For the Belarusian Investigative Center (BIC), strengthening internal systems was not just a matter of efficiency; it was a matter of resilience. Operating in exile and designated as “extremist” in Belarus, the newsroom faced a dual challenge: continuing to deliver high-impact investigative journalism while protecting both its staff and its audience.
BIC’s mission and audience
BIC’s mission is to raise the bar of Belarusian journalism by advancing investigative reporting and countering corruption and disinformation. As a member of global networks such as OCCRP, GIJN, and IFCN and a contributor to major cross-border investigations like the Pandora Papers, the organisation has established itself as a leading investigative newsroom in the region.
Its audience is primarily working-age Belarusians, both inside the country and in exile, who seek reliable, fact-based reporting on public life and politics. Many of them engage with BIC’s content through YouTube and Telegram. Yet reaching this audience and sustaining the organisation behind it comes with significant constraints.
“Our main concern is safety. We want to reach people in Belarus, but even consuming or supporting independent media can be dangerous for them.”
Monetization
Like many media outlets in exile, BIC operates in a highly constrained revenue environment.
For now, most of its funding comes from grants, with limited income from crowdfunding platforms such as Patreon and Buy Me a Coffee. Advertising is similarly restricted given the political and security context. But the team keeps experimenting with alternative revenue streams, such as subscription and donation models.
“It is challenging. People are afraid to donate. Even those living abroad who want to support us, do worry about consequences for their families or property”, the team notes.
Fixing the financial management
While navigating a broader shift moving towards fully digital publishing, BIC identified another critical barrier to sustainable growth: its financial and operational systems.
Financial management processes were largely manual, relying on disconnected spreadsheets and documents. As the organisation grew to more than 60 contributors across multiple countries, these workflows became increasingly inefficient and error-prone.
“Important processes like budgeting and planning were happening in separate sheets. The data was not connected.”
This resulted in difficulties managing multi-currency transactions, limited visibility across budgets and projects, increased risk of errors in reporting, and inefficiencies in coordinating across departments. That is what BIC focused on fixing during its participation in IPI’s Transition Accelerator: creating a more structured, automated system.
Building a stronger operational foundation
BIC focused on strengthening its internal infrastructure to automate financial and budgeting processes, improve accuracy and transparency, enable multi-currency accounting and strengthen financial oversight and compliance.
The team brought together a mix of financial, operational and grant management expertise for both technical implementation and long-term sustainability.
The path to implementation was not straightforward. An initial partnership with a provider had to be abandoned after the company withdrew, citing legal and reputational risks linked to BIC’s designation in Belarus.
This forced the team to reassess its approach and apply stricter criteria when selecting a solution, including: strong security standards, compliance with EU regulations, independence from Russia and Belarus, and long-term vendor reliability.
After evaluating several options, including enterprise systems such as SAP and recommendations like QuickBooks, the team selected Zoho, a modular business software solution that met both operational and contextual requirements.
Supporting a distributed newsroom securely
With team members and contributors spread across countries, including Poland, Lithuania, Spain, Georgia, and Belarus, coordination presents a constant challenge.
With the new system, the team managed to have structured timesheet tracking for contributors, centralised data and documentation, EU-compliant digital signatures and improved coordination across financial and operational functions.
The implementation process included training 3 internal specialists, migrating existing workflows and data, and integrating financial processes across the organisation.
Building resilience from within
For media organisations operating in exile, sustainability often depends on systems that remain invisible to audiences. By moving from fragmented, manual workflows to a structured financial management system, BIC strengthened its operational resilience, improved accountability and created a foundation for long-term sustainability.
“But participation in the Transition Accelerator gave us much more than fixing our internal operations; we learned so much about monetisation strategies, partnerships, and audience engagement models. We are exploring subscription-based models and diaspora-focused engagement. Peer exchange was also very valuable to us: to gather insights from other media organisations, compare tools, and explore collaboration opportunities”
The Transition Accelerator is part of the Media Innovation Europe programme (MIE), made possible with the support of the European Union.
