Sponsoring Agency: Google News Initiative
Type of Fund: Challenges, Competitions or Prizes
Deadline Available: Available
Deadline Date (mm/dd/yyyy): 05/03/2021
Size of the Fund: USD $50,000 to $500,000
The Google News Initiative (GNI) is seeking applications for its Innovation Challenges in Latin America to support projects that focus on new business models and new news products to advance a more sustainable and diverse ecosystem.
The GNI will fund projects from around the world that meet specified criteria, with the intention of producing learning and thought leadership for the wider industry.
Funding Information
Google will fund selected projects up to USD $250,000 and will finance up to 70% of the total project cost.
Eligible Projects
The second Latam GNI Innovation Challenge will advance a more sustainable and diverse ecosystem in Latin America through the development of new business models and new news products. All innovative ideas were welcome and projects can be experimental but must have well-defined goals and measurable impact. There’s no requirement to use Google products for the project. GNI encourages applicants to clearly demonstrate the value of the project by providing actionable key performance indicators (KPIs). KPIs should further the news organizations’ digital news objectives (i.e., digital subscription growth, online daily active users, digital ad revenue, etc.). Special consideration will be given to collaborative projects involving multiple news organizations. Successful projects will also need to be delivered within one year.
Projects will be evaluated against five main criteria:
• Impact on the sustainability of the news ecosystem: Projects should demonstrate potential for significant positive impact on the creation of new revenue streams and/or change the way people consume digital news.
• Innovative: Projects should advance new innovative approaches to creating, distributing, and monetizing digital journalism.
• Feasible: Preferred projects will have a detailed business plan when relevant, clearly outline key performance indicators or metrics, and identify key risks and how to mitigate them.
• Inspirational: Can other news organizations learn from or replicate the project? Is the news organization willing to share knowledge across the news ecosystem?
• Diversity: Projects should be able to demonstrate their self-defined commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and promotion of underrepresented voices, whether that is within their audience, organization, or content. Google is committed to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and works to support companies/projects in line with these values.
Projects that would NOT qualify for Innovation Challenge funding include:
• Projects that are limited to the creation or publication of content without a component to further a new news product or business model are not eligible for funding.
• Projects merely translating news content into other languages
• Upgrades of legacy publishing systems
• Projects that relate to simply collating or listing data (for example, the publication of job listings or stock exchange data, or the re-publication of newswires articles);
• Projects providing only training or education
• Projects which do not have any indicators to demonstrate their potential sustainability
• Projects focused on only research without implementation or execution-oriented elements
Eligible Geographies
Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela.
Eligibility Criteria
• The Latin America GNI Innovation Challenge is open to digital natives, startups, NGOs, freelancers, sole traders as well as broadcasters and traditional news organizations – whose projects focus on encouraging a more sustainable and diverse news ecosystem.
• Organizations must be incorporated or based in one of the eligible countries in the Latin America region.
More information at: https://newsinitiative.withgoogle.com/intl/en_gb/innovation-challenges/how-to-apply/latam/
