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EducationNC’s 2024 Annual Report
Highlights
- An external case study finds, EdNC “built a team whose talent was matched only by their commitment.”
- In 10 years, we published 8,643 articles lifting up about 1,500 voices from across our state, collectively writing the story and history of education in North Carolina.
- EdNC’s audience exceeds 1.2 million users and 2 million pageviews annually.
- EdNC has built the trust that allows us to provide strategic support across the education continuum in times of crisis, like Hurricane Helene.
- It is our privilege to do this work. Thank you for being part of us.
Newsrooms and think tanks are dependent on our audience from the public to philanthropists to policyshapers and policymakers. In many ways, creating and publishing content is not the hard part. It’s getting it to you in ways that you will not only read our content but share and act on it as well.
Since our beginning, EdNC’s secret sauce has been 1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3: 1/3 of our time is spent out in the world building relationships and finding the stories, 1/3 is the process from writing to publication, and 1/3 is pushing the information back out into the world.
EdNC started with an audience of zero in 2015, and 10 years in, we wanted to better understand our reach and impact.
To kick off our 10th anniversary, EdNC retained Tim Griggs and the Blue Engine Collaborative to conduct an external review of our work as a nonprofit media outlet. Tim was our coach for the Knight-Lenfest Newsroom Initiative in 2018, and we have regarded him as our Yoda ever since.
On Jan. 25, 2024, Blue Engine provided EdNC with a 44-page report on how we track analytics. The report helped us assess our market penetration, prompted us to move to Parse.ly to better understand our analytics in real time, and served as a framework for our participation in Poynter’s Media Transformation Challenge.
Anna Pogarcic is the youngest news leader ever to be selected for the Media Transformation Challenge, and she guided us through a year-long process to stabilize our audience at 1.2 millions users and 2 million pageviews annually through a series of audience-focused content strategies.
It worked. In 2024, we had 1,236,039 users and 2,013,871 pageviews.
At the same time, the Blue Engine team was conducting a case study of EdNC, which they released today, finding we are seen as a source of truth on all things public schools, but also that “the startup news organization’s leadership has done a lot of other things right,” including:
They built a team whose talent was matched only by their commitment, then grew the organization to more than a dozen people, journalists and non-journalists alike.
They became subject matter experts in all things education. Then, importantly, earned a reputation as trustworthy authorities on the topic.
They put in the miles, traveling to all 100 counties of North Carolina and forming personal connections with thousands of stakeholders.
They innovated on ways to build investment, build audiences, and build trust.
They grew their annual budget to more than $2.5 million in 2023 and 2024.
They adjusted the approach when required but never lost sight of their mission: To produce trustworthy news and information about education in North Carolina, to provide those engaged on the topic with a way to participate in the process, and to expand educational opportunities and improve academic outcomes for all students.
Blue Engine’s EdNC Case Study, January 2025
Since the beginning, educators have looked to us for “balanced, fair reporting on the hot topics in education.” You’ve trusted us to share your story with the public.
That won’t change in our moving forward.
EdNC’s Theory of Change
Year to year, our annual report provides an update on our theory of change, our outputs, outcomes, key performance indicators, and impact. This chart explains how we believe our direct, widespread, and systemic impact is driven by what we do and why we do it. In 2024, we launched this ripple effect survey to better map the impact of EdNC going forward.
1) On the ground in your communities
From the beginning of EdNC, showing up in your communities in person has mattered in building and then strengthening our relationships with you. We strive to be welcome in all 100 counties, all 115 school districts, and all 58 community colleges.
Conducting our reporting and researching on the ground in your communities allows us to establish trust, share relationships, check our assumptions, conduct both qualitative and quantitative research, inform grantmaking and policymaking, and align and build momentum for collective action in addition to storytelling.
In May 2024, as the expansion of school choice in North Carolina and the race for superintendent of public instruction garnered national attention, EdNC published a book co-authored by members of our team titled, “North Carolina’s Choice: Why our public schools matter.”
The purpose of the book is to encourage everyone from people in community to policymakers in Raleigh to talk out loud about how policy changes to public education bear on the role public schools play in economic development statewide, economic impact locally, as anchor institutions in community, in building the diverse workforce the future requires, the provision of early childhood education, postsecondary access and opportunity, and the perception of this state we all call home.
We followed up with stories about the impact of school districts locally.
In 2024, we traveled more than 50,000 miles, the equivalent of driving from Murphy to Manteo 93 times. We visited 87 of 100 counties, publishing content about 78 of those counties and the Qualla Boundary.
2) Journalism as the fourth estate in a democracy
EdNC covers the continuum from birth to career, and since our beginning we have known we can’t cover education without also covering poverty, health care, nutrition, and the economy.
