“Accountability Still Exists.” A Closer Look at a Place-Based Donor’s Historic Journalism Gift

One of the most important donor demographics in the media space is the top-of-the-pyramid, placed-based giver concerned about the state of the body politic. Their gifts, which range from $5 million to $20 million, often flow to journalism programs based at their alma maters. Often, the gift’s philosophical underpinnings are shaped by their experience in the media industry.

Examples of these kinds of donors and their recipients include Curtis Media Group CEO Don Curtis (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Media and Journalism), journalist Michael I. Arnolt (the Media School at Indiana University), and Angela Filo and her husband David Filo (University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism), whose Skyline Foundation is a partner of Press Forward, the $500 million commitment by 22 funders to back local journalism.

Florida-based real estate executive Nathan Collier also fits this profile. Back in 2019, Collier gave the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications (UFCJC) a gift to establish the Collier Prize for State Government Accountability. Adhering to the conventional philanthropic wisdom that smaller gifts often lead to mega-gifts, UFCJC announced last month that it had received $8 million from Collier to fund the prize in perpetuity, hire a director to administer the prize, and create an annual symposium dedicated to local and state journalism. It’s the largest gift in UFCJC’s history.

Technically speaking, Collier doesn’t perfectly match this demographic since he didn’t study or practice journalism. However, he has spent over a decade serving on the board of the Columbia Journalism Review — which he calls “journalism’s premier standard setter” — so he is deeply attuned to the opportunities and challenges animating the field. Moreover, Collier comes from an illustrious line of muckrakers. In 1888, his great-grandfather, Peter Fenelon Collier, founded Collier’s Weekly, a magazine focused on investigative reporting that paved the way for reforms related to child labor, slum clearance and women's suffrage.

This strong, civic-minded impulse infuses Collier’s mega-gift to UFCJC. “I love America and I feel it is everyone’s duty to give back,” he said via email. “One of my affirmations is, ‘Bit by bit, better every day, helping others along the way.”

The “vital role of government oversight”

Collier is the founder and chairman of the Collier Companies, a multifamily housing management and real estate development firm based in Gainesville, Florida. The company currently has over $2.5 billion in assets under management in over 50 communities in the state, with additional holdings in Georgia. Collier received his bachelor of science, master of business administration and juris doctor at the University of Florida. In 2006, he endowed the Nathan S. Collier Master of Science in Real Estate program at UF.

He said he named the Collier Prize in honor of his great grandfather, Peter Fenelon Collier, an Irish emigre and “classic American ‘rags to riches story.’” Thankfully, America benefited from Peter’s industriousness. In 1905, his outlet, Collier’s Weekly, published Upton Sinclair’s, “Is Chicago Meat Clean?” which persuaded the U.S. Senate to pass the 1906 Meat Inspection Act.

The Collier Prize channels this watchdog spirit by recognizing the best U.S. reporting on state government accountability in any medium and on any platform, and its aim is becoming more relevant by the day. Last year, Northwestern University’s State of Local News found that two community newspapers are shuttering per week and 70 million Americans live in news deserts. The deleterious effect on the body politic is self-evident — when local outlets fold, there isn’t anyone to keep an eye on officials making decisions in the state capitol.

Collier picked up on this theme in our email exchange. “Social media and the internet have decimated the local newspapers, which had provided a vital role in governmental oversight; it was imperative that efforts be made to replicate that accountability,” he said. “As the Washington Post’s masthead motto states: ‘Democracy dies in the darkness.’”

The prize winner is announced annually at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. Last year’s winner was the Los Angeles Times, which received $25,000 in recognition for its two-year investigation into the shortcomings in the California Bar's regulation of lawyers. The Times’ stories “demonstrated the many ways that feeble, and at times nonexistent, regulation had enabled the exploitation of the vulnerable and the corruption of the court system by wealthy and powerful lawyers,” read the UFCJC press release. The Collier Prize has attracted more than 350 entries since its inception.

Rubbing shoulders with the field’s best and brightest

Collier’s hands-on interest in journalism dates back to when he met Victor Navasky, the former editor and publisher of The Nation, while participating in Harvard Business School’s executive education program. “In spite of occupying differing locations on the political spectrum, we became fast friends,” Collier said. When Navasky became chair of Columbia Journalism Review’s Board of Overseers, he asked Collier to join the board.

Collier accepted the officer, and in the subsequent 10-plus years, he has worked closely with some of the media’s most experienced journalists and thought-leaders, such former Reuters Editor-in-Chief Stephen Adler, NBC News Washington correspondent Yamiche Léone Alcindor, and Craig Newmark. “I’ve met many highly accomplished journalists and became all the more aware of the vital importance of a vibrant and free press in ensuring a functioning democracy,” Collier said. “It was that work that gave impetus to this gift to the University of Florida.”

Gifts of this nature rarely emerge as fully formed ideas in the donor’s mind, and Collier’s was no exception. He said that his two “lifelong friends” Ken and Linda McGurn “were very instrumental in helping this come together.” The pair, who also have a footprint in real estate, having played a major role in redeveloping downtown Gainesville, co-chaired UF’s Go Greater campaign, which, in yet another testament to the regional higher ed fundraising boom, concluded in 2022 after raising $4.6 billion. The McGurns are “enduring companions on life’s journey,” Collier said. “They were very helpful sounding boards and contributed vital time and energy, always there if my vision grew cloudy or faded.”

With the Collier Prize now entering its fifth year, Collier’s gift will ensure his vision exists in perpetuity. Besides awarding funding to winning newsrooms, the UFCJC will use Collier’s support to bring on a director who will be responsible for boosting the prize’s visibility, soliciting entries and coordinating the final component of the gift, an annual symposium highlighting the best state reporting from across the country.

“My only hope,” Collier said, “is that Collier Prize for State Government Accountability achieves an ever-higher profile because it is publicity that magnifies the deterrence effect [and] the knowledge that there still are guardians of freedom on watch on behalf of citizens, that accountability still exists.”

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