to feel overwhelmed and helpless. Research indicates that when the news consistently raises awareness about problems without showing what can be done about them, it reduces citizens’ sense of efficacy, and leads them to tune out and disengage from public life. Over time, the “problem frame” of news gets into the marrow of society, increasing fear, reducing trust, and perpetuating a narrative of decline that can become self-fulfilling.

Ironically, journalism—a feedback system meant to help society self-correct—has become an impediment to social innovation. By omitting credible efforts to solve problems, it reduces the chances that vital work will gain the attention of policy makers, researchers, funders, or citizens, and inspire corrective action.

Like many problems, the flipside is an opportunity. We need to open up space within the news for rigorous coverage of potential solutions. This will spark citizen agency, enhance respect, strengthen political participation, and reveal avenues for people to work together toward common aspirations. It will allow the marketplace of ideas to function as it should.

As solutions journalism has gained traction, it has demonstrated early potential to elevate public discourse, reduce polarization, and energize citizen agency. In a recent randomized nationwide survey of 750 Americans, individuals who read a solutions story (compared to a similar non-solutions version) were significantly more likely to say they would be interested in getting involved in a response to the problem. They also said they would be more likely to share it on social media and read more stories in that newspaper. (See Appendix for expanded findings.)

These findings, alongside considerable anecdotal evidence from our newsroom partnerships, story fund projects, and other initiatives suggest that people are hungry for good reporting that links problems and responses. Many are tired of fractious arguments and yearn for constructive discourse. As news organizations struggle to avoid commoditization in the age

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Capital Plan, 2015-2017 of Google News, solutions journalism may help them differentiate themselves and win audiences back.

A Wedge Moment When we launched SJN, we expected to encounter opposition from journalists because it challenged traditional assumptions. However, doors have opened in ways we hadn’t imagined – among news organizations from different regions, working in different media types, and across the political spectrum. Why is the time ripe for this change?

• Journalism is in crisis, so everyone is seeking new models. Audiences are not • Audiences are demanding news that helps them to satisfied by news imagine and build a better world. that generates • Journalists are yearning for dignified ways to serve the outrage and public interest. frustration while • The landscape of dynamic responses to problems has failing to provide multiplied – creating a striking disconnect between practical ideas and reality and the bleaker version that the news presents. actionable opportunities. Solutions journalism is, in short, the right approach at a crucial moment – for the news industry, and for society.

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III. Spreading the Practice of Solutions Journalism

Where We’ve Come In mid-2013, SJN launched “Education Lab” with The Seattle Times, the first big test of the solutions approach in a major metro daily (with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Knight Foundation). Conceived as a one-year demonstration project, our goal was to create a powerful proof point in a newsroom highly respected for its tough investigative reporting and develop tools and resources focusing on the question: How can you implement solutions journalism in your newsroom?

“Education Lab” has surpassed our expectations. Both The Seattle Times and the Gates Foundation upgraded their aspirations mid-course and decided to extend the project for an additional year because the response from both the public and the newsroom was so encouraging. Nearly 90% of respondents to a recent audience survey said they “appreciated the focus on a solution that seemed to be working,” and about two- thirds reported that EdLab stories had “changed the way I think about” an education topic.

Seattle Times reporters, many of whom had initially been skeptical of the project, have come to embrace the model. The Times promoted one of its Education Lab reporters, Linda Shaw, to be education editor. Another staffer, Sharon Chan, was promoted to a new position, Director of Special Initiatives, and is now charged with initiating and raising funding for other projects modeled after Education Lab. The editor-in-chief has committed publicly not just to advancing solutions reporting on education but to applying the approach to other coverage areas, as well.

When our project began, about 10 percent of the paper’s education coverage referenced solutions, with little detailed coverage about how they work. Today, The Times’ managing editor and education reporters assert that solutions journalism should comprise 40 to 50 percent of its education coverage. To this end, The Times is exploring how to mix solutions journalism into a wide range of education coverage, experimenting with different story structures and lengths and integrating solutions coverage with investigations. It will also function as a “laboratory” for education reporters in other newsrooms who want to apply the solutions lens to their work. The “lab” will generate a steady stream of online learning products culminating in a live convening of journalists and education experts in September, 2015.

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This was our hope: to move the paper from exposure to experimentation to self-investing, sustained practice – and then to ambassadorship, spreading solutions journalism to other news organizations.

SJN has initiated relationships with 30 other news organizations – from major TV news organizations like ABC, NBC and Univision, to online news sites like Yahoo! News, to metro dailies like The San Francisco Chronicle, to NPR affiliates like KPCC or KQED, to smaller news organizations like the Fayetteville Observer. Our partners have produced great journalism on topics that include efforts to help veterans, improve justice, promote public health, reduce violence, improve education outcomes, promote social and emotional learning, and other issues. With each of these engagements, we are looking to refine our approach and learn how to advance this practice change in the most scalable manner.

Additionally, our story funds have yielded 20 individual reporting projects on climate change resilience, social and emotional learning, and women’s economic equity – a critical mass of solutions-oriented model stories that have become crucial teaching tools.

Nearly every news organization we have approached has shown interest in working with us. In some cases, a practice shift has occurred shortly after a brief engagement. Yahoo! News launched its ‘Solutions Revolution’ series following a single, exploratory conversation with senior editors there.

We are now working in partnership with some of the most highly respected investigative news organizations in the country. We are developing a project with the Center for Public Integrity that will look at alternatives to incarceration for adjudicated youths and alternatives to school policing to improve school safety.

From all of these engagements, SJN continues to refine its training methodology and curriculum. We’re getting more persuasive at articulating the rationale for solutions reporting and reducing defensiveness where it arises. Our first comprehensive online toolkit will launch in late 2014. In addition, we conducted the first online webinar at Poynter’s NewsU in solutions journalism. We continue to map out the tools that journalists need to put the idea into practice. The resources are being assembled on our website, which will grow into a learning hub for broader network outreach.

What We’ve Learned Winning adoption means challenging assumptions, particularly the assumption that the primary role of a journalist is to be a watchdog. That has turned out to be easier than expected. Our presentations successfully overcome skepticism from even the most hardboiled reporters.

