How Outriders created an ‘ethical content studio’

In a nutshell

This Polish news organisation monetises its ability to tell stories and communicate key messages by working on custom projects with corporates and non-profits and using the revenue to fund their community-led journalism.

Background

• Outriders is a Polish non-profit organisation founded in September 2017 following a crowdfunding campaign that raised 84000 PLN (approx 19,500 euros) from more than 630 people. It has 13 staff members.
• Outriders specialises in interactive, solutions-driven stories focusing on global issues including migration, technology and the environment. In 2018, it published stories on the people caught up in the war in Ukraine and the negative impact of tourism in major European cities among others.
• It also runs the Outriders Network, a knowledge-sharing platform for journalists, and Wachlarz, an annual festival about travel.
• The organisation won the Grand Press Digital prize at the 2017 Grand Press awards, Poland’s most prestigious journalism event.

How did they do it?

Launching the studio

• In January 2018, soon after it published its first stories, Outriders was approached by a number of companies and non-profits asking for help to create media projects.
• For example, they were asked by a mineral water company to run a grants project for environmental journalism and by a community of non-profits to build a new platform for activists. They took on other smaller projects on a case-by-case basis, most of which were squeezed in around other stories.
• Outriders co-founder Jakub Gornicki developed the Outriders Studio (subsequently re-branded Outriders Mixer) and brought the team together to create rules and principles that all projects and clients must align with.
• The launched the Studio in December 2018 with the goal of building custom projects with commercial partners. All of the profit generated by the Studio is used to support journalism produced by the Outriders team.

Running the Studio

• Most projects delivered by the Studio comprise "ready products" for partnerships with bigger media players. For example, Outriders built a new site for Compassfest, a travel event in conjunction with the Lviv Media Forum.
• The team actively seeks media partnerships as part of the organisation's revenue-and membership-growth strategy.
• Many businesses have corporate social responsibility budgets (CSR) which they often want to use to explain their work and positive impact to the public. This presents a business opportunity for the Studio.
• The team looks at their resources-to-monthly-income ratios before taking on a project. For example, if an event production project takes two days of work, but brings in 30% of the monthly budget, it is worthwhile to deliver.
  
• The team has a rule that Studio projects should not take more than 25% of their resources at any time. This means they can continue producing their own stories and ensure Outriders remains a non-profit organisation.
• Unlike other commercial content studios, Outriders does not distribute the content it works on (other agencies do so via paid social media posts). This is made clear to clients before a project starts.

What did they learn?

• As the work of the Studio is highly innovative, this sometimes creates barriers to increasing reach of prospective media partners.
• In its first year, the Studio generated around 45% of Outriders’ overall budget, a result which they found surprising and promising. (NB: Outriders is at an early stage, so revenue streams can fluctuate a lot, according to Jakub).
• A number of prospective clients have backed out of commissioning Outriders due to not being fully on board with the Studio's rules and principles. The team recommends ensuring each client is fully on board before committing much time or resources to discussions.
• Outriders had a lot of requests for help with producing podcasts. A number of NGOs in Poland have won grants to start one, but need assistance to get it up and running. They’re looking to develop these skills.

In their own words

Jakub Górnicki, CEO and co-founder, Outriders

“We focus on helping clients with stories, formats and content since that is what we do on daily basis. But we are not a 360 agency - we just monetise our skills in a different way."

How would you improve it?

"I would like [the % of revenue from the content studio] to go down. This year it will decrease to around 25% - but we are a young organisation so that percentage fluctuates rather fast. With every contributor, we are closer to our end goal of being a community-financed platform.”

Now try it for yourself

• Rural Media (UK) fund their work telling stories from underserved communities by working on corporate films, music videos and commercial virals for the likes of the BBC, Channel 4 and Hay Festival. Check out how they showcase what they do.
• Our Engaged Journalism in Europe database has lots of examples of news organisations making use of their expertise and brand by publishing books, running training and selling merchandise.
• It’s not only small news organisations that are diversifying what they do in order to fund their journalism. Larger ones are running events and doing content marketing, too.

This case study was updated in May 2021 with recent information about Outriders Studio.