The Hub Growth Plan: Accelerating audience & revenue growth in small and medium-sized organizations
By Katie Hawkins-Gaar
Throughout its history, the News Revenue Hub has provided consulting and technology to support newsrooms of all sizes in reaching their audience and revenue goals. Since 2016, the Hub has helped news organizations raise more than $100 million in contributions and donations.
The Hub’s team of in-house experts do this by employing a “full-funnel” approach to membership, supporting newsrooms with top–of-the-funnel plans to grow traffic and audiences; middle-funnel work to boost loyalty and drive subscribers to newsletters; and bottom–of-the-funnel strategies to convert readers into sustaining financial contributors.
Last year, the Hub introduced RevEngine Core, an affordable software tool designed for growing newsrooms ready to take early steps with membership. And now, the nonprofit is announcing a new effort to help those same growing newsrooms: the Hub Growth Plan, a robust, but affordably priced, support package that offers Hub tech and the proven strategies of audience and membership consulting.
“The Hub Growth Plan is for small but growing newsrooms who need comprehensive funnel support,” explained Evan Mackinder, the Hub’s vice president of business development.
“It’s the intro level to our audience and membership work at the Hub,” added Graham Watson-Ringo, vice president of customer success and growth. “The Growth Plan gives newsrooms a good taste of what is possible and gives them a good foundation for success in terms of understanding the methodology behind membership, why value propositions and calls-to-actions are crucial, and the basics of goal-setting.”
Over the course of a year, participating newsrooms receive detailed assessments of their SEO, site calls-to-action, and newsletters, paired with quick-fix recommendations and training on how to implement proven best practices that deliver results. They also receive an in-depth audience survey; full assistance running two membership campaigns, plus limited assistance with a third campaign; regular check-ins with Hub team members; and monthly KPI reports. Throughout it all, newsrooms are also able to access the Hub’s team of experts for product support and feedback.
It’s been six months since newsrooms began using the Hub Growth Plan. Here’s how two of the participating newsrooms have benefitted so far.
A more robust tech stack
In 2019, 32 years after launching as a for-profit print magazine, India Currents transitioned into a fully digital, nonprofit entity. The site’s mission remained the same — to tell the stories of Indian Americans living in California’s Silicon Valley — but the model was wildly different. For co-founder and publisher Vandana Kumar, the shift was welcome, but daunting.
Kumar began researching what it would take to create a digital-only news organization and connecting with folks in the industry who could offer her advice. One of those people was Christina Shih, then-senior vice president of revenue at the News Revenue Hub.
Shih gave Kumar an overview of what it takes to build a tech stack — the various technology services needed to run an organization’s operations — and explained how the News Revenue Hub could help. “It made sense to me,” said Kumar, “but I couldn’t afford it.” At the time, India Currents wasn’t making revenue, and options for outside support were limited.
For the next several years, Kumar continued to learn from her industry peers and cobble together solutions. In 2020, her organization began asking readers for donations, initially through PayPal. Later that year, India Currents joined the Institute for Nonprofit News.
In 2022, India Currents was among 25 newsrooms to receive a one-time grant from the Knight Foundation to manage, adopt, or upgrade a digital publishing solution of their choice. This year, the newsroom is part of INN’s third wave of Google News Initiative Fundamentals Labs, receiving a $20,000 grant at the end of the program to continue implementing best practices in audience growth and membership
In late 2023, bolstered by its recent success, India Currents joined the News Revenue Hub’s Growth Plan.
Since then, the Hub helped India Currents consolidate and coordinate their technology services. Now, the newsroom’s donation-management platform, email marketing platform, and customer-relationship management platform all work seamlessly together.
Without a functional technology stack, none of the funnel work — such as building audience, boosting loyalty, or collecting donations and contributions — is possible.
“Our tech stack has been a huge buoy for them,” Watson-Ringo said. She explained that the India Currents team is running more fundraising campaigns than ever before, thanks to the ability to now segment their audience and campaign to different readers at different times.
That work is beginning to pay off, as illustrated by Watson-Ringo’s Slack notifications. “I don’t think there’s a day that goes by that the India Currents donation channel isn’t flashing,” she said. “They’re getting donations daily, which is really cool and not something that had previously been happening.”
Kumar said she loves the Hub’s tech stack capabilities, especially “because it has reduced the duplication of work that we previously had to do.” In particular, she appreciates the connection to Salesforce and the many features that platform offers.