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Our main challenge is learning how to cost-effectively and systematically shift daily practice in newsrooms. The solutions journalism model is relatively easy to comprehend. However, because of competing demands and time pressures in newsrooms it takes a combination of motivation, education and practical incentives to elicit behavior changes among individual journalists as well as across newsrooms. We track our progress against an “engagement continuum” that begins with exposure to this idea and advances towards sustained practice and advocacy. We’re refining our approach continually to find the right mix.

Looking ahead, the next major challenge will be harnessing our newsroom partnerships to build a platform that can spread and institutionalize the practice broadly through a network. We have come to see that there is considerably more demand for this practice than we can serve through a direct-to-newsroom delivery model.

Where We’re Heading Our work is guided by the aspirational questions: How can we advance a wholesale culture change in journalism that will multiply its capability to circulate knowledge about promising models for our most pressing challenges? How can we realize sustained practice change with progressively less investment of effort and funding? And how can we quickly and credibly spread what we’ve learned across ever-larger networks?

We know that there is a broad appetite in journalism for three integrated approaches:

• Education and curriculum-development that make the rationale and the practice of solutions journalism compelling, accessible and teachable at multiple levels. • Newsroom-based projects that bring the practice to life, moving journalists and news organizations toward sustained adoption. • Network services that harness the demonstration power of the projects to spread the practice change broadly and continually refine the approach. As we move forward, we are focusing on ways to gain efficiencies and maximize success, pursuing experiments to test different tactics to reach, support and influence journalists, and disseminate the approach. They include more careful screening of partners, fellowships and gatherings in addition to direct newsroom trainings, curriculum development and outreach to journalism schools and apex organizations, strategic demonstration projects, live networking and training events, and online networking. Each of these is designed to build motivation, reduce barriers, simplify tools, and harness more and more editors and journalists as trainers and ambassadors. We expect the specifics of the programs to evolve considerably over the next three years. The laboratory approach is necessary to discover how to realize broad-based practice change.

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IV. SJN’s 3-year Plan to Launch the Shift

Building on our exploratory work in 2013 and 2014, we have adopted a three-year plan to accelerate the shift described above, focused on the following streams of activities:

• Education: Introducing the concept and practice to journalists, editors and publishers, journalism and communications schools, and media organizations, through:

Online tools. We define and explain solutions journalism through models, tools and research linkages to make the practice accessible across media, geography, and beats.

Training materials and curriculum. SJN packages the rationale for and mechanics of solutions reporting in live trainings for newsroom staffs and in online and college courses tailored for professional journalists and journalism students.

• Practice change: Bringing solutions journalism to life in a variety of news organizations, demonstrating its advantages with regard to social impact, journalistic values, and business goals, and amassing data and other forms of evidence to move newsrooms from exposure to sustained adoption.

Newsroom Orientations. Staff meetings introduce news organizations to the rationale for and practice of solutions journalism, creating a gateway to practice change activities.

Engines. The “Solutions Engine” is an issue-focused spread strategy that deploys a standardized, low-cost combination of training and coaching; a data or evidence “concierge” function in a research organization (to help reporters identify evidence- based stories); funding to jump-start solutions-oriented reporting projects; and/or assistance with outcome tracking.

Engine-plus. Where newsrooms demonstrate special potential to sustain high quality practice of solutions journalism and are positioned to help SJN spread the practice to others; and where a specific project has a likelihood to generate powerful audience engagement and impact, SJN will forge higher-investment, deeper partnerships.

Fellowships. We identify and convene promising or influential journalists (focusing on the same issue areas as the Engines) to deepen their commitment to the solutions approach, build excitement and trust, support their work, and identify potential ambassadors or co-trainers. We aim to assemble leading and emerging journalists representing diverse communities. We will recruit journalists based on the quality of their proposals, from both Engine and non-Engine newsrooms.

• Mass spread: Building upon our curriculum development and newsroom activities, we engage journalists and key influencers to form an expanding, collaborative community of journalists and news organizations.

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Online network. SJN creates a platform where journalists can learn about the foundational skills and techniques of solutions journalism; share work, challenges and experiences; and collaborate on dynamic tools and guides.

Offline events. SJN organizes or works with journalist leaders who organize regional- or issue-focused gatherings and trainings focusing on solutions journalism. These local events feed into a national SJN-hosted summit.

Our programs assume that practice change follows a generally predictable engagement continuum for both individual journalists and news organizations, as outlined on the following page. Using this continuum as a guide, we seek to gain increased clarity about our progress and appropriate next steps for each client, rough estimates about conversion costs, and insights into where we are succeeding and where we are not, including whom to prioritize (e.g., early adopters and early majority) and whom to sidestep for now (e.g., later adopters, laggards).

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SJN Engagement Continuum Engagement stage Individual journalist Newsroom

Awareness Exposed to solutions Top editor develops interest via journalism via peer peer connections or direct connections, events, or outreach by SJN fellowship outreach Orientation Takes online webinar/ Live newsroom orientation with course, downloads toolkit editor as internal champion INTRODUCTION Affiliation Joins SJN network; connects Commits to Engine or Engine- via social media; and/or plus relationship

applies for fellowship Adoption Produces initial solutions Engine collaboration yields stories initial stories

EXECUTION Intensive practice Fellowship increases skill, Engine-plus expanded project deepens commitment demands high institutional investment Sustained Produces at least three Solutions approach is entrenched practice quality stories over first year; and self-funded in one coverage network recognition area, reinforced by engagement reinforces practice metrics. Editor commits to spreading practice. Advocacy Informally shares solutions Shares approach across Engine approach with peers across newsroom network; participates network in public events Ambassadorship Trained as solutions Hosts newsroom “laboratory,” journalism mentor; spreads making its learning available to practice change within a other newsrooms INTEGRATION & SPREAD

coverage area or geography

Individuals and newsrooms may enter the continuum at different levels; some will come to us with confidence and expertise in the solutions approach already established, others less so – and the pathway through SJN’s services should, therefore, be flexible. Ultimately, we will judge our success in terms of yields: How many of the journalists and news organizations we engage with can advance to the “Integration & Spread” stages – the level at which they sustain practice change and, in some cases, help to drive the proliferation of our approach.

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V. Our Programs

SJN’s programs aim to catalyze practice change, taking journalists and newsrooms from exposure to the idea to early application to long-term adoption. These activities are intended to be accessible, and to provide value to journalists and organizations across a wide range of experience, professional development, and contextual demands. They are also intended to catalyze sustainable adoption: We provide training, mentoring, and, in some cases, financial support in the early stages of a relationship; but we expect that, over time, the clear value of solutions stories to news organizations and audiences will encourage journalists and newsrooms to self-invest in the practice – and, in the most successful cases, to help spread the practice – without continued direct assistance from SJN.

