YR Media
YR Media equips emerging content creators between the ages of 14-24, primarily BIPOC, with an immersive media arts education, top industry mentors, paid career-track employment, and holistic support services including counseling and healthy food.
Young people leverage these offerings to become civically engaged citizens that diversify the traditional media landscape by creating stories, art, and music that matter.
Raised over $13,000,000 to support the next generation of storytellers.
Our Impact
Industry/Field:
Youth Journalism, Media, and Arts
Location:
Oakland, CA
Deliverables:
GRANT WRITING
report writing
prospect research support
Development pipEline reports
YR Media partnered with Fundraise Inc. for expert grant writing services.
The organization’s pipeline included several large institutional partners, and YR Media had multiple high-stakes proposals in the pipeline that were highly competitive, as noted by their program officer. They needed a grant writing team that could hit the ground running—one with the expertise to articulate their holistic approach to equipping young people with future-proof skills while also highlighting the civic engagement inspired by their creative work. As many philanthropic partners noted an upcoming shift in priorities, YR Media also needed a new batch of aligned projects they could pursue.
A Strategic Partnership Designed to Make Their Mission Go Further.
Our team would be responsible for producing high-quality proposals under tight deadlines while managing prospecting to ensure long-term stability.
During the discovery process, Fundraise Inc. identified that YR Media required more than just expert writing support—they needed a cohesive grant writing team capable of managing the entire institutional funding process. Support needed to include working with a dedicated project lead who could oversee everything from messaging and language resonance to ensuring the team met deadlines. YR Media also needed a coordinated effort between writers and researchers to maintain momentum. Given the urgency of their funding needs, we implemented a team-based approach to keep the institutional pipeline filled, conduct ongoing prospecting, and prevent any funding gaps.
Fundraise assembled a specialized team of three to handle grant writing and prospect research.
The account lead worked closely with YR Media's Director of Development to create a prospect pipeline and a detailed grant calendar, ensuring the team stayed on track. We implemented a prospecting strategy to move potential funders seamlessly through awareness, cultivation, and proposal submission based on the weighted pipeline's needs. We made sure to match YR Media with a grant writer experienced in youth media arts, social justice, and education, ensuring proposals demonstrated a nuanced understanding of the issues central to YR Media's mission.
During our four-year engagement with YR Media, we worked alongside their team to raise over $13,000,000 to support the next generation of storytellers.
Highlights include gifts from The National Endowment, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Ford Foundation, and the McArthur Foundation. Prominent, high-profile funders were inspired by the high-level of trust given to them by other large institutional funders, and it became easier to acquire meetings with larger institutional funders. For foundations that did shift in properties during that period, several offered tie-off funding due to the deep commitment to the work and partnerships built during that time.
This enabled them to expand their leadership team by hiring a Chief Strategy and Growth Officer, Chief Technology Officer, Chief Creative Officer, and Chief Operations Officer, along with extended teams to support their growing initiatives. Additionally, the organization expanded its reach by launching a Chicago Hub, unlocking new pools of funding and resources to serve young people in the Midwest. This growth also directly benefited hundreds of students, who gained access to paid training and mentorship opportunities .
Our collaboration significantly increased YR Media's capacity.
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