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Phase 1 was a smash. Where do we go next? That's the scary (and exciting) part.
Julio Ricardo Varela
November 14, 2024
Today is the first day in about five months that we have nothing to produce here at The Latino Newsletter.
I am going to take the time to share where we are. Since launching on May 21, we have achieved a lot, and I can enthusiastically report that our Phase 1 goals, which were timed to follow the 2024 election cycle, have all been met.
As I wrote back in May, “This will be an intentional journey that the community will see from the very beginning. It will be a nonprofit model that will be free to anyone subscribing to it. It will have a Board, an operations side, and an editorial side.”
All goals have been met. We have a Board. We have a fiscal sponsor. We have completed all our nonprofit compliance tasks and are awaiting our official IRS designation, so having Tiny News Collective as our fiscal sponsor allows us to accept donations and apply for grants. Our path to nonprofit status is all trending nicely.
For Phase 1, we had identified raising $50,000 to pay for my time, our freelance contributors, our student journalists, travel expenses, and the overall running of the company. Funding from The Latino Community Foundation in July started us off at $20,000, and the Hispanic Federation committed $15,000 in October. In addition, the Latino Election Project that we co-produced with New England Public Media generated $40,000 for our journalism work. We also raised around $2,000 through individual supporters. Overall, our $50,000 goal turned into $77,000.
As a result of that initial funding, this is what we were able to achieve at The Latino Newsletter:
Top page Google ranking for the terms “latino newsletter,” “latina newsletter,” “hispanic newsletter,” and “latine newsletter.” We are listed as number 3 for “latinx newsletter.”
As of today, we have 880 email subscribers, with a 65.08% open rate, a 4.72% click rate, and 66,040 impressions.
Outside of this post, we have published 120 posts since May 21. Outside of the 66,040 email subscriber impressions, we have also received more than 20,000 views of our work at TheLatinoNewsletter.org.
Our podcast (15 episodes and 5 mini-episodes) has gotten close to 4,000 listens, with consumption rates in the high 80-low 90 percent range.
Our work has been featured on the BBC, CBS News, GBH, NEPM, MSNBC, WAMU, and WBUR, among others.
The Latino Election Project Team (l-r): Me, Evanni Santos, Halima Mohamed, Liz Román of NEPM, Ian Burger, and Donyet Le’Noir Felton. (Not pictured: Sam Hudzik and John Sutton of NEPM)
Here is where we are with our social media following:
That’s a social audience of 7,991 with hundreds of thousands of video views and impressions.
We are also proud to be a founding member of the Latino Media Consortium.
On to Phase 2
We are thrilled with this growth and now want to make Phase 2 a reality.
The Phase 1 funding was enough to run the company from May until now. I have estimated that, at minimum, it takes about $15,000/month to run The Latino Newsletter, although running it at $25,000/month would be ideal and give us some runway.
The Latino Newsletter has applied for a few grants, and we are waiting on a few Boston-area ones where we take the student journalism model we created for NEPM and take it to other local communities. That would be one revenue stream for us.
We are also monetizing this newsletter, and as we bring in more subscribers, our monetization opportunities will keep growing.
I am also beginning to explore how we can take our work and syndicate it. If you know of anyone who has experience in this (this is part of the founder work I don’t like to do, LOL), feel free to let me know.
The last week has proven to me that The Latino Newsletter must continue the work. Our communities need to keep being seen and heard.
Finally, I have a number in my head for the next three years. If The Latino Newsletter can raise and generate $500,000/year for the next three years (a total of $1.5 million), we would be able to continue our current work and also have a team of 3-4 staff members to keep the editorial and podcast cooking, operate the company, and expand revenue opportunities. We would also have a runway that will take us to 2028, which will be yet another critical year for our community.
That’s what we plan to do, and if you believe that our outlet will keep creating new lanes for Latino and Latina journalists, we have identified a $10,000 end-of-year donation goal for 2024.
As of today, we are at 8% of that goal. Thank you to the 19 supporters who have already given! Clicking on the Donate button below will take you to our donation page. Any amount would be amazing.
Let’s do this.
Peace, y’all,
Julio
Julio Ricardo Varela is the founder and interim publisher of The Latino Newsletter.
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