While we have designed these activities to inform and flow sequentially into each other, we understand that journalists and newsrooms approach us with diverse needs and contexts. We don’t expect there to be a single, optimal pathway to success; rather we expect to accommodate our constituents’ needs with services at higher and lower levels of intensity and investment.

Our programs comprise three integrated approaches: Education, Practice Change, and Mass Spread.

A. Education Initially, we introduce solutions journalism through direct, hands-on orientations, mentoring and other engagement. SJN’s curricula and tools detail what solutions journalism is, why it matters, when to make use of it, how it fits into the theory and evolution of journalism, and how it connects to the emerging interest around news engagement and media impact. It provides an accessible explanation of the craft, with specific modules aimed at beats, issue areas, and different media types.

SJN brings distinctive expertise to this work: Our staff members are widely respected for their reporting, and they have themselves produced hundreds of solutions-oriented pieces for many media outlets, building a deep understanding of models in social innovation, research and evidence about effectiveness, reporting tools, and storytelling strategies.

SJN has created curricula for one-hour, two-hour, and full- “I have never really stood day journalist trainings, designed to be deployed live and in webinars. SJN also has begun to build out a suite of online back and seen if there was tools, including issue guides and 100 model solutions a way to solve a problem stories, intended to advance understanding and practice for or issue. I have written the hell out of a problem but reporters and editors who don’t have access to our engagements. never asked: Is there someone that has We will soon complete a digital toolkit that will distill succeeded and how?” solutions journalism principles and techniques, available for SJN newsroom training free at our website and tailored, over time, for journalists participant focusing on specific issues. We will continue to add

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Capital Plan, 2015-2017 analyses and annotations of model stories; video and audio interviews with reporters and editors; and blog posts that connect the theory of solutions journalism to real-world practice.

In 2014, SJN produced the first interactive solutions journalism webinar on the Poynter Institute’s NewsU platform. Some 320 journalists registered, making it one of Poynter's most popular webinar launches. The recorded webinar serves as an online introduction available to 225,000 journalists around the world who use Poynter’s professional development tools and to many newsrooms that use NewsU to train reporters.

We plan to work with NewsU to integrate solutions journalism modules in other online course offerings, including a multi-part series for general practice and shorter courses bringing the solutions approach in specific beats such as education and health care.

We are in discussion with David Boardman, Dean of Temple University’s School of Media & Communication (who is a SJN board member and president of the American Society of News Editors), to develop the first full-semester solutions journalism course for journalism schools. This course will include modules that can be integrated in other, specific-focus journalism courses, and will be made available to other U.S. journalism schools.

Education Summary: SJN's curriculum development team can now draw from a large range of content to build programs tailored to the needs of key journalism constituents. We will:

• Develop a full interactive, self-directed course targeting journalism professionals – and additional courses on coverage of specific beats via the Poynter Institute NewsU network.

• With Temple University’s School of Media & Communication, develop curriculum for classroom instruction of journalism students.

• Produce tools tailored for reporting on education, health, economic equity and other key newsroom beats. These materials will be deployed in live trainings with newsroom reporters and distributed online in partnership with issue-focused apex journalism organizations – extending the reach of SJN’s approach and the depth of our support. They will also be included as sub-modules inside existing NewsU courses, where suitable.

Primary 2017 metric: 8,000 journalists and journalism students will be exposed to solutions- oriented curricula Investment required: $470,000

B. Practice Change SJN’s newsroom programs put theory into practice, applying our curriculum in real-life news organizations. The most powerful way to help journalists adopt the solutions approach is to connect it to an actual reporting project that matters. This allows them to both discover new

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Capital Plan, 2015-2017 possibilities for coverage and experience a sense of achievement from the audience response and the impact. Our activities provide reporters, producers, and editors the opportunity and resources to introduce solutions tools into their work, so they can begin to enjoy these experiences and then move toward sustained adoption. Building a platform of newsrooms that are self-investing in solutions journalism – and benefitting from it – is a necessary early step towards embedding the practice into the fabric of journalism more broadly.

As noted in our engagement continuum, our goal is to take newsrooms from awareness to sustained practice and then, at the highest level, to self-motivated ambassadorship. News organizations come in all stripes and sizes. As we have seen, some editors and reporters require only a brief training to be converted – almost immediately self-investing and producing high-quality work. Others need multiple touches, extended support, and incentives to get the ball rolling, which our “Engine” provides. Still others show such strong promise that it is beneficial for SJN to move them to an “Engine Plus” relationship, helping them develop ambitious, journalistically-important and highly visible projects, and assisting them in building their own internal fundraising capacity to pursue deep-dive solutions- oriented projects (as we are now doing with The Seattle Times).

Two overarching principles for SJN in this phase of growth are, first to avoid wasting time or money on organizations that are not quickly moving along the engagement continuum, and, second, to invest the majority of our current energy and resources to support, elevate, celebrate, and connect leaders in news organizations where things are working well.

Newsroom Orientations: Newsroom relationships begin with introductory staff orientations, typically in person but also, in some instances, via webinar. These explain what solutions journalism is, why it’s important, and the basics of how to do it. At present, this is the main entry point into our engagement continuum for newsrooms.

Orientations can themselves catalyze practice change – and social impact. For instance, following a single, hour-long SJN webinar, the Fayetteville (N.C.) Observer reframed a year-long series about crime into “Seeking Safety,” a solutions- oriented project focused on how other cities in the southeast were improving public safety. The series led Fayetteville’s leaders to convene gatherings to discuss whether the city should invest in some of the models reported on.

We have delivered orientations to more than 800 journalists and editors. By design, we have done trainings with a diverse range of organizations, cutting across media type, size, and geography – from public radio station news directors to investigative journalists at the Center for Public Integrity to

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Capital Plan, 2015-2017 reporters at smaller newspapers like the Cedar Rapids Gazette in Iowa – to test our approach across different journalist segments.

