PINF is delighted to announce a new grants programme: the PINF Impact Fund. We are grateful for the support of the Neal & Dominique Gandhi Foundation for making this pilot programme possible.
The window for expressions of interest has now closed. Thank you to all who submitted.
What is the Fund?
The Impact Fund aims to explore the impact of local journalism on civic or democratic engagement, partly through the 2022 local elections. We aim to the keep the process as open as possible, to help us learn for future programmes.
The programme aims to award five grants of £8,000. Each grant should fund a new journalism intervention at an individual electoral ward level, from January 2022 through to May 2022. PINF aims to track the impact of those interventions with the help of an academic learning partner.
We are inviting brief expressions of interest from news publishers in London and Birmingham. Both London and Birmingham have all-out elections in 2022 and their size gives us the best opportunity to find comparable wards to act as quasi-control areas.
What should I include in my submission?
News publishers are invited to submit early ideas for approaches to such ward-level interventions. For example, this might include a new weekly email newsletter for a ward, an intervention in an existing ward-level social media group, or a new distribution effort specific to an individual ward.
All ideas are welcome at this stage, especially for interventions in wards with populations less likely to take part in the democratic process. If publishers do not have a specific ward in mind, PINF or its learning partner may be able to help choose one.
Publishers with an interest in the programme should submit a brief expression of interest. PINF will then bring interested parties together for a workshop in late September or early October, before inviting full proposals. The interventions themselves will begin in January 2022.
Deadline for expressions of interest: 9am, Tuesday 7 September. [NOW CLOSED]