SABEW reaches fundraising goal

The Society of American Business Editors and Writers announced Friday that it had reached a key fundraising goal with the help of a former business journalist.

SABEW needed to raise $50,000 to match a $50,000 challenge grant from four donors — The Ford Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the McCormick Foundation and the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation. The organization neeeded to raise that amount by the end of July.

The organization got help from Kenneth Baldwin, a former business editor and executive at the Norfolk, Va.-based Landmark Communications, which owns daily newspapers in Norfolk and Roanoke, Va., as well as Greensboro, N.C. Baldwin gave a large, unspecified amount to the fundraising effort.

Earlier this year, Baldwin also gave a $500,000 gift to the University of South Carolina’s School of Journalism and Mass Communications to establish an endowment to teach business and financial journalism.

Another large donor to the SABEW challenge effort was former Wall Street Journal managing editor Paul Steiger, who gave $5,000.

The society plans to use the $100,000 from the foundations and its fund drive to revamp its technology. This upgrade will enable it to offer streaming and advanced resources for membership services, to manage its affairs more efficiently, to become more flexible and to incorporate a wide variety of other improvements.

SABEW, which is moving to Arizona State University later this summer after 25 years at the University of Missouri, is expected to soon announce a new executive director.