Orientations are an essential gateway: They reveal interest and excitement among reporters, producers, and editors, and build momentum for more intensive SJN engagements and investment by the news organizations in solutions journalism. And they serve as a sorting mechanism, helping SJN to identify organizations with the vision and commitment to follow through and succeed. Increasingly, as demand for SJN’s orientations has grown, we are conducting more triage prior to engagement – using questionnaires to gauge editors’ commitment and “Never in 23 years of motivation, and prioritizing those most likely to advance reporting have I written a solutions journalism. story that’s generated such consistent reaction from Over the next three years, SJN will test out a range of readers – and all kinds of training dosages in multiple settings, to see what works readers, from politicians to best, and how to gain efficiencies. We will continue to educators to moms and prioritize collaborations with mainstream media those who’ve never had newsrooms. (For all that has been written about their kids. Yes, I’ve done stories impending demise, they remain the locus of the most that sparked lots of important journalistic work and enjoy visibility and reaction, but not like this: credibility. And they comprise a critical mass of skilled thoughtful, appreciative, reporters, producers, and editors, so a productive inspired.” engagement with one large newsroom is an opportunity to Claudia Rowe, reporter influence many journalists at once.) But increasingly, we The Seattle Times also will serve new-media news organizations and regional outlets that often have major influence in their markets.

SJN has a pipeline of more than 40 news organizations that have expressed interest in our training – from first-tier newsrooms such the Detroit Free Press, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and The Marshall Project to dozens of local and regional newsrooms. Over the next three years, we expect to have trained staff in 100 news organizations.

The Solutions Engine: Based on experience, we estimate that we will achieve deeper partnerships with half of the news organizations that participate in introductory SJN orientations; however, as we refine our partner screening and selection, we will seek to increase this hit rate. The next step is working with news organizations through an engagement we call the “Solutions Engine.”

The Engine is a standard issue-based approach that allows SJN to realize efficiencies as we increase our reach, gain experience, and benefit from an expanding network. The main role of the Engine is to lead newsrooms from affiliation to adoption of the practice. The goal is to institutionalize practice change while reducing our financial incentives over time. We consider an Engine successful when news organizations produce multiple versions of solutions journalism and come to value the approach enough to self-invest in it.

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SJN’s Health Data Reporting Initiative, catalyzed by a grant from a Knight News Challenge, embodies this approach. We have partnered with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a health research organization based out of the University of Washington, to make comprehensive health data accessible to journalists through a new position called a “data concierge.” The concierge helps journalists identify “positive deviants” – places where health outcomes are better than expected – which offer valuable leads for solutions-oriented news stories.

We are collaborating with 12 newsrooms, including three major-market NPR affiliates, PRI’s “The World,” the San Francisco Chronicle and Univision. In each, SJN has trained health reporters in the general solutions approach and in the application of solutions-specific tools, such as the use of positive-deviant data. For reporting projects that require travel or added expenses, we provide modest sparkplug financial support – typically $2,000 per project, but sometimes more if needed.

Much of this funding has been provided by the California HealthCare Foundation, which has a strong interest in generating coverage of emerging public health solutions, and circulating ideas to public health officials. (The ability to attract this kind of fee-for-service revenue from issue-oriented funders will enable SJN to roll out Engines in other areas. We have received interest from numerous funders for this sort of partnership.)

Newsroom engagements vary based on the motivation within the newsroom, the need for ongoing assistance and resources, and the commitment and quality of execution. Experience indicates that, for a subset of newsrooms, successful early training, inspiration and mentoring is sufficient to move them to practice adoption. Through better screening, we will hone in on the conditions in newsrooms that predict a higher likelihood of success.

We are refining the Engine as we go, engaging closely with newsroom partners to see where it’s moving well and where we are meeting resistance. We expect that by early 2015, we will have enough track record to begin rolling out the approach for another issue area. Our decision to create issue-based Engines is based on our estimation that the resulting projects and relationships will provide momentum to solutions journalism more broadly. Key questions are: Do many newsrooms feel an imperative to cover this issue? Are there solution models available to drive robust reporting and improve news coverage? Will quality solutions-oriented coverage lead to social impact and increased audience engagement?

We expect that, initially, these issues will include:

• Violence prevention (beginning in 2015) • Child and youth development and education • Economic opportunity, poverty alleviation and economic equity (with target group sub-focuses determined by news partners. e.g., youth, women, minorities, older citizens, immigrants, etc.) • Environmental protection, sustainability and adaptation

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We plan to launch a new newsroom Engine each year, while sustaining and adding new newsrooms to existing Engines – such that, by 2017, we will support up to a total of 50 newsrooms through this mechanism.

Each new newsroom Engine will gain efficiencies as a result of our increasing experience with the approach, and will open up new opportunities from issue-oriented funders for SJN.

Engine “Plus” Opportunities: Some newsrooms generate outstanding ideas for especially high-impact projects that promise to generate highly referable models of what solutions journalism looks like in practice. These projects require more extensive mentoring from SJN and resources for dedicated staffing, travel, research or technological support.

We expect to focus on roughly the top 10 percent of newsrooms for these “Engine-plus” activities. We assess opportunities based on the potential impact of the proposed project, and the potential influence of the newsroom’s work on journalism more broadly. We look for evidence that the solutions approach has spread within the newsroom, and that the organization’s reporters, editors or publishers will act as advocates for solutions journalism. We also require for the organization’s cooperation on a substantive metrics strategy; in return for our investment, we want audience engagement data that could help strengthen the case for other newsrooms to adopt the solutions approach.

In these cases, SJN’s investment looks much like our work with The Seattle Times, but on a more modest scale. We work with top newsroom editors to frame out an article or series, then provides ongoing advice to reporters on sourcing, data sets, and potential models. We may also review or help edit story drafts, depending on newsroom preferences. Our funding may support the pay of dedicated staff or contract reporters who will dedicate work explicitly to the project, allowing editors to sustain both the project and normal beat coverage.

We are collaborating with the Center for Public Integrity, for instance, on a proposal linked to our planned Engine on violence issues in 2015. CPI’s series will examine alternatives to incarceration for adjudicated youths and alternatives to school policing to improve school safety. Because CPI has a national reputation for the quality of its investigative reporting, we expect that this series will be highly visible, lending credibility to the solutions approach – and we hope, in turn, that CPI will become an active ambassador for SJN.

Fellowships: Reporters and editors who are interested in solutions journalism often face barriers in newsrooms that prevent them from pursuing in-depth stories or projects. Typically, they need time to get off the hamster wheel of daily news to think about a new approach. They need to hear from researchers who focus on new models for mitigating problems. And they benefit from opportunities to connect to like-minded journalists.

