The Water Desk offering Funding to support Coverage of Western Water Issues and the Colorado River Basin

Deadline: 17-Aug-20

Applicants are now invited to apply to The Water Desk for funding to support their coverage of Western water issues and the Colorado River Basin.

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The Water Desk is interested in supporting a wide variety of media and journalistic approaches: newspapers, magazines, websites, video, television, radio, podcasts and other channels.

The Water Desk will support journalism that focuses on water issues involving the seven states of the Colorado River Basin—Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming—as well as the borderlands of Northwest Mexico. They welcome proposals related to areas that lie outside of the Colorado River Basin’s watershed but that are still within the seven states and borderlands region.

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Types of Grants

The Water Desk runs two grantmaking programs:

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Micro-Grants
Micro-grants of up to $2,000 are meant to pay for discrete expenses that are necessary to produce content or advance a journalist’s professional development. These grants are meant to remove relatively small obstacles standing in the way between a journalist and better coverage of water issues.
Standard Grants
Standard grants of up to $10,000 are meant to support significant reporting efforts that lead to the publication of content connected to Western water issues and the Colorado River Basin, as defined above. These grants will be issued as general support grants, meaning that it will be up to the recipient how to allocate the resources. That said, applicants will still need to provide a proposed budget that outlines how the funds will be spent.
Eligibility Criteria

Only journalists (freelancers and staff at media outlets) may apply for funding.
Recipients of either micro-grants or standard grants should complete the work they outline in their proposals within six months of receiving funding. If the project has not been published yet, grantees should submit their completed work to The Water Desk. (They will only publish on their site with the consent of grantees.)
Recipients of 2019 standard grants from The Water Desk are welcome to apply for 2020 funding if they have completed their existing project by August 17, 2020.
Individuals and media outlets may only submit one application per calendar year for the standard grants. It’s OK for the same journalist or outlet to receive both a micro-grant and a standard grant within a single calendar year so long as they are for different projects.
Journalists and media outlets are welcome to collaborate and submit a joint proposal. Regardless of how many journalists/outlets are part of the application, the cap on standard grants is $10,000.
For more information, visit https://waterdesk.org/journalists/grants