Banyan Project is a start-up non-profit seeking to launch co-operatively-owned online news services in American cities that have lost their newspapers.
Banyan Project came to Open Organize seeking an all-encompassing technology strategy. The start-up wanted to know how to build and provide a comprehensive, low-cost platform for the news organizations it was planning to start. The platform would need to manage all aspects of a modern online news business: from content management, to member management, to advertising sales, accounting, and knowledge management.
Open Organize worked with Banyan Project to develop a comprehensive and low-cost technology strategy, putting meat on the bones of Banyan Project’s unique and compelling business model. In 2015, working under a grant from the Institute for Non-Profit News, Open Organize developed an integrated, turnkey system using Wordpress, Largo, and NationBuilder that Banyan Project will use to launch new affiliates at a moment’s notice.
Banyan’s pilot affiliate, Haverhill Matters in Haverhill, Massachusetts, has begun its initial membership drive and plans to launch sometime in 2017.