SJN’s Fellowship programs support journalists who are interested in solutions journalism, and who show promise of becoming proponents of the approach. Fellowships provide opportunities to move individual reporters or editors quickly from orientation to intensive practice, and allow SJN to identify and form relationships with potential advocates and

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Capital Plan, 2015-2017 ambassadors (within issue areas, and across the country). We anticipate that the Fellowship model will allow us to engage a significant number of journalists at once, and at lower cost than direct-to-newsroom trainings.

We plan to organize Fellowships and symposia in partnership with existing journalist conveners (such as universities) that have experience running these kinds of programs. We are in discussion with John Jay College’s Center on Media, Crime and Justice to organize an initial Fellowship and symposium focused on violence prevention.

For that initiative, we plan to put out a call for proposals, select 25 journalists and bring them together in New York, where they will have the opportunity to build connections with other journalists, learn about solutions journalism from SJN staff, and hear directly from researchers focusing on violence prevention or mitigation efforts.

In 2015, we will hold an additional Fellowship and symposium focusing on education reporting, to be hosted by The Seattle Times or another partner. Times reporters and editors will join with SJN staff to train other education-focused journalists based on their experiences with the Education Lab project. Journalists will also have opportunities to connect with researchers focused on examining new models to improve public education.

Fellows will have access to ongoing research support for one year, and special data research assistance, as needed. SJN will follow up with coaching and, if needed, modest funds to support project expenses.

Based on our experience with the first two Fellowships, we will explore further opportunities to organize others with institutional partners. What we learn from the Fellowships, symposia and resulting projects will be shared across our network and will help build up the solutions journalism canon and inform SJN’s strategy for newsroom engagements.

Practice Change summary: We are building out our network of newsroom partners to a total of 100 U.S. news organizations by 2017. This will include:

• Scaling the health Engine to a total of 20 newsrooms. • Applying the Solutions Engine model to issues beyond health, launching at least two new Engines focused on violence prevention, education, poverty, and/ or the environment – engaging a total of 50 newsrooms across all engines. • Four “Engine-plus” relationships that produce high-impact projects. • Fellowship programs engaging 150 leading and high-potential journalists in training, symposia, and project support to ensure sustained practice change. • Building capacity for impact measurement that demonstrates the efficacy of the solutions approach.

Primary 2017 metric: 30 newsrooms will advance to the "Integration & Spread" tiers of the engagement continuum Investment required: $4,055,577

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Capital Plan, 2015-2017

C. Mass Spread Over the next three years, our major investments will focus on direct engagements with newsrooms and journalists, with the goal of moving a critical mass of practitioners over the conversion point – i.e., to “sustained practice” or higher on our engagement continuum. But we realize that this focused approach can touch only a small minority of journalists. That’s why we are simultaneously launching a network-based strategy to effect sustained practice change among the many individual journalists who work independently or in news organizations we can’t reach.

A network approach promises built-in leverage. We anticipate that the unit cost of moving individuals or newsrooms towards adoption and sustained practice will drop because of increased idea momentum, the availability of multiple proof points and evidence of success, and the spread of solutions journalism curriculum through multiple avenues. More connections with more network participants will drive faster learning and practice change.

The network build-out will flow out of our work with newsrooms. Their journalism – and what we learn from the introduction of the solutions approach into their organizations – will be used to teach and reinforce the practice, fueling a self-perpetuating body of intelligence. Fellows will help to deepen the learning within particular issue areas. The growing community will augment our curriculum development as member newsrooms and journalists contribute ideas, examples and resources that add to the solutions journalism canon. Journalists who are successful using the solutions approach will experience exciting reporting opportunities and see genuine impact from their stories. Many will be sought out as speakers and authors and will serve as aspirational models for their colleagues, friends, readers and social media followers.

By 2017, we anticipate network membership of 75 newsrooms and 5,000 individual journalists. A network curator will shape the emerging community – seeding new participants, building relationships and connections, amplifying connections with Engine and Fellowship activities, and spotting new innovations, best practices, and growing trends.

Online activities The SJN website will be the editorial hub of this community. Designed to ensure high utility and flexibility, the site will feature an archive of hundreds of high- quality, solutions-based projects from our funds, Fellowships, newsroom partnerships, and other sources – a critical mass of models for journalists and journalism educators.

The network itself likely will be hosted on an established social media platform such as LinkedIn. This will serve as a community center where reporters can share their

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Capital Plan, 2015-2017 work; discuss practical challenges, great experiences, and ethical considerations; co-create tools or guides for themselves and their peers; help to amplify one another’s work; and engage in ongoing critical analysis about the practice.

The SoJo Toolkit – available in English, then in Spanish and ultimately other languages – will summarize solutions journalism fundamentals for news professionals, especially freelancers and reporters and editors in small news organizations, who don’t have access to our newsroom trainings or the online course.

SJN expects there will be strong complimentary relationships between this network and our Engines. News organizations that participate in an Engine will flow into the network – in most cases, paying a modest annual fee to reflect the value of the relationships and maintain access to network learning and research resources. They also will populate and lead network activities geared for senior and beat-level editors.

Offline activities The online hub will anchor and reflect an expanding universe of offline network activities. We see demand for city-based and issue-based events – both informal, organic gatherings and more structured programs – that assemble journalists to share and collaborate around best practices in solutions reporting. These events will culminate in an annual Solutions Journalism Summit.

The key to these offline activities will be our ability to nurture journalists who are motivated to spread the solutions practice – moving reporters and editors up the engagement continuum such that they acquire the passion, confidence, and expertise to spread the practice themselves. These ambassadors will organize local events, lead workshops and discussions, represent SJN at industry conferences, and publish thought-leader pieces on solutions journalism. Some ambassadors, we expect, will emerge from Engine partners and Fellowship cohorts; we will identify others from the broader network membership.

We will engage journalists who are leaders in apex bodies, such as the Education Writer’s Association, National Association of Black Journalists and American Society of Newspaper Editors, offering opportunities for broader dissemination.

We piloted this approach in November, 2014, through a collaboration with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. The event brought together 32 journalists, including four featured Pulitzer grantees, who either had started into solutions-oriented projects or were interested in the approach. A daylong training left participants with a nuanced understanding of solutions journalism, as well as a self-developed reporting plan for a solutions story in hand – and an evening reception provided the opportunity to showcase model stories and build relationships with solutions-oriented peers.

