Wednesday, April 22, 2009

[CW:MONTHLY] New from NewsU: Reporting on Nonprofits

Chances are you'll find yourself covering a nonprofit organization at some point in your job. But what information can you get on nonprofits?

What are they exactly, anyway, and what makes them different from other businesses?

NewsU's new course, "Reporting on Nonprofits," will show you that there's nothing scary about covering nonprofits. You will learn what constitutes a nonprofit and how it gets its tax-exempt status. You will get tips on digging for information -- especially on how to decipher an IRS 990 tax form -- and what to do with that information once you have it. At the end of the course, five journalists detail the steps they went through to nail great stories on nonprofits.

Their successes and the thrills they had along the way should give you the confidence you need to take on any of the 1.5 million nonprofit organizations in the U.S.

This free course will take just an hour or two to complete. Click here to enroll and take the course on your own schedule. It was developed in partnership with the Newspaper Association of America Foundation.

NewsU offers more than 70 focused, interactive courses that appeal to journalists at all levels of experience and in all types of media. NewsU is funded by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The program is a project of The Poynter Institute, a leader in journalism training.