RuthAnnHarnisch.com

Making an “S” Out of Yourself

by Ruth Ann Harnisch on 02/19/09 at 10:34 am

The Harnisch Foundation recently made news – that’s what happens when you give money to people in the news business.

Our gift to create the Center for Sustainable Journalism at Kennesaw State University under the direction of Leonard Witt has received no small amount of attention.  Journalists being  journalists, they smell more than a story here. They smell opportunity.

The CSJ is meant to create opportunities for journalists, but more importantly, to create opportunities for JOURNALISM. Len Witt and his associates earned my trust and my investment because they are bold about trying new ways of gathering high-quality content and delivering that information to the people who want it and need it.

Most importantly, Len is an entrepreneur masquerading as an academic. Sure, he’s interested in scholarly research on this topic. But his primary objective is to discover and replicate self-sustaining methods of reporting.  If it can’t pay for itself, it’s not sustainable.  This isn’t “subsidized” or “supported” journalism, like ProPublica (www.propublica.org).  We don’t have pockets that deep, or maybe we’d emulate that model.  Naaah, we wouldn’t.  Here’s why.

I’ve learned many things from my husband, the money manager who created the revenue that funds my philanthropy.  One of his commandments is, “The Market Is Always Right,” no matter how wrong you might think it is.  That holds for individual business models, including nonprofit businesses.  The only difference between a nonprofit and a for-profit enterprise is what happens to the revenue.  In nonprofits, the cash goes back into the mission. For-profits distribute profits to shareholders. On the Harnisch Foundation website (www.thehf.org), we tell grantseekers that our preference is to invest in nonprofits with a plan for sustainability that does not include asking us for more money!

Because so many current business models in journalism are failing, we don’t want our philanthropic dollars to prop up failing models. The market is always right. It’s up to Len Witt and the CSJ to find and fund those experiments in journalism that stand a better-than-average chance of becoming self-sustaining. 

Same goes for you, by the way. Becoming self-sustaining, where you don’t depend on one source of income, is a great goal. Diversify. Find or create multiple streams of revenue. People who remember me from my journalism career may recall that I had a lot of jobs at the same time: I was a television news anchor, reporter, and talk-show host. I was a radio talk-show host. I was a newspaper columnist. I taught at a local university. I got paid for recording voice-overs and narration, out-of-the-market television commercials, giving speeches, being in movies, and even doing calligraphy. 

What can YOU do to make an “S” (self-sustainer) out of yourself?