Mass Spread Summary: These activities, combined with our growing momentum in newsrooms, will prepare SJN to:

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Capital Plan, 2015-2017

• Leverage existing online platforms so journalists can learn about the foundational skills and techniques of solutions journalism. • Sustain outreach efforts that build a critical mass of journalist participants. • Create a network curator function that continually harvests, distills, and distributes intelligence from the network to provide value for the field. • Embark on an learning process leading issue-oriented Fellowships and other live events that strengthen the network, draw on learning from newsrooms, and build the capacity of exemplary partners to conduct their own workshops and discussions.

Primary 2017 metric: To be determined. Investment required: $594,298

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Capital Plan, 2015-2017

VI. Metrics & Evaluation

We have created a robust metrics function that examines impact across our work: It is critical that our projects generate credible proof points that demonstrate to our core constituents the impact of the solutions approach and that can inform SJN’s evolving strategy and operations. As SJN’s strategy evolves, we must better understand which of our services actually deliver value to journalists and newsrooms. And we must learn what optimal investment of staff resources and financial investment will yield sustained practice change.

On the following page, we describe SJN’s anticipated impact, by program. We are targeting four primary, long-term outcomes: Civic change; sustained newsroom adoption; curriculum integration; and network spread. Note that for network spread, we haven’t yet settled on a powerful and accessible primary metric: We understand that this metric should reflect both sustained adoption by journalists of the solutions approach as well as their output – a growing body of solutions-oriented stories. We will continue to test various approaches to measurement of our impact in this important area.

SJN is collaborating with metrics experts at the University of Southern California’s Media Impact Project and the University of Texas’ Engaging News Project, among others, to create meaningful measures of the impact of our work. A new project, for example, will expand our earlier A/B pilot test to compare audience engagement with live solutions and non-solutions stories on five online news platforms. In Seattle, we will survey neighborhood-based education constituents and analyze the content of community media to gauge the impact of “Education Lab” stories on public discourse and activation. We also expect to build substantive measurement components into each of our emerging “Engine-plus” relationships.

In addition, SJN is participating in an emerging consortium of news organizations led by the Center for Investigative Reporting to develop metrics that explore audience engagement with, and social impact, of journalism. We expect that such collaborations will advance our own understanding of the impact of our work – and that it will provide important intelligence for the news field.

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(See appendix for larger image.)

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VII. Building an Infrastructure for Sustainability

SJN has forged a skilled and experienced leadership team capable of driving the organization into the next stage of its strategy. After intensive focus in 2013, our financial and administrative functions efficiently support programmatic activities. In July, 2014, the Internal Revenue Service certified SJN’s tax-exempt status as a charitable organization.

Since the beginning of 2013, we have made significant progress toward building an organization that will deliver on an ambitious mission.

Current Organization Staff (six full-time, four part-time):

• Senior management: David Bornstein, Keith Hammonds, Courtney Martin, and Tina Rosenberg • Program staff: Sarika Bansal and Rikha Rani • Senior administrative staff: Julia Burns • Support staff: Taylor Nelson and Keri Stokes As described in the plan, SJN will need to increase its core staff over the next three years to accommodate the growth in our programs. Anticipated new, full-time staff roles by 2017 include:

• Training director (to be added in 2015) • Two Engine directors (2015, 2017) • Network steward (2015) • Curriculum support manager (2016) • One financial & administrative support staff (2016) Compensation: To date, SJN is compensating its senior staff at below-market rates. In order to attract and retain the key people we will need to drive rapid expansion, this capital plan assumes that senior administrative and management staff will receive increases to their base

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Capital Plan, 2015-2017 compensation to bring them in line with the non-profit market in the New York metropolitan area. Compensation levels have not been formalized for 2015, but they have been reviewed with the board at the September, 2014, meeting using the Guidestar Non Profit Compensation Survey for 2013. At the December, 2014, meeting, the board plans to ratify a compensation plan for 2015, driving our assumption of a partial step-up in senior staff compensation. In 2016 all staff will be stepped up to a full market rate of compensation.

SJN does not currently offer health benefits to employees. The capital plan assumes that in 2015 SJN will begin offering partial reimbursement (up to a maximum of $5,000 per employee) against health costs for all employees.

Overhead: SJN has been operating out of a modest two-room office. As the staff grows over the next three years, we will need to find a more suitable space. This includes access to meeting and conference rooms, and reliable IT support and infrastructure. The additional costs for larger office space are included in the capital plan.

Board Development (2015-2017): The current board of directors is comprised of the three co-founders and two independent directors: Dean Furbush and David Boardman, both of whom were elected in April, 2014. Over the course of the next two years, SJN will consider adding up to five independent directors, bringing the total board to as many as ten members. The current board, with senior management’s support, is developing a strategy for director acquisition based on the identification of candidates with knowledge and experience in the news and information business and philanthropic space as well as capacity for fundraising.

Our challenge now is to seize the unfolding opportunity. Our experience has shown us that our potential to work in partnership with the most influential newsrooms to advance this shift is limited only by our current operational capacity. With this plan, we are seeking to establish a strong financial base that will allow us to respond over the next three years to these opportunities in a coherent, focused, intentional fashion – without being distracted by non-strategic opportunities, and with the ability to respond to unforeseen problems and integrate learning from ongoing experimentation.

We believe that this investment will produce self-reinforcing and sustaining changes that will substantially speed the circulation of valuable ideas and knowledge, allowing society to respond more effectively to many urgent social needs and yielding significant social returns.

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Capital Plan, 2015-2017

VIII. Investment Required

The Solutions Journalism Network is seeking total investment of $7.5 million to support growth through mid 2017. A summary by program:

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Capital Plan, 2015-2017

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Capital Plan, 2015-2017

Funding Need Summary: Financial Narrative for Key Elements

At the heart of SJN’s expenses outlined in the Capital Plan are our Practice Change programs. Investment in these programs over three years totals $4,055,577. Of that expense, 55%, or $2,245,576, is driven by planned growth in the number and scope of Solutions Engines. Over the course of three years, 50 new newsrooms will participate in the Solutions Engines program. The costs to support a newsroom are greatest in year one – averaging about $32,000 per newsroom – and then decline over time for those newsrooms that continue to participate. The per newsroom cost is a blend of 20% of fixed SJN staff costs and 80% variable costs associated with training, coaching, travel support, data provision, and project management.

