What are the odds? Here's a rare inside look at the reality of running an indie media outlet.

To understand why we’re always brainstorming like this, you have to know something about what we call the Nonprofit Industrial Complex (you may be familiar!). In the world of nonprofits like BSR, there is a holy grail: operating funds. That means the funder isn’t telling us what we have to do with that money: we can accept it, and use it in any way that keeps the organization running. For us, that means paying our writers and staff, maintaining the many unseen subscriptions that modern publishers need, and keeping our website running. You can see why that’s critical to our survival.

When funders want projects

But instead of supporting operating costs, most funders want you to cook up a big new idea and pitch it to them, and then if you can get that money, it has strings attached. You must use it to run a new project for a certain amount of time, on top of your organization’s core functions.

It takes intensive brainstorming and planning. It takes hours of meetings, and writing, and spreadsheets, and rounds of feedback. You must fine-tune your concept, make a budget, explain how you will measure the impact of those dollars, and prove to the funder that the project will expand your mission in a significant and sustainable way, all on deadline and within very specific application guidelines that are different for each funder. All with zero guarantee of a payoff.

At BSR and at most nonprofit arts organizations, this is the work you almost never see. There is either a sudden announcement of success, or, in most cases, silence. Because most of the time, all of that work yields a no in an incredibly competitive funding landscape.

Years of late nights

Last week, we shared how the whole BSR team, due to our annual operating budget of just $110,000, is paid a part-time rate. Especially in the case of the editors, that work is visible. You read the stories we assign or write and edit, and the newsletters we publish; you attend the events we dream up and plan and promote.

But that is still just one slice of the work we’re doing. Keeping a small, nonprofit media outlet running takes constant innovation and effort behind the scenes, including identifying and applying for grants, developing sponsorships, and crafting fundraising campaigns like the one you’re reading right now. On top of this, our whole team must work other jobs to keep the bills paid. I am often at my desk until 10 or 11pm.

Believing and diversifying

To say we’re tired is the understatement of the year. But we believe in this work. For more than 20 years, our readers and the artists we cover have told us that they believe in it. An important Philly funder believes in us, too. BSR is a proud grantee of the Philadelphia Cultural Fund (PCF), which makes hundreds of small operating grants to grassroots cultural groups throughout the city’s neighborhoods. Those dollars are a big part of why we’re still publishing.

PCF falls under Creative Philadelphia, the city’s arts office. Each year, the Philly cultural sector faces a renewed fight to fund PCF, because without sustained attention from our city government, that budget keeps shrinking, when it’s not threatened with total elimination. We hope for a better future, thanks to voters in this week’s election, who just made Creative Philadelphia a permanent part of city government. Here’s my explainer on that campaign. But we must keep up the pressure on our leaders while also diversifying our revenue.

The odds we face

We at BSR believe that when we are transparent with you about the challenges we face, instead of downplaying them, you will recognize our passion, and be inspired to help us expand our team by joining the Readers Decide Revenue Drive. The revenue expert we hope to hire in 2027 will put a more sustainable future into focus, where we can rely on readers to help keep us running, while we also pursue other funding avenues, all while keeping BSR paywall-free.

Back to that big swing on training cultural critics: after months of work and waiting, we finally got an answer. It was a no. That was a hard day, but not unexpected. The funder greenlit just 29 projects out of 3,000 applications. That’s a success rate of about one percent, but in the world of 21st-century nonprofit journalism in America, we’re used to facing those odds. We’re determined. We’re resilient. And we hope sharing this with you helps you understand why we need our readers’ support. Thanks to the readers who have already donated, as of November 9, we are almost 20 percent of the way to the $10,000 we must raise by December 31. Learn more and make your gift here.