Our team uses a layered media strategy to engage our audience, starting with social-first content when we are out on the road.
Our news documents in real time what is happening — when and where and why, providing comprehensive coverage of issues, covering stories over time, and conducting enterprise projects.
Here you can see EdNC’s top news stories in 2024.
This year, EdNC was the go-to source for reliable information about those wanting to lead education policy and the impact of the 2024 elections on education.
Our multimedia capacity allows us to infuse our work with graphics, audiograms, podcasts, videos, and short- and long-form documentaries.
3) In-depth research on the issues surfaced by the news across the education continuum
EdNC conducts in-depth qualitative and quantitative research, policy analysis, and surveys on the issues surfaced by the news. This research, conducted by policy analysts, informs our capacity to provide thought leadership on policy and politics. In 2024, EdNC published 45 policy-based research projects.
We see all of the categories of best practices in our travels across North Carolina from innovation to promising practices, models, and best practices ready to be scaled sometimes even becoming statewide policy, like the science of reading.
Rupen Fofaria, a former reporter at EdNC and now the director of operations and policy for the N.C. State Board of Education, highlights, “EdNC’s unique ability to distribute thoughts about what’s working in different places around the state.”
In 2024, Emily Thomas piloted a case study approach aligned with philanthropic funding to scale best practices we identified in building the health care workforce.
In fall 2024, EdNC started partnering with the Rural Postsecondary Practices Partnership (RP3), a collaborative group including the North Carolina Community College System, the Belk Center for Community College Leadership and Research, and myFutureNC. The goal is to collectively better understand, curate, and share practices and policies that strengthen rural-serving community colleges.
Combining solutions journalism and public policy analysis, Liz Bell and Katie Dukes have continued their look to other states to document what is and isn’t happening in early care and education, but more importantly what must happen moving forward. In 2025, we will release research on increasing the utilization of child care grants at community colleges, and we are conducting a model analysis of how community colleges provide early care and education in their communities.
With support from the Education Writers Association (EWA) Reporting Fellowship, Chantal Brown conducted research on the educator workforce in North Carolina, with a specific lens on the recruitment, retention, and professional development of teachers working with students in special education. Angelina Liu with EWA said in an email to Chantal, “Congratulations on both publishing such impactful work and working toward your dream of amplifying voices from underreported groups.”
EdNC conducted research on housing, fund balances, school performance grades, home schools, marketshare, school board elections, and more.
In July 2024, EdNC convened public policy leaders from around the country at Wildacres thanks to the Blumenthal Foundation, and the national Governmental Research Association (GRA) subsequently published a book, “Moving Forward: Issues that matter in cities, regions, and states,” that emerged from our time together.
EdNC also hosted the annual conference of the GRA in Asheville.
4) Building and engaging our audience
EdNC launched with an audience of 0 in 2015, and now day-to-day we truly have statewide reach.
In 2024, our team participated in more than 735 external meetings to engage with our audience and better understand how to meet their needs.
Annually, EdNC iterates our audience playbook for content distribution, audience growth, and engagement, including our website; email, including newsletters; social media; Reach, our suite of tech tools, including texting and surveys; fostering belonging, including individual donations; events, including ours and others; brand building, including swag and sponsorships; and leveraging redistribution and republication.
When we add in First Vote NC and Apple News, the total reach of our EdNC.org platform was 1,287,782 users and 2,115,562 pageviews.
Google search, newsletters, and Facebook drive most of the traffic to EdNC articles. We had 31.2 million impressions on Google search in 2024 up from 24.3 million in 2023, we send out about 300,000 emails weekly, and our content garners additional impressions and link clicks from Facebook, Twitter now X, and Instagram.
EdNC shares our platform with a commitment that at least 20% of perspectives published are written by people of color. In 2024, we hit 33%. Here is information on how to submit a perspective.
“Thank you for allowing me to share my voice and perspective on education. It has been life-changing. I have always struggled with finding my passion in life, and you all have helped me find it through writing.”
— Joshua Webb, Transformational Scholar at NC State
We offer free subscriptions to four newsletters: EdDaily, EdWeekly, Awake58, and Early Bird. You can sign up for all of them here.
This year, more than 60 EdNC articles were republished by other news outlets, allowing our coverage to reach audiences we may not have otherwise reached locally and nationally. Newsletters such as N.C. DPI’s daily education news clips, the North Carolina Tribune, the NC Insider, The 74, and Education Commission of the States often point to our content, allowing us to reach key influencers in education and policy. Apple News and Newsbreak also distribute our content. Here are our republication guidelines.
Stay tuned for the results from our annual audience survey.