The growth in costs for Practice Change from 2015 to 2017 is driven in part by the addition of program staff, especially in the Solutions Engines. We expect that Solutions Engine staff will account for 5.2 FTEs in 2016 and 6.3 FTEs in 2017, up from 2.4 in 2015.

Fellowships and Engine Plus are critical extensions of the core Solutions Engines. Investments in those two areas are $840,002 and $795,000 respectively. Each Engine Plus project will cost approximately $200,000, with almost $150,000 of that going to the newsroom for support of a solutions reporting position, travel, engagement, and impact measurement. The remaining $50,000 per project reflects SJN staff support for project management and mentoring as well as general overhead.

Investment in Fellowships is driven largely by anticipated payments to contractors who will coordinate Fellow selection, support, and convenings. These contracts will include expenses for project management, event expenses, mentoring, and Fellow travel. We also expect to provide modest funding of some Fellows’ reporting projects. (These payments will be made directly to freelance journalists, or to newsrooms in cases where Fellows are full-time staff.) We have budgeted for six cohorts of 25 Fellows over three years.

Education investment, totaling $470,000, will be heavier up front as we continue to build out the toolkit and launch new online tools and courses for professional journalists and journalism school students. Most of the spending in Education reflects payments to consultants; we also anticipate hiring a manager to oversee curriculum efforts.

Spending on Mass Spread, totaling $594,298, is comprised primarily of staff costs. We anticipate hiring a full-time network curator in mid-2015, and to deploy part-time program staff to support this function. Additionally, we anticipate higher costs in 2015 to support a website redesign and the build-out of an online network platform.

Spending on Foundational programs in 2015 primarily reflects SJN’s “Education Lab” collaboration with the Seattle Times, which we anticipate will end before 2016.

Infrastructure spending comprises a range of support from legal and accounting services to rent. We anticipate an increase from 2015 to 2016 for new office space; the increase in personnel from 2015 to 2016 reflects the full step up to market rate salaries for senior staff.

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Capital Plan, 2015-2017

Current and Past Major Funders

• Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, two grants totaling $1,300,000 o $700,000 grant, 7/2013-6/2015 o $600,000 grant, 10/2014-11/2015 • California Healthcare Foundation, $122,500 grant, 2/2014-8/2015 • Einhorn Family Charitable Trust, $375,000 grant, 5/2012-2/2015 • Emerson Collective, $300,000 grant, 11/2014-11/2016 • William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, $250,000 grant, 11/2014-11/2016 • Innovate Foundation, $25,000 grant, 2013 • John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Two grants totaling: $430,000 o Knight Presidential grant, $250,000, 10/2013-3/2015 o Knight News Health Challenge grant, $180,000, 2/2014-8/2015 • Novo Foundation, $250,000 grant, 8/2012-8/2015 • Onward and Upward Charitable Trust, $100,000, 2013 • Peery Foundation, two grants totaling $225,000 o $150,000, 5/2011-5/2013 o $75,000, 9/2014 • Rita Allen Foundation, $50,000, 8/2014-8/2015 • Rockefeller Foundation, $300,000, 11/2012-12/2014 • William James Foundation, $250,000, 7/2012-7/2015 Cumulative Funds raised to date: $3,977,500

Fundraising Update – as of November 2014

Anticipated and Pending Grant requests/Individual Donations: • Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, $500,000; anticipated confirmation Q4 2014 in support of the Violence Prevention Reporting Engine • Innovate Foundation, Tim Ranzetta, $25,000; confirmed for payment in Q4 2014 for general operating support • Richard Ravitch, $10,000, in Q4 2014 for general operating support

Anticipated Funding Sources – 2015-2017 SJN’s funding to date has come almost entirely from large foundations (approximately 95% in 2013 and 2014). The remaining 5% has come from individual donors and earned income from the provision of professional services. We expect that this revenue mix model will continue through the next three years. SJN is currently forecasting for all of 2015 revenue to come from foundation grants and awards.

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Capital Plan, 2015-2017

IX. Appendices

The SJN team ii Consultants iv Funding partners v Board members v Advisors v Newsroom engagements v A/B Research vi 2013 summary income statement vii SJN “in the news” viii 2015-17 metrics, by program ix

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Capital Plan, 2015-2017

The SJN team David Bornstein, Co-founder, is a journalist and author who focuses on social innovation. He co-authors the “Fixes” column in The New York Times” Opinionator” section. His books include How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, The Price of a Dream: The Story of the Grameen Bank, and Social Entrepreneurship: What Everyone Needs to Know. His new book will highlight key patterns in social innovation today.

Tina Rosenberg, Co-founder, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author. She co- authors the “Fixes” column in the New York Times “Opinionator” section. She is a former editorial writer for the New York Times and a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine. Her books include Children of Cain: Violence and the Violent in Latin America and The Haunted Land: Facing Europe’s Ghosts After Communism, which won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. She has written for dozens of magazines, including The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Foreign Policy and The Atlantic. She is the author, most recently, of Join the Club: How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World.

Courtney Martin, Co-founder, is an author, blogger, and speaker living in Oakland. She is also the author of five books, including Do It Anyway: The New Generation of Activists, and Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: How the Quest for Perfection is Harming Young Women. She is Editor Emeritus at Feministing.com and her work has recently appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, and MORE Magazine, among other national publications. Courtney has appeared on the TODAY Show, Good Morning America, MSNBC, and The O’Reilly Factor, and speaks widely. She is the recipient of the Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics and a residency from the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Centre. She is a also a facilitator for The Op-Ed Project and a strategist for the TED Prize.

Keith Hammonds, Chief Operating Officer, comes to the Solutions Journalism Network from Ashoka, where he started and led the News & Knowledge Initiative, advancing the work of hundreds of social entrepreneurs in media around the world. He also has been executive editor at Fast Company magazine; a bureau chief and editor for BusinessWeek in Boston and New York; a writer for The New York Times in London and Johannesburg; a consultant to New Nation in Johannesburg; director of an emergency food distribution program in Namibia; and (currently) coach of the Firebolts, a fearsome girls' soccer team.

