“Attention, newspaper in danger: support Mediacités by donating or subscribing. » Since the end of September, this banner has been displayed on the home page of the local investigation site. Objective: collect €100,000 by December 31. Halfway through, out of the thousand contributors, almost one in two had chosen the donation option.
“This is the first time we have called for donations for Mediacités. Previously, we ran campaigns with a quantified objective of new subscribers or we called for donations to pay legal costs or finance a report, traces Nicolas Barriquand, its publishing director. But our relationship with giving has changed and we realize that it can be a pillar of our economic model. »
For several years, autumn has seen these campaigns flourish in the press, mainly in online media. Two systems coexist: press companies which rely on their own association to collect donations, and those which go through an external organization. The environmental media Reporterre uses its own governance association, La Pile, while Mediacités refers to the association J’aime l’info. For his part, The Cross relies on the Presse et pluralisme association and the CredoFunding endowment fund.
“People have understood the importance of the independent press”
Thanks to the Charb amendment, passed in 2015, generosity towards the press entitles you to a tax reduction of 66% of the amount of the donation. And the success of the collections continues to progress. So in 2023, The Crosswhich launched the call for donations in 2011, raised nearly €600,000 from 4,000 people, to which was added around €300,000 from major donors solicited within the framework of a committee of support launched in April 2023. In total, donations represent 2% of daily resources.
“We are in the early stages but there is a real desire to develop donations. The press becomes a new actor in the panel of generosity »underlines Isabelle Ousset, philanthropy manager at The Crosswhose position was created at the end of August.
In other media, the donor lever is already well activated. The French edition of The Conversationa free information site which publishes researchers’ analyzes and which was founded under the association’s regime, professionalized its collection systems in 2020. Result: in 2023, donations represented 14.6% of its resources, the majority being made up of contributions from the association’s members.
For four years, the site has recorded double-digit annual growth in generosity. “The share of contributions has been stable for several years. We are therefore seeking to diversify our resources. Donations help finance new projects,” explains Julien Talbot, head of digital strategy at The Conversation France.
The importance of the independent press
A pioneer in calling for donations in France among the media, the Reporterre site relies 98% on generosity, while donations represented 20% of its resources in 2013. For the editorial director, Hervé Kempf, the increase is multifactorial.
“We are lucky to have invented the model. Then, we have a clear editorial objective on ecology so it resonates strongly. Finally people understood the importance of the independent press in a democracy who is going badly”, lists the journalist, who notes that this model is increasingly imitated today. After purchasing a newspaper or subscribing to a media outlet, donating could well become the new gesture of support for the press.
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The online press, increasingly supported by the French
The National Panorama of Generosities studied the evolution of donations to two organizations: Presse et pluralisme, created in 2007 for written publications; and J’aime l’info, created in 2010 for the benefit of online press sites. On these platforms, the donor can choose the media they wish to support. In 2022, Presse et pluralisme collected 2.6 million euros in donations. Since 2012, donations have increased by 3% each year, with a slowdown recorded since 2020. J’aime l’info, for its part, collected 4.5 million euros in 2022, compared to barely 2 million in 2020. In full expansion, donations to online press sites have been the majority in both collections since 2021.
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