When an article in the Chicago Reader about an organic farm blighted by pesticides or inner-city children harmed by gun violence inspires readers to act, they don’t have to hesitate before helping nonprofits working on those causes.
They can click on the “take action” button below the stories and make donations to organizations working to tackle those issues.
The donate button — and the technology behind it — was developed with a $35,000 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. It’s one of several innovations designed to harness online journalism to motivate people to support charities.
To be sure, newspapers have long helped nonprofits connect with supporters, drawing attention to children and pets in need of adoption and highlighting charities around the holidays. A few have formalized that effort. CNN, for instance, has an “impact team” of reporters who research and recommend nonprofits that respond to natural disasters.
“One of the most common things we would hear from our audience whenever there was a devastating event was, ‘How can we help?’ " said Katie Hawkins-Gaar, who spent seven years at CNN before becoming a digital-innovation faculty member at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies.
More Options
A variety of new approaches are being adopted to incorporate recommendations about nonprofits in ways that make donating as easy as sharing a news story on Facebook or Twitter.
Among them:
• The Chicago software company Public Good developed the “take action” button the Chicago Reader adopted. This approach uses an algorithm to identify charities that might appeal to readers of specific stories. After reading an article about a social problem, people can use the button to donate to a specific nonprofit or a group of charities active on that issue. If readers choose to donate to a group, the donation is divided evenly among all the nonprofits. Any organization can sign up to receive gifts after providing proof of its tax-exempt status from the Internal Revenue Service.
• Ideal Impact, a Washington start-up, is also developing an algorithm and a set of giving tools, including a donation button that newspapers can attach to their articles, a mobile application that readers can use to donate when inspired by a news article, and a browser plug-in for the same purpose. The company, which raised nearly $20,000 through an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign, vets nonprofits by consulting Charity Navigator ratings and the GuideStar database, and by soliciting information from people who work for and with nonprofits.
• The Last Graph, another recipient of a Knight grant, encourages reporters to insert a call to action, including donation information, in the final paragraph of a news story.
• StoryAct, which also won a Knight grant, prompts reporters to suggest throughout articles possible charitable actions readers can take.
• Employing an approach similar to that of The Last Graph, RYOT is a news website whose reporters end every article with a link to a recommended nonprofit.
“As humanitarians and news junkies ourselves, we thought it was crazy that news didn’t have a call to action at the end,” said Bryn Mooser, co-founder of RYOT. “News just ended up depressing people or turning them off. We wanted to turn them on.”
Spreading Benefits
The new technology tools are still so novel it’s hard to know yet whether they will make a difference.
When one reader used a “take action” button on a Chicago Reader article to donate $25 to five nonprofits involved in an Art in Public Spaces effort, the Chicago Design Museum received $5 as its share.
“I really love that you can give to a cause,” Tanner Woodford, executive director of the museum, said of Public Good’s donation system. “It’s a way of ensuring your money goes further across the discipline.”
The new tools won’t just benefit nonprofits. Newspapers will get data about what issues spur action among readers, statistics that may help attract advertisers wanting to reach socially conscious audiences.
“News organizations have been super-receptive to the ability to measure and monetize the emotional impact of an article,” said Olivier Kamanda, Ideal Impact’s founder.
The companies providing the new tools to promote donations may eventually charge fees every time someone makes a gift.
Some of the new approaches give journalists pause. They’re nervous about eroding the wall between reporting and advocacy, said Chris Barr, director of media innovation at the Knight Foundation.
Roy Peter Clark, vice president and senior scholar at the Poynter Institute, also has reservations.
“I would be concerned, to a certain extent, about an explanatory piece about climate change that had a button you could push to support one activist group versus another,” Mr. Clark said.
“It’s very important that if news organizations are going to get into this business, they have a responsibility to describe how and why and when.”