Collectively, our audience breathes life into the “architecture of participation” we built to tell the story of your commitment to our students, our state, and our future.
5) Belonging
Many news outlets employ strategies to foster loyalty with the goal of getting people to pay money and subscribe to their newspaper. None of our content is behind a paywall.
Instead of loyalty, we strive to foster belonging. In 2025, Derick Lee will lead a learning journey for us to think about what belonging looks like for our team, our board, our strategic council, donors, those who subscribe to our newsletters, our front page loyalists, those who write perspectives, our social influencers, and those who buy and wear our swag.
The work of belonging happens in the small decisions made in the day-to-day. At EdNC, we approach the work intentionally through four dimensions: intrapersonal (this is the “I” work), organizational (this is the “we” work), community presence (this is “our walk”), and systems change (this is “the way” forward).
In 2023, we announced our process for an ongoing content audit, and in early 2024, we announced our process for assessing choice points between article inception and distribution.
Our commitment to partners includes supporting and amplifying the work of others. In 2023, Derick Lee led an analysis of our “force amplification” of other leaders and organizations, identifying five key levers:
- Amplification: inclusion in newsletters, posting and boosting on social media;
- Content: profiles of leaders, event coverage, publication of perspectives, creation of social first and multimedia content;
- Leaders/Organizations: monthly or quarterly check ins;
- Financial: sponsorships, grant writing, sharing other financial assets; and
- Resources: sharing relationships and networks, sharing our team.
In 2024, Derick Lee and EdNC provided targeted support to LENS-NC, CREED, the Dudley Flood Center for Educational Equity and Opportunity, LatinxEd, and Teach for America North Carolina, among other organizations.
EdNC has our own content expectations for the eight majority Black counties and two Indigenous counties, including Bertie, Edgecombe, Halifax, Hertford, Northampton, Robeson, Vance, Warren, and Washington as well as the Qualla Boundary.
6) Leading innovation in the new media and nonprofit world
First Vote NC
First Vote NC is EdNC’s award-winning, online, simulated election experience for North Carolina students. This year, we invited all K-12 students regardless of their education setting — homeschools, private schools, charter schools, and local public schools — to participate in First Vote NC. Students in 76 of North Carolina’s 100 counties cast 1,734 ballots.
Strategic support in crisis
EdNC, as a nonprofit news organization, has not always been in the business of providing strategic support for communities experiencing a crisis, but part of our theory of change in addition to journalism is leading innovation in the new media and nonprofit world. As best we can tell, this kind of public service is no organization’s job, but it turns out that the same information needed to write articles is the information needed to write grants.
And Rolfe Neill always encouraged us “not to be afraid to be caught loving our community.”
We piloted this model of crisis intervention to provide support for local leaders to protect educational anchor institutions last year in Canton, where the state’s largest layoff of the year created unprecedented ripple effects for the community. This experience allowed us to imagine how to provide support across a three-county region following Hurricane Helene.
To date, we have published 69 articles, and we have supported more than $2.8 million in fundraising related to Hurricane Helene.
“Thank you for being a blessing to all of us,” said Superintendent Kathy Amos of Yancey County Schools.
7) Tracking the impact of our work and moving the needle on policy change
EdNC strives to inform and shape the conversation about education in North Carolina. We love it when the information we publish is used to prompt change.
Our readers use our content for an incredibly wide range of purposes. Philanthropists use them to inform framing documents to support long range planning and investment. Our articles are used to document the scope of work across the state in each sector: early education, K-12, and community colleges. Emerging leaders and new nonprofits use articles to connect to funders and funding opportunities. Our articles are used by educators to collaborate with others regardless of geography. They even lead to dissertations.
When Caroline Parker wrote this article about the Delta House, they told us that they “received a 21st Century Community Learning Centers state award for the outstanding strategies used at the Delta House because of your article in EdNC.”
A state legislator read an excerpt from Laura Browne’s article, “The power of an LGBTQ+ school club: ‘It makes me feel at home’” during LGBTQ+ Advocacy Day at the General Assembly.
8) Increasing leadership capacity statewide
EdNC believes in collective and distributed leadership that is service oriented. We work together as a team of peer experts and thought leaders.
