"The traditional financial models for news are dying. Could churches, environmental movements, and open source communities hold clues to its survival? We’re at a moment of profound transition and successive crisis for news. Our mission is to explore how membership models might help. A key takeaway from our research over the past 12 months is that membership models are fundamentally different from subscription or product models–and that they require whole new methods and mindsets to be successful. Membership isn’t just “subscription by another name” (though it’s often referenced that way), or about giving consumers access to a product. It’s participation in a larger cause that reflects what they want to see in civil society. In membership, there’s a different “social contract” or “value proposition” between the site and its members. At the basic level of: What do you give? What do you get? Subscribers pay their money and get access to a product. But members join the cause and participate because they believe in it." (Executive summary)