Raise a glass with the Uncharted Journalism Fund on Jan 17

At a time when much of the news about news is doom and gloom, the Uncharted Journalism Fund is braving stormy waters to help bring you inspiring and adventurous stories in or about British Columbia. If you would like to be part of a good news story about journalism, reporting, and storytelling, please raise a glass with us on Tuesday, January 17 at 6 p.m.

On Tuesday evening, we’ll convene at the Tangent Cafe to congratulate the winning grant recipient, as well as to recognize many of the other innovative projects that applied. We will also announce the next grant application dates and talk a bit more about what the fund is looking for. Space is limited, so please RSVP online here.

Here are the details again:
Tuesday, January 17, 2017
6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Announcements at 7 p.m sharp.
Tangent Cafe will offer a limited menu and bar service.
Reporter-friendly beer special by Dageraad Brewing.

How we got here

During the first application round, the fund received 49 applications – almost double what we expected. The average time to complete the application was roughly one hour. After hearing from applicants that they’d like to see the questions in advance, we release a Google Doc version of the application form here. It came as no surprise that many of the applications were received on the last day.

The next step was to start reviewing each application. To begin that process, names and identifying information were removed from each application. Then each trustee received a subset of the total applications to review, and each of those subsets were reviewed by two trustees. We reviewed the applications against a scoring rubric that we’ll talk a bit about on Tuesday night. Trustees then proposed applications to a short list. We met in person to review the shortlist – just seven applications – and decided on two finalists.

The final step was to interview the two potential grant recipients and make a hard decision because we could only fund one project in this round.

What started as just a kernel of an idea last April is evolving into a community that’s passionate about the future of storytelling. Please help us to continue to build this community by joining us on January 17 at the Tangent Cafe.

We look forward to meeting you in person!

The Uncharted Journalism Fund: Chet Woodside, Phillip Smith, Alex Samur, Giselle Portenier, Erin Millar, John Gray, Geoff D’Auria, and David Beers as well as Stuart Sutton-Jones and Mary Lynn Young.

P.S. Don’t forget to RSVP!