Here’s what we achieved in 2021 with your help (Patreon)

The Kyiv Independent team wishes you happy holidays and all the best in the year to come.

The end of 2021 showed all of us that the fight for independent journalism in Ukraine is far from over. The editorial team of the Kyiv Post, Ukraine’s leading English-language media, was fired by its owner over a dispute about editorial independence.

But it also gave us hope as the team launched a new media outlet, the Kyiv Independent. It took an enormous effort to create a media company in seven weeks – our team was working day and night. It wouldn’t have been possible without your support.

In this email we want to give you some updates on our progress and thank you once again for joining our fight and investing into our future, as well as the future of independent media in Ukraine.

We understand that this is just the beginning of our journey, but we are off to a good start:

We are already producing news at full capacity!

We launched our first editorial product, a daily newsletter, on Nov. 15, before we had even decided on the company’s name. The newsletter already has more than 3,200 subscribers. with an average open rate of over 50%. You can subscribe to our newsletter here.

We launched our first podcast, Media in Progress, documenting our journey as we create a new media company. We have already published five episodes. Listen to it here. 

We launched our website. In fact, we launched a fully operational news website less than three weeks after deciding to start the Kyiv Independent. It would not have been possible without our friends and partners, the Dudka Agency, who did this pro bono. If you are looking for professional, engaged and prompt website developers – we wholeheartedly recommend them.

We are on our way to securing a budget for our operations in 2022!

We have launched a Patreon-based membership system, and just seven weeks later we already have 694 community members pledging $7,600 in monthly support. We have also raised more than $16,000 in one-time donations on GoFundMe. Our readers’ support helped us cover all the administrative expenses for the new company, as well as one-third of the monthly newsroom payroll.

We have secured our first grants. We signed an agreement with the European Endowment for Democracy, an emergency support foundation, as well as with the International Renaissance Foundation in Ukraine. The two grants cover one-third of our 2022 budget. However, we will keep on fundraising to secure a runway for the first two years as we build up our business capacities.

We have entered a final stage of negotiations with an investment company and expect to finalize our first investment partnership in early 2022.

We secured our first commercial partnership on content production with our colleagues from the UNDP and MDF, and have already produced several video and text stories about the UNDP’s humanitarian activities in eastern Ukraine.

We are becoming a real company!

We have registered an NGO in Ukraine and received non-profit status, allowing us to process grant support and donations.

We have begun the process of setting up an LTD in the U.K. and are looking into creating a for-profit company in Ukraine – this could be done to create a viable company that can operate effectively with different kinds of stakeholders.

We have met our supporters and received our first award!

On Dec. 14 we held our first-ever community event to present the company’s strategy to our friends, partners and patrons. We welcomed 30 people to the historic Contract House building in Kyiv, a space provided for free by our friends at Kontravtovyi Dim and the Ukrainian Interbank Currency Exchange, to talk about our next steps and get their advice on the matter.

On Dec. 15, we received our first professional award from our colleagues at Ukrainska Pravda, Ukraine’s leading online media outlet. They gave their annual “Journalist of the Year” award to the Kyiv Independent for standing up for media independence in Ukraine. The award became a huge inspiration for the whole team!

The end of 2021 has been extremely challenging and exciting for all of us at the Kyiv Independent, but the best is yet to come! In 2022, we aim to grow our editorial and business capacity, set up a robust company structure, and secure more partnerships, but most importantly: report the most important stories about Ukraine and the region to our readers.

Sign up for our newsletter, join our community and stay with us in 2022. Your support is what fuels our journalism!

Wishing you happy holidays!

Cordially,

Daryna Shevchenko, CEO of The Kyiv Independent

and

Olga Rudenko, Chief Editor of The Kyiv Independent