Julia Power Burns, Chief Financial Officer, comes to the Solutions Journalism Network from Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts where, as Business Director of LCI, she advised on a wide range of operational, strategy and financial initiatives for its education arm. Previously, she was Director, Global Strategy at Wolters Kluwer, leading projects on corporate innovation and the impact of new technology; prior to that she was Group Finance Director, Domestic Print Publishing and Global Electronic Publishing at Dow Jones where she managed the operational finance function for The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s and Dow Jones Newswires. Julia began her career as a music agent working for IMG Artists.

Sarika Bansal, Director of Partnerships, is a journalist who specializes in social innovation and global health. Her writing and photographs have appeared in the New York

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Capital Plan, 2015-2017

Times “Fixes” column, Forbes, The Guardian, FastCompany, and several other publications. Sarika has previously worked in management consulting with McKinsey & Company and in microfinance business development in India. She holds an undergraduate degree in Disease and Public Policy from Harvard College and a Masters in Public Administration from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). She is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers Community.

Rikha Rani, Intelligence Director, has worked extensively as a consultant in the global health space and was Manager of Strategic Partnerships for the Clinton Health Access Initiative in New Delhi, where she led the Foundation’s partnerships with the private sector. She was part of the four-person team that negotiated the price reductions announced by former President Clinton in 2008 and 2009, which cumulatively reduced the price of key antiretrovirals for the treatment of HIV/AIDS by more than 60% worldwide. Rikha holds a Master’s degree from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, during which time she also served as editor-in-chief of the Journal of International Affairs.

Kerrin Stokes, Administrative Director, has worked as an office administrator for non-profit and educational institutions for the last 5 years. She has a background in the performing arts and in dance, performing on various stages such as Broadway theaters, Madison Square Garden and feature films. Her entertainment career brought her to various countries around the world, and she was inspired to go back to Hunter College to get her bachelor’s degree in Women’s Studies and English Language Arts. That path has led her to align with organizations dedicated to bringing education and social change to their respective communities.

Taylor Nelson, Development & Administration Associate, comes to the Solutions Journalism Network from the Social Impact House, where, as the Operations Specialist, she spearheaded new projects and managed the daily operations for their 2013 Social Impact Fellowship with the University of Pennsylvania. Through her work with Ashoka Ireland, Global Playground, Branch Out Alternative Breaks, and numerous free health clinics, she has gained national and international experience in project management, development, strategic planning, community engagement, and event planning. She holds an undergraduate degree in Sociology and Community Studies from the College of William and Mary.

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Capital Plan, 2015-2017

Consultants Samantha McCann, Web Producer and Editor, is a journalist whose career has taken her from environmental and fiscal policy research at Seattle University to editorial positions for several publications. She has published in Scholastic, The Guardian, The Journal of International Affairs, & Grist, and authored the text of the award-winning photography book, Columbia University in Pictures. Her policy interests center largely on criminal justice policy: she has published on sentencing and drug policy, and investigated racial bias in crime reporting, and the impact of a criminal record on earnings upon reentry. She holds a Masters of Public Administration from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA).

Lori Robinson, Digital Curriculum Manager and Editor, is a journalist and the author of I Will Survive: The African-American Guide to Healing from Sexual Assault and Abuse. She was selected as a Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism fellow in 2013. She served as editor of the award-winning lifestyle magazine B.L.A.C. Detroit, and was the founding editor and publisher of VidaAfroLatina.com, a digital media project which covered Latin America’s African Diaspora. Her work has been published in the Detroit Free Press, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post and several national magazines.

Peg Tyre, Advisor on the Seattle Times partnership has covered education and social trends for over a decade. She is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, The Trouble With Boys, and The Good School. She is a recipient of the Spencer Fellowship at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, the New York Times, Salon, Time magazine and Newsweek. She also serves as director of strategy at the Edwin Gould Foundation which incubates and funds organizations that get motivated, low income students to and through college. She began her career at New York Newsday, where she covered crime, organized crime and domestic terrorism. She spent three years as an on-air reporter for CNN.

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Funding Partners Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Rita Allen Foundation California HealthCare Foundation Peery Foundation Einhorn Family Charitable Trust Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Rockefeller Foundation NoVo Foundation Innovate Foundation Onward and Upward: A Charitable Trust William James Foundation

Board of Directors David Bornstein, SJN Tina Rosenberg, SJN Courtney Martin, SJN Dean Furbush, CEO, ScrollMotion, Inc.; former President, College Summit David Boardman, Dean, Temple University School of Media and Communication

Advisors Jake Bernstein, ProPublica Ellen Goodman, columnist Peter Catapano, New York Times Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times Helen Coster, Reuters Indira Lakshmanan, Bloomberg News Fred de Sam Lazaro, Under-Told Stories Peter Maass, First Look Media Project Michael Massing, author and journalist Paul Edwards, Deseret News Catherine Orenstein, The Op-Ed Project Cheryl Strauss Einhorn Dr. John J. Pauly, Marquette University Stephen Engelberg, ProPublica Chris Satullo, WHYY Kevin Fagan, San Francisco Chronicle Mark Schoofs, BuzzFeed James Fallows, The Atlantic Mitch Stephens, New York University’s Katherine Fulton, Deloitte Carter Institute Peter Goldmark, independent consultant Peg Tyre, author and journalist Jesse Hardman, CUNY Graduate School of Journalism

Newsroom Engagements ABC News Oregon Public Broadcasting Alabama Media Group Pennsylvania Public Media "Keystone Buzzfeed Crossroads" collaboration Center for Investigative Reporting Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting Center for Public Integrity PRI Public Radio International Deseret News Raleigh News & Observer Fayetteville Observer San Francisco Chronicle Kaiser Health News Southern California Public Radio KPCC The Gazette (Cedar Rapids, IA) KQED The New York Times McClatchy Newspapers The Seattle Times Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Univision National Public Radio WHYY NBC News WNYC New America Media Women’s eNews Orange County Register Yahoo! News

v

A/B Research In March, 2014, SJN commissioned Brigham Young University and Survey Sampling International, with support from the University of Texas’ Engaging News Project, to conduct an A/B study comparing engagement of readers with solutions and non-solutions versions of the same stories. (Note: both versions had identical headlines and paragraph flow; the solutions version contained text at the end describing a response to the problem.) Below are selected results from the survey of 764 adult respondents in the U.S.:

vi

2013 and 2014 YTD Summary Income Statement

vii

SJN “in the news,” selected features

viii

ix