SAVE NAILED: A Pitch & a Public Meeting
At 7:30pm on 11th July 2019, we are holding an open meeting at No. 28, The Market Place, to discuss how to Save Nailed.
The Birth of Nailed
Nailed was started by a small group of people who were very concerned about the lack of information, news, democracy, and representation of the town by existing media, which is all owned by mass media companies, with little local knowledge or sense of duty, as they are not part of the town. We felt that Belper had been failed and that we had the skills and the will to do something about it.
Nailed began with an open meeting at the Lion Hotel, which about 30 people attended. 4 of those people, David George, Edward Sills, Emma Clinton, and myself, Clare Washbrook, became the founding editors of the paper, with many others helping crucially behind the scenes.
We founded Nailed with £5 donations from those 30 people and have supported it since with little bits of fundraising and our own money, time, energy bills, and equipment. Our running costs have been low, but our time costs have become higher and higher.
Nailed has now reached a readership of over 40,000 (41,629 at time of publication), and that’s up from 23,441 since October. This figure is slightly more than the population of DE56, which is the area we specifically cover, and we still haven’t reached everyone in DE56 – yet. We are now the primary news source for Belper, which is why we changed our name from Alternative to Independent.
The Emergency
We want to keep going, but we’ve become too big for our boots. Nailed now needs full time handling. Just communicating with the community takes up 2 full days a week. That’s 2 days of unpaid work, on top of 4 hours every day researching, writing, editing, handling submissions, sourcing news, running our website and social media accounts, and formatting our news, and most of every weekend attending events. And at 4 hours a day, we aren’t getting everything covered that we want to and think you need to know, and I, as editor-in-chief can only have a day off if I deny you news. Our current operation is unsustainable.
Funding
Nailed needs to go full time. Nailed needs to expand. Nailed needs equipment that isn’t our personal equipment. Nailed needs to print. Nailed needs MONEY!
If each of our readers paid just £1, for the whole year, we could have enough to run the paper full time, rent premises, buy the letterpress printing press we’ve got our eye on (zero carbon emissions, sustaining a dying skill), provide equipment for our reporters, print, start a youth training program, and pay for part of the next year.
But we know this is unlikely to happen. So we are seeking sponsorship from local businesses, groups and people.
We promote every independent business, group, charity, event, band, venue, organiser, and motivation. We turn up: not once in a while, but pretty near every time. We cover every big event fully and in person, not just with a few borrowed lines and last year’s photo, but as carefully as we can.
Do we help you? Is Belper better off for being informed about politics, worthy endeavour, local businesses, the arts, our festivals, local issues, crime, debate, awards, meetings you can’t get to? Do you appreciate having a news source that cares about you?
Can you come along and add your ideas, or money, to our enterprise?
Nailed belongs to Belper. It will never be sold. It will never be owned by businesses. It will always be utterly and purely independent, and the property of the town itself. The ethics upon which Nailed was founded are community ethics. Nobody is going to sell your investment to line their own pockets.
We are immensely proud of everyone who has been involved with Nailed and everything we have collectively created. We really want to continue, and do it bigger and better than ever. But what there is already is threatened by the time it requires, and the fact that that time comes out of our working time, or personal time. We all have jobs, and those jobs change, changing our available time for Nailed. At present Nailed is eating our jobs.
Nailed is, in the next few weeks, going to become limited to less than half the time that is spent on it at the moment, with no weekday events being able to be covered, only a selection of events promoted, and far fewer in depth articles … UNLESS the community comes together to save what we have created.
What is needed, in order of priority:
- Funding for full time running (at the cheapest feasible price) of £20,000
- Funding for a Letterpress printing machine, and training, of £3-5000
- Funding for equipment – video camera, digital cameras, computer equipment, of £5-7000
- Funding for a print run without a printing machine, of up to £1000
- Our current annual running costs, including promotional materials and stationary, of £500
Some of this can be sourced through grants. We would welcome expert advice on grant applications.
The most important figure, the one we need to keep going and improve Nailed’s service is the cost of full time staffing – £20,000. We need to raise this more quickly than improvement costs, if there is to be no reduction of Nailed’s service. This figure isn’t optional, and can’t be gambled on grant applications.
The ideas we have so far:
- Direct sponsorship from local businesses, groups and individuals
- a Crowdfunder
- applying for grants – most of which are tiny, or restricted to expenditure on equipment
- using the Patreon system to gather patronage to keep funding us
- Selling community shares, with possible returns
- Better advertising provision, for which we will need advice
Come to the Meeting
We want your ideas too. We’ll listen to anything anyone has to say, with the exception of Nailed being owned by companies.
We’ll take pledges, advice, fundraising offers, expertise, and partnerships. We’ll take cold coins from the back of your sofa.
But what we need most of all are 40 businesses to put in £500 each, or variations on that theme, and we can then be secure enough in Nailed’s continuation to apply for grants for equipment and start up Patreon and/or crowdfunders to expand and sustain.
Please come to the meeting to support us. Whether you can support us with money, or support us with expertise, or support us with time, we want you and we need you. We are all Belper.
Without support, Nailed may well cease to be. And then you’ll only have 3 stories a week, about multi-million pound houses in Duffield, holidays you can’t afford, and phone quotes on events journalists didn’t attend. Which besides being a shame, will trash democracy, as democracy only exists within a well informed community. And that, you will have to pay for weekly.
WHERE: No.28, Market Place
WHEN: 11th July 2019
TIME: 7:30pm
The meeting will last a maximum of an hour and a half.
Save Nailed logo created by Madeleine Washbrook
I’d love to.attend but have a prior commitment at North Mill.
I’m interested personal donation and how businesses can help.
Hello Kim,
Thank you, we really appreciate your interest. We will be updating everyone on the outcome of the meeting, and will then launch the chosen funding routes. It is likely that we will have conversations with businesses, which can begin via editor@nailed.community or by phoning me on 07881 284 805. There may be additional meetings and there will be a specific structure decided for businesses to support us.
Have you chatted to Amber Valley CVS at all… ask for Lynn CEO she may have a few ideas.
We haven’t. Thank you. We will look into that.
Hi, I wish I’d seen this earlier, because I would have gone to the meeting. My suggestion would be to think about charging a regular online subscription. I make several small, monthly subscriptions. Even though they are all about £3 a month, for me the regularity and the amount give them a certain value to me as a subscriber. Something like £2 or £3 a month could give Belper Nailed a healthy income and would be well within the reach of most people. I really want Belper Nailed to continue to thrive and grow as part of the community of Belper!
Thank you Rowan. Subscriptions were one of our proposals, which was approved at the meeting, so this will be coming very soon.