Last week, the embattled U.S. public media ecosystem got some more good news from philanthropy. NPR announced it received two donations totaling $113 million — $80 million from Connie Ballmer, wife of billionaire and former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, and $33 million from an anonymous donor. These are two of the largest gifts the public broadcasting organization has received in its 56-year history, and will help offset Congress’ sweeping cuts to public media from last year.
As the cofounder and co-leader of Ballmer Group, the couple’s philanthropic LLC largely focused on increasing economic development and opportunities for children and families, Connie Ballmer is a figure of growing influence in today’s increasingly billionaire-heavy philanthrosphere. She is a general partner of Blue Meridian Partners, a funder collaborative which the Ballmer Group helped establish, and sits on the boards of StriveTogether, Obama Foundation and the Los Angeles Clippers Foundation. (Steve Ballmer is the owner of the Clippers basketball team, and is worth an estimated $136 billion, according to Forbes.)
Connie Ballmer has a strong connection to both NPR and journalism as a whole. She previously sat on the board of the NPR Foundation, and she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Oregon.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Ballmer is “an avid listener” of NPR. Ballmer told the Journal she listens to NPR’s shows, including its flagship programs “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered” as she goes about her day.
“I support NPR because an informed public is the bedrock of our society, and democracy requires strong, independent journalism,” Ballmer said in a statement. “My hope is that this commitment provides the stability and the spark NPR needs to innovate broadly and strengthen its national network.”
Ballmer’s gift will support innovation in digital technology to help NPR better connect with audiences on the platforms and devices they choose to use and to better meet their evolving needs.
“Audiences don’t just listen in their cars or in their kitchens,” said NPR’s President and CEO Katherine Maher. “They’re reading, they’re viewing, they’re listening on the go.”
Meanwhile, the gift from the anonymous donor will be used to strengthen the NPR Network and help make it more sustainable into the future. Described as a “catalytic investment,” the gift will give NPR more resources to build and acquire “shared tools, technology and services needed to better serve” its audience and support member organizations across the country. The NPR Network will help stations analyze their audiences, improve marketing and raise funding.
Philanthropy’s response to federal cuts to public media
The gifts come at a precarious time for public media. Last June, Congress voted to strip the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which administered federal support for public media such as NPR and PBS, of its federal funding, cancelling the $1.1 billion that had been set aside for the next two years.
Philanthropy quickly responded as a group of funders came together to launch the Public Media Bridge Fund. Operated by the Public Media Company, the fund was initially backed by Knight Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Schmidt Family Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Melinda French Gates’ Pivotal. It’s now supported by more than 100 funders and has raised $73 million in commitments.
Some funders have also awarded grants directly to public media organizations or stations. In addition to its support for the Public Media Bridge Fund, the MacArthur Foundation committed $10 million in direct support for public media stations, programs and organizations.
There has also been a surge in grassroots support for public media. According to a demographics analysis of new public media donors from Current, there was a year-to-year increase in new donors of 61% by August 2025 compared to the same period in 2024. The analysis found that the surge in new donors was likely due to the cuts to federal funding — and underscores the fact that while the “public” component of public media funding has always been important, these outlets have also long relied on viewers like you.
More broadly, philanthropic funding for institutions that work to expand access to knowledge has continued to flow — to libraries, Wikipedia and the Internet Archive, for instance — in part to adopt emerging technologies to better serve the needs of their users.
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Problems with more private funding for public media?
Connie Ballmer’s media megagift is the latest indicator of how much the media funding landscape in the U.S. is changing as billionaires make their influence felt. With newsrooms struggling with financing and declining readership and audiences, more and more outlets have come under the ownership of the ultra-rich. To name a few examples: Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post, David Ellison (the son of Larry Ellison) owns CBS and may soon own CNN, Patrick Shoon-Shiong owns the Los Angeles Times, and Marc Benioff owns Time magazine. And as great as it is for these outlets to continue to operate, billionaire owners have at times used their positions to influence news coverage.
That’s not to say that will be the case with Ballmer’s gift, and in most cases, nonprofit news outlets receiving philanthropic support have taken pains to ensure that their newsrooms remain independent from donor influence.
Still, as encouraging as it is to see philanthropy step up to support public media, this overall shift toward more megadonor support (and away from actual public sector funding) raises questions.
The good news is that a lot of the funding raised recently will enable newsrooms to be more sustainable and find alternative revenue streams. As numerous funders have pointed out, philanthropy cannot and should not wholly replace government funding. It can, however, help these news organizations not only to survive but to become more sustainable and better equipped to inform their communities.
