Foundation fundraising needs the support of NCEW members

Last year at the NCEW convention, you heard about the success of the NCEW Foundation in winning a grant from the Miami-based John and James Knight Foundation for one hundred fifty thousand dollars to finance the Minority Writers Seminar for five years. At the same time, Sigma Delta Chi Foundation of Indianapolis pledged one hundred thousand dollars towards a half-million dollar endowment goal for the program, which the Knight Foundation challenged us to raise over five years.

Today, I am pleased to tell you that the McClatchy Company, a West Coast newspaper corporate owner, has pledged one hundred thousand dollars over five years towards the endowment. That means that in one year, NCEW Foundation already has raised forty percent of the five-year goal.

This is a tremendous performance and the result of hard work by a lot of people. But I would like particularly to note the recent efforts of David Holwerk, editorial page editor of The Sacramento Bee, in securing McClatchys commitment.

The Fundraising Committee of NCEW, headed by Holwerk and working closely with the NCEW Foundation, has developed a Powerpoint presentation that NCEW members will present to top officials at other corporate chain newspapers as NCEW makes similar requests to support the endowment. At least two of these corporate presentations are in process now, and several more will follow over the next few months.

In addition to training some twenty to twenty-five minority journalists annually on site at the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University, the NCEW Foundation will begin producing videos that will reflect the kind of training going on at Vanderbilt. Neil Heinen, of Madison, Wisconsin, heads this effort. NCEW will distribute these videos widely in an effort to attract more minorities to editorial pages and to broadcast editorial departments.

The efforts to fully endow the Minority Writers Seminar came out of a strategic planning session by NCEW and the Foundation in the spring of 2004. We identified important priorities that will enhance the value of NCEW to members and will attract new recruits to the organization.

One of the most important of these is regional workshops designed to provide professional development opportunities all over the nation for NCEW members. In particular, we were concerned that many NCEW members were not able to attend the annual convention, largely for financial reasons, but could benefit directly from local, or regional, workshops. These workshops are not new. NCEW long has attempted to conduct strong professional programs in local areas. The difference is that these programs were largely run on a shoestring in the past. Now, we will concentrate on raising money to endow these regional workshops so that they have reasonable budgets that will subsidize the cost of the training for editors and writers.

In addition, the Foundation and the Development Committee will focus on securing foundation grants that will help us raise money for foreign travel. The idea is to make the wonderful foreign trips run by NCEW affordable for virtually any NCEW members, and not just for those from large newspapers who have more generous travel budgets.

NCEW Foundation has used seed money from the Knight Foundation to hire Patricia Schwartz, a professional fundraiser from Pennsylvania, to help raise money for the Minority Writers endowment. She has already begun identifying potential sources of revenue for our programs.

I am convinced that we are on the cusp of a tremendous surge in the ability of NCEW to persuade philanthropic organizations of the value of the work we are doing. I am proud to join outstanding members of this organization to make NCEW even stronger and to raise the money that will provide compelling professional development opportunities.

In the coming months, all NCEW members will be asked to make contributions to the NCEW Foundation. I believe this article outlines just a small portion of the good work being done by the NCEW and Foundation boards to improve our organization. But we need, most of all, the financial support of our own members, because foundations that might give money to us want to be assured that we have the financial support of NCEW members.

No matter how large or small, please make a contribution to the NCEW Foundation. It's tax deductible and it supports the good work of this magnificent organization.

Morgan McGinley is the NCEW Foundation president and is editorial page editor of The Day in New London, Connecticut. E-mail m.mcginley@theday.com

Copyright MASTHEAD National Conference of Editorial Writers Autumn 2005
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