The Civic Partnerships Playbook
A guide for generating revenue and impact through partnerships
Sustaining local news has become increasingly challenging, especially for newsrooms serving communities often neglected by mainstream outlets.
For the past five years, El Tímpano has developed a novel way to sustain and even expand its public-service journalism: civic partnerships.
Through this model, nonprofits, government agencies, and other mission-aligned organizations contract El Tímpano to distribute vital information to “hard to reach” communities. El Tímpano began this work in 2020 with a $6,000 grant to support census outreach. In 2025, civic partnerships brought in approximately $350,000, making it El Tímpano’s second-largest source of revenue.
Civic partnerships could be a revenue source for your newsroom as well if…
- Your outlet serves, or seeks to serve, “hard-to-reach” or niche audiences such as immigrants, youth, elders, or rural communities.
- You can demonstrate that your outlet is seen as a trusted messenger for those audiences.
- There are agencies in your region that want to reach those communities for efforts like public health campaigns, soliciting community feedback on a proposed development, or to spread the word about a community resource.
In this playbook you’ll learn how to:
- Determine if civic partnerships are right for you
- Develop a civic partnerships strategy, including what to offer, how to set prices, and how to organize the work
- Find and secure partners
- Evaluate the success of a partnership
Our hope is to guide newsroom leaders, particularly those dedicated to reaching underserved communities, in exploring this funding model and defining an approach that makes sense for their organizations and audiences.
Credits & acknowledgements
The Civic Partnerships Playbook was researched and written by Ariel Zirulnick, in collaboration with El Tímpano’s Madeleine Bair, Malena Data Ernani, and Deana Balinton. The playbook was copyedited by Diana Montaño. El Tímpano is grateful to Vanan Murugesan of Sahan Journal and Mazin Sidahmed of Documented for providing peer review and feedback. The playbook was made possible thanks to the generous support of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.