Stacker Connect generated over 10,000 pickups for nonprofit newsrooms

In the past six months, Stacker has helped generate over 10,000 syndicated pickups of nonprofit journalism. The average story was picked up by over 200 outlets. 

Last year, we launched Stacker Connect— a service where we vet and distribute stories from approved brands whose stories meet our journalistic standards. 

In parallel, we heard a consistent refrain from the publishing industry. Nonprofit newsrooms were seeking greater distribution, a way to reach more targeted audiences, and better impact tracking to share with their readers and funders. 

We realized that by using the same distribution pipelines and analytics platform as Stacker Connect, we could support nonprofit newsrooms and provide them with a valuable, free service. 

After an initial pilot that included The Conversation and USA Facts, we expanded the program to include more than 10 leading nonprofit newsrooms across North America. 

Timely stories about policy impact perform best. 

The stories we syndicate from nonprofit newsrooms fall in line with the rest of the Stacker Newswire: high-quality, newsworthy content. And through our alliance with the Solutions Journalism Network, we brought on several nonprofit newsrooms specializing in solutions journalism. 

We published stories about methane levels in Oregon; how extreme weather impacts Amtrak; online privacy; solitary confinement; wilderness therapy camps; “barbershop talks”; and the effects of COVID-19 on our education system, among other vital stories.

“As a nonprofit news organization, we care more about collaboration and impact than competition and exclusivity. Working with Stacker has given us another tool to elevate our reach and our impact, sharing our stories on urbanism and social justice with readers well beyond our own direct audience of urban planners, architects and other city builders. This syndication model also has the lowest lift of any that we've used, and as a small newsroom with limited resources, that's crucial.”
—Aysha Khan, managing editor, Next City

In analyzing the stories that performed best, here’s what we learned: 

• Timeliness is key. As we’ve seen with our entire newswire, timing and headline framing go a long way in capturing attention. One of the top syndicated stories was a piece written by Votebeat focused on Pennsylvania elections, published in November 2023 around Election Day.
• Stories about public policy impact performed well above benchmarks. This includes stories about banning smartphones in schools from The 74 Million and a story from The Marshall Project about youth curfews (and how they don’t reduce crime.)
• Innovation and technology have been consistent requests from Stacker publishing partners. Stories about ChatGPT and artificial intelligence continue to be in high demand, like "How AI can teach kids to write – not just cheat" from The Hechinger Report. In fact, The Markup’s “Facebook watches teens online as they prep for college” is the best-performing nonprofit story to date. 

But sheer audience size isn’t everything. Many publishers are looking to reach their precise audience like rural communities or under-represented groups.

“In addition to major news organizations like MSN, Stacker has helped Reasons to be Cheerful get published in dozens of local news markets across the country – the kinds of news outlets that people trust to make a positive impact in their communities. This has helped fulfill our mission of spreading solutions journalism to places it doesn't always reach.”
—Will Doig, executive editor, Reasons to be Cheerful

What’s next

As part of our commitment to supporting nonprofit newsrooms, we plan to scale the program to even more newsrooms in 2024. If you’re interested in participating in the program—or if you’re a foundation interested in supporting our mission—please reach out to us at publishers@stacker.com. 

Featured Image Credit: Photo by Patrick Perkins / Unsplash