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Whether you’re a team of 1 or 10, carving out time to think deeply about your sustainability as a news organization is often hard to do, as essential as it is. But the GNI State Sustainability Accelerator provided that opportunity to 14 North Carolina news organizations, who kicked off their work last August and celebrated the completion of the program last week.
The intensive program is led by Blue Engine Collaborative and uses hands-on challenges to help news organizations grow audiences, diversify revenue, improve products and technology, and strengthen people and processes. Teams scored themselves in each of the four areas at the beginning of the program and then again at the end. Blue Engine calculated a 51% gain in overall sustainability progress with strong growth in all categories, particularly in revenue and process.
"I watched as these teams recognized, over time, the power of working as a team on shared goals and removing silos between departments, resulting in both financial and internal systems wins that they can build on long after our work together," said Candice Fortman, one of the coaches for the North Carolina teams.
When Scalawag began the program, they were facing some serious financial difficulties and thought they might have to close their doors. But the team used the frameworks, tools and coaching from the program and dramatically turned things around.
Their first challenge was a year-end campaign with a goal of $15,000. They looked at their tech, and decided to use a new tool to make the donation process easier. And they tried something else: the “In Our Bag” series of live, fundraising events on Instagram featuring Scalawag staff and writers providing context and insights about their work. With a boost from Newsmatch, they exceeded their goal and raised $25,000 from 300 donors, including 30 with recurring donations.
“Because of this Accelerator, we were able to pull off our most successful campaign to date which has actively improved how our team works together—and how we fundraise,” said Da’Shaun L. Harrison, Scalawag’s Co-Executive Director.
Another news organization testing new approaches to audience and revenue was Outer Banks Insider, which is a team of two: Publisher and Reporter Corinne Saunders and Tech Lead Tony Leone. They started with a good understanding of who their readers were, but wanted to be more strategic about moving them through the audience funnel into paying subscribers. Or, in the words of the wise Blue Engine Team: “Get ‘em to come, get ‘em to stay, get ‘em to pay.”
Outer Banks Insider, which is now in their second year of operation, analyzed their data and decided to launch two weekly newsletters (one for paid subscribers and one for non-subscribers) to drive subscription purchases. The result: gaining nearly 1,000 total subscribers and more than doubling their paid subscribers to 317.
“We set out with a goal to grow our revenue to a level that could functionally support the operation,” said Saunders and Leone. “The Accelerator got us far closer to our magic sustainability number (although we are not there yet) through the changes we implemented.”
Across the state, the 142-year-old Mountaineer team was feeling like they hit a plateau. Before the Accelerator, they had focused on two things: audience and money. The program brought the team that “ah ha!” moment when they realized the critical importance of the other two sustainability pillars.
“People and processes underpin everything, but it was a weakness we didn’t even realize existed,” said Editor Becky Johnson. “We had to break down our departmental silos and own the same goals. We had to get everyone in the canoe, rowing in the same direction."
With shared goals and metrics, the team created an audience value proposition and designed campaigns to encourage both free and paid subscriptions. They identified tech improvements, revamping their sign up page and adding a site-wide pop-up. And now, they no longer throw paint at the wall and hope some of it sticks.
“We have a suite of concrete strategies to move the needle and measurable progress. We have optimism, which can be hard to come by in today's local news landscape,” said Johnson.
Coach Cierra Hinton says the most powerful aspect of the program isn’t necessarily the immediate gains in audience or revenue, but “newsrooms learning to treat sustainability as a practice, not a project. Whether they hit their goals or not, every team left with sharper tools, stronger internal collaboration, and a clearer path forward."
Other teams in the GNI NC Sustainability Accelerator include Davidson Local, Carolina Public Press, Down in the County, Enlace Latino NC,NC Health News, Port City Daily, QCity Metro, QNotes Carolina, Southpoint Access, The News Reporter and The Smoky Mountain News.
Congrats to all the teams who completed the NC Sustainability Accelerator and thank you to GNI and Blue Engine Collaborative for bringing this transformation program to the Tar Heel state!
Their next initiative, the 2026 GNI AI Sustainability Labs, is a free 7-month-long program for news organizations to design and run a practical AI project tied to audience, revenue, product or operational goals. Application deadline today: April 15.
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