Mebane Rash is the founding CEO and editor-in-chief. Liz Bell is our early childhood reporter and perspectives editor. Molly Urquhart is our vice president and chief operating officer. Caroline Parker is our director of rural storytelling and strategy. Alli Lindenberg is our associate director of engagement. Eric Frederick is our beloved part-time editorial advisor, who works most closely with Liz and Katie. Emily Thomas is our director of postsecondary attainment. Anna Pogarcic is our director of content and communications. Katie Dukes is our director of early childhood policy and perspectives editor. Hannah Vinueza McClellan is our senior reporter, and she continues to pursue her masters in divinity at Duke Divinity School. Derick Lee is a storyteller and our associate director of culture and partnerships. Lauren Castillo is our associate director of operations, and she continues to pursue her masters in business at N.C. State University. Chantal Brown is a reporter. Ben Humphries is a reporter and policy analyst. Andy Marino is our lead web developer specializing in WordPress and web accessibility. Andy, we are thrilled to have you on the team.
In 2024, when Liz was featured in the documentary “Take Care,” Alli said, “This is what we mean by peer experts.”
EdNC is deeply thankful for the leadership of Molly and Lauren, who day-to-day manage the operations of the organization with an excellence that is both aspirational and inspirational, and allows the rest of us to focus on content and be on the road out in community.
EdNC has three fellows in 2024-25: Rakyah Jacobs, Sophia Luna, and Chunyi Xu.
EdNC has three social media ambassadors in 2024-25: Paola De Avila, Jonathan Fuller, and Deja Davis.
You may have heard about EdNYC, our outpost in New York City. Alessandra Quattrochi continues to copy edit for us while she is getting her law degree at NYU. Cheyenne McNeill, a recipient of the prestigious Chips Quinn Scholars Program for Diversity in Journalism, serves as an EdNC fellow and contributor while she attends graduate school for a masters in fine arts at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. Sergio Osnaya-Prieto is also in the city getting a graduate degree at NYU. Analisa Sorrells and Patrick Archer round out our EdNYC team, and in big news for the team, they tied the knot this year.
Our thanks to Tara Kenchen, Kelley O’Brien, Robert Kinlaw, Deanna Ballard, Dan Gerlach, Unity Web Agency, and Outfitters4, who play invaluable roles on our team. Many thanks to our attorney, Mike Tadych, and our auditors, Batchelor, Tillery & Roberts, LLP.
A few highlights from our 2024 leadership investments:
- Anna Pogarcic is the youngest news leader ever to be selected for Poynter’s Media Transformation Challenge.
- Derick Lee is in the 2023-25 class of Friday Fellows. The William C. Friday Fellowship for Human Relations is a statewide program for cross-sector leaders, dedicated to fostering relationships across differences.
- Caroline Parker attended the American Press Institute’s Rural Journalism Summit in Tulsa, OK.
- Katie Dukes was selected as a 2024 Aspen Ideas: Health Fellow.
- Ryan Hankins attended the Aspen Institute’s executive seminar.
- Chantal Brown and Donna Bledsoe are participating in the 2024-25 Education Policy Fellowship Program (EPFP).
- EdNC is supporting Erika Wilkins with coaching by Tracey Greene-Washington and Indigo Innovation Group.
- EdNC is providing Rodney Pierce with a 2024-25 fellowship as he transitions from being a teacher to being a legislator, including a sabbatical and support for the Institute of Political Leadership.
- The principals of the year are working together to support principals across North Carolina. They launched a website this year! EdNC is providing support for their collective voice.
9) The broad base of financial support
Our funders breathe life into our work. Here are our supporters by year. Thank you!
EdNC writes grants for others in the education ecosystem. In 2024, EdNC’s grantwriting supported $3,063,282 in fundraising for others.
About EdNC
EducationNC has been operating online since Jan. 12, 2015, and June 30, 2024 marked the end of our tenth fiscal year. EdNC is a registered trademark with the N.C. Secretary of State and the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Our mission is to expand educational opportunities for all students in North Carolina, increase their academic attainment, and improve the performance of the state’s public schools. We provide residents and policymakers with nonpartisan data, research, news, information, and analysis about the major trends, issues, and challenges bearing on education. We gather and disseminate information employing the most effective means of communication, primarily through the Internet. In addition to the content distributed, we encourage an active and connected community of those interested in education policy and practice throughout the state. Our work encourages informed participation and strong leadership on behalf of the students of North Carolina.
In 10 years, we published 8,643 articles lifting up about 1,500 voices from across our state, collectively writing the story and history of education in North Carolina.
Here is our statement on journalistic independence. Here is our statement on safeguarding children.
EdNC’s Board of Directors and Strategic Council
In 2021, EdNC changed our governance model. Here is who currently serves on our board and strategic council.
EdNC’s Annual Reports and Financials
Here are EdNC’s previous annual reports. Here are EdNC’s audited financial statements and tax returns.
Thank you for your ongoing support of EdNC. It is our privilege to do this work, and we could not do our work without you. Submit your ideas for stories here.
Expect great things from us, and please donate so we can continue to grow our impact in 2025 and beyond.
