Back in the beginning of 2019, I wrote this post about changes in CAC funding, and my experiences with CAC and CPAC over the years.
Last week, we received the bad news that CAC had declared Belt Media Collaborative, the non-profit under which Belt Magazine (but not Belt Publishing) operates, ineligible to apply for funding.
I was shocked. Last year, when we told the folks at CAC that the magazine was separating from the press, becoming its own non-profit, and was hoping to apply for project support, the folks there were very excited, said we were a great candidate for a grant, and suggested we use their eligibility deadline to help the IRS move the paperwork forward. Unfortunately, we did not receive our 501c3 in time to meet that deadline, so we have been waiting for a year for the next round—the 019 deadline was at the end of May. In the meantime, the leadership of CAC changed.
Had I thought we might be declared ineligible I would have had a conversation with them earlier, so that’s on me. But, as chair of the board of Belt Media Collaborative, I just assumed we were fine. So I was really taken aback.
Now, rules are rules, and bureaucracies are complicated, and sometimes you have to just shrug your shoulders in the face of them.
Here is what they have told us:
“ This determination was made based on your lack of a permanent and viable base which is defined as the “applicant organization, branch or affiliate office must have a business address in Cuyahoga County and present at least 51% of its local programs and services in Cuyahoga County for the residents of Cuyahoga County and visitors to Cuyahoga County.” This definition can be found of page 19 of the Project Support II guidelines (page 24 of the PDF).
You stated “the work we publish is written and read across the [Rustbelt] region. We do have more readers in Cleveland than elsewhere, but not 51% or more.
In other words, the majority of the programming coming from of your Cuyahoga County office is not intended to specifically engage county residents nor does it specifically take place in the county.”
Our address is in Cleveland, so it’s the latter part that tripped us up. “Programs and services” refers to readers and writers (we held no events over the past 12 months). Since more than 51% of our readers are not in the county, we are not primarily serving the residents.
Now, how might one alter things to change this, to have that 51%? Seems to me we would need to publish fewer pieces by fewer writers. More readers — based on IP addresses—are from Cleveland than any other city. If we had, say, 500 page views, and 251 of those views were from a Cleveland IP address, we’d be eligible. But we have, to make the analogy, 50,000 page views, but only 24,000 come from within the county.
Obviously it makes no sense to alter our mission to fit these guidelines. And clearly it doesn’t do me any good to continue to be so upset. (I have been posted a lot about this on twitter, which I understand CAC is aware of.) So my latest idea is to relocate the magazine to another city that might, down the line, provide grant funding for local coverage, which would organically increase by virtue of us being located there, or because we entered into a partnership to commission pieces by local writers about local issues. The magazine has received grants from the Indiana Humanities Council, Missouri Humanities Council, Lensfent, Amazon Literary Partnership, and the Buell Center over the past few months (we only began writing grants in 2019), so we are definitely succeeding. Unfortunately, the Cleveland Foundation rejected our recent proposal (but encouraged us to apply again next year, and reduce the total amount we request). So we are 100% for grants applied for from non-Cuyahoga County sources, and 0% for those applied for from the county.
Obviously I believe Belt Magazine should be eligible for county funding. But I accept their determination. Now I want to put my energy into something productive and proactive, like researching other locations to base our digital-only operations.
In *other* Cleveland-based news, I am excited to announce that Belt Publishing (a separate entity, and an LLC), is partnering with the Happy Dog to revive Belt University, a program we hosted there in 2013-2014. Every month we will feature a speaker to discuss a regional- or local issue, often pegged to a Belt Publishing title, and we are planning to create a “course catalog” in advance with the programming. The series will start in September. So, the forces of the city pull me away, and then back, and then away, and then back, borne back ceaselessly in the current.
My previous posts about non-profits, the Cleveland philanthropic community, arts funding, and the need for local journalism are now free to all, if you want to click about in the archives.
Sorry I’ve been awol—I’ll get back to chronicling more frequently when my large pile of personal and professional backlog subsides.