How Spot.Us Works

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"Creating a New Platform to Support Reporting"
- David Cohn
Spot.Us accepts microdonations that are put toward a journalist’s proposal for an investigation. Progress toward reaching the goal is charted on the Web site. This means that an individual’s donation goes only to the targeted project that spurred the donation. Rules exist to govern the percentage of funding that can be donated by individuals as a way of protecting against advocates becoming the primary funders of any specific enterprise reporting project. The finished content is licensed under a Creative Commons license, and Spot.Us will try to get it published in as many places as possible. If any news organization wants exclusive rights to the story, it will need to refund a percentage of the original donations, so the original supporters will get their money back to invest in a new story.