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Dear Psci-com, My name's Jon Manning, I'm a postdoc at the University of Edinburgh, and core member of EUSci, Edinburgh University's science media association. I've been a 'lurker' for a while, but this is my first post. We (EUSci) started two years ago as a magazine only, an off-shoot of Cambridge's 'BlueSci', and have quickly formed an identity of our own and expanded into podcasting, seminars and other activities. We're currently experiencing some difficulties, and I'm hoping someone here can offer advice. Many of the things we do (podcasting, seminars, website (www.eusci.org)) cost us very little, and we can happily accomplish them without much in the way of funding (beyond initial equipment costs etc). The magazine, however, is a costly thing to produce, requiring £2k every 4 months for our minimum print run of around 3-4,000. We do not receive any centralised university funds, so the magazine has been supported from: - Advertising revenue from biotech etc. - Internal advertising from university agencies - Roberts training funds (in the process of producing the magazine we provide training on editing, production etc) - Ad-hoc contributions from various sci-comm pots around the university - Fund-raising events- for example ceilidhs - Contributions from a BHF centre award's outreach funding, covering 10% per issue Unfortunately the most signficant of these streams are drying up. We're finding that advertisers do not come back, since they're not seeing a measurable effect from their ads as far as they are concerned- i.e. people actually saying 'we bought this kit because we saw it in EUSci'. Brand exposure etc doesn't seem to cut it. We've been very lucky in receiving funds from the University's 'Roberts' pot that has supported part of our printing for the past year, and for the current one. However we've been told that may not be do-able again due to the dominance of our printing 'overhead' in the funds we ask for. We are a student society, but have been told we are not eligable for society funding since pretty much our only cost is printing, and they won't fund that. Internal advertising and ad-hoc funds are unreliable, and generally not enough, making the Editor's job somewhat stressful. We're chasing up as many leads as we can, but as it is EUSci magazine's existence beyond the next year or so is looking shaky- at least in print form. A web-only format is a consideration, but we'd like to stay in print. I would sincerely appreciate any pointers people may have in terms of potential funding avenues. Many thanks for your time, Jon Manning ********************************************************************** 1. To suspend yourself from the list, whilst on leave, for example, send an email to mailto:[log in to unmask] with the following message: set psci-com nomail -- [include hyphens] 2. To resume email from the list, send an email to [log in to unmask] with the message: set psci-com mail -- [include hyphens] 3. To leave psci-com, send an email to [log in to unmask] with the message: leave psci-com -- [include hyphens] 4. Further information about the psci-com discussion list, including list archive, can be found at the list web site: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/psci-com.html 5. The psci-com gateway to internet resources on science communication and science and society can be found at http://psci-com.ac.uk 6. To contact the Psci-com list owner, please send an email to mailto:[log in to unmask] **********************************************************************