BANGOR, MAINE — February 13, 2025 — The Maine Independent News Collaborative (MINC) congratulates five newsrooms awarded 12-month project grants to facilitate newsroom projects designed to grow digital capacity and revenue resiliency. This is the second round of grants that MINC has awarded in an effort to strengthen independent local journalism in Maine.
This funding is offered as part of MINC’s Infrastructure Fund, which was created as a core service of the MINC two year pilot period. “By offering project grants to implement ideas tested in the initial planning phase, MINC’s support in high priority areas of digital transformation for MINC newsrooms helps publishers deliver online local news while making progress on legacy community media sustainability,” said MINC steering committee member and Unity Foundation program officer Lori Roming.
Congratulations to MINC grantees:
- Amjambo Africa (Portland) will implement the recommendations received in a six-week program offered by the Google Fundamentals Lab for critical areas of improvement in order to increase reader revenue and improve the audience experience on the website. The grant will add resources to the Amjambo web team so they can make critical improvements to digital products, including a membership structure, an additional annual fundraising campaign, and possibly a second newsletter.
- Bangor Daily News (Bangor) will design and implement a new paywall strategy for TheCounty.me. Product features and pricing will be aligned to meet the unique characteristics of TheCounty audience. The new consumer revenue product will use new best-in-class technology recently deployed at the BDN, which has already enabled significant growth in reader revenue. The grant will cover platform and staff costs to implement the new paywall.
- Lincoln County News (Damariscotta) will select and implement an integrated customer relationship management (CRM) system and build a modern advertising sales workflow that empowers their advertising sales representatives with accurate and consistent information and smooth fulfillment for customers. The grant will cover monthly platform costs for two years.
- Penobscot Bay Press (Stonington) will expand donor appeal processes, outputs and income by introducing online fundraising for their community news mission. The grant will allow PBP to hire a contractor to create a repeatable seasonal fundraising strategy and content for those campaigns.
- The Quoddy Tides (Eastport) will develop and launch a new website and newsletter in tandem with transitioning to new subscription management software. The grant includes funding for needed hardware investments as well as a year of support for monthly platform fees.
About the Maine Independent News Collaborative:
Initial funding for the MINC Infrastructure Fund was provided by the Elmina B. Sewall Foundation and the Stephen & Tabitha King Foundation.
The Maine Independent News Collaborative was formed in 2023 by founding partners the Bangor Daily News, Eastern Maine Development Corporation and the Unity Foundation. MINC represents more than 1.5 million readers comprising six local news organizations with common values: Amjambo Africa, the BDN, the Lincoln County News, Penobscot Bay Press and The Quoddy Tides. The Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, publisher of The Maine Monitor, became a strategic partner in 2025. The project is fiscally sponsored by EMDC.
Learn more about the Collaborative and our plans at maineindependentnewscollaborative.org.