Various members of India Currents’ 11-person team have also participated in SEO training and have reviewed the results of an audit of the site’s calls-to-action. “The audits have been most helpful,” Kumar said. “They’ve opened our eyes to what is possible.”
Perhaps most eye-opening, Kumar added, were the results of the Hub’s Audience Insights survey, which asked readers about their relationship to India Currents. “The survey was very well designed,” Kumar said. “It was conducted in a way that was impossible for us to do and it asked such insightful questions.”
Her favorite takeaway was that nearly 20% of respondents had voted because of something they had read in India Currents — a talking point her team now uses in fundraising appeals. “We were super thrilled about that!” Kumar said.
A redesigned newsletter
The New Times, an independently owned news organization in California’s San Luis Obispo County, was one of 15 newsrooms to participate in the Association of Alternative Newsmedia’s first Transformation Tech cohort. Upon completion of the program, which wrapped up in late 2023, newsrooms were given $20,000 to support their digital revenue goals.
New Times decided to use that grant money to join the Hub’s Growth Plan. Alex Zuniga, New Times’ publisher and art director, explained that the Hub presented during one of the Transformation Tech webinars and “offered expertise in specific areas of our operations that we were looking to improve.”
The New Times’ began their Hub Growth Plan work in October 2023. Since then, the weekly publication’s team has reviewed the results of their Audience Insights survey, received an audit of their calls-to-action, and attended an SEO training session.
The biggest change so far is aimed at middle-of-the-funnel work: building loyalty. After several weeks of working closely with the Hub, the New Times launched a newly designed weekly newsletter. The new version of News Wire, which covers “San Luis Obispo County’s biggest stories, breaking news, and latest events,” is much sleeker and more streamlined than the previous iteration — and puts a greater emphasis on reader donations.
Zuniga said that coming up with the new design took about a month or so, with the New Times team meeting weekly with the Hub to evaluate progress and determine next steps. The most challenging aspect, he said, was ironing out various workflow changes. “We wanted to make sure we could maintain the quality and consistency of the newsletter before launching,” he said.
On April 25, the newly designed News Wire was launched — and the initial feedback was “very positive,” Zuniga shared.
“[Hub Success team member] Mac Blair walked the New Times team through how to make a really comprehensive newsletter and they came back with this beautiful product,” Watson-Ringo explained. “It’s exactly the type of digital transformation that New Times was looking for when they approached the Hub.”
Zuniga describes his team’s experience with the Hub as “pretty positive and engaging so far.” The newsroom is transitioning to RevEngine Core to collect reader donations and is currently working on crafting emails for their initial membership drive.
“We’re anxious to see what effect the changes with our newsletters will have,” Zuniga said. “We’ve already seen a few donations come in with just a redesign of the message and graphic.”
The next six months — and beyond
While both Kumar and Zuniga stress that their time on the Hub Growth Plan is still midway through the timeline, they feel optimistic about their experience so far. Mackinder and Watson-Ringo are feeling equally positive, and are actively soliciting feedback to improve the Growth Plan experience for future newsrooms.
As part of the service, newsrooms run three fundraising campaigns — two with the help of the Hub, and one on their own. “We’re like ‘fly, bird, fly!” Watson-Ringo said. “We want newsrooms to feel confident that everything they learned with us shows them the potential that reader revenue can have for their organization.”
“It’s very gratifying for us and hopefully transformational for the newsrooms,” she added.
Kumar said she feels like her team is “on track” to feeling empowered by the information and skills they’re learning through the Hub. “That’s why we turned to experts in this space like the Hub,” she explained. “They are providing us with this knowledge that we intrinsically don’t have but can learn over time.”
Mackinder emphasized Growth Plan’s “incredible value” for newsrooms. “It’s a sweet spot for organizations that want to pay more attention to list growth and membership conversion and may want to upgrade their tech stack at the same time,” he explained.
Mary Walter-Brown, the Hub’s founder and chief executive officer, said she’s thrilled to see more news organizations be able to take advantage of the Hub’s expertise. “Every newsroom who’s thinking about growing their audience and membership should be considering the Growth Plan,” she said. Walter-Brown also hopes that many of the newsrooms — building on their Growth Plan success — decide to continue to work with the Hub.
Watson-Ringo agrees. “At the end of the year, we hope newsrooms are in a position to deepen their engagement with us,” she said. “The learning journey never stops, right?”
Ready to grow your audience and membership? Contact the Hub’s business development manager Lily Black to learn more about the Hub Growth Plan: [email protected].