In September 2023, a coalition of 22 donors announced the launch of Press Forward, a national initiative that aimed to infuse local news ecosystems with $500 million over five years. Two years later, the initiative, which now consists of 110 funders, has already moved $400 million out the door. “The goal is to get above $500 million,” said Press Forward Executive Director Dale Anglin. “That’s just the start, not the finish.”
I caught up with Anglin at an inauspicious time. It had been less than two months since funders, including Press Forward, rolled out the Public Media Bridge Fund to support outlets that lost Corporation for Public Broadcasting funding. Press Forward was also poised to publish its latest impact report laying out the initiative’s accomplishments and where it’s headed next.
The coalition has four priority areas: closing local coverage gaps, sustaining trusted news sources, providing the infrastructure local news needs and advancing policy that expands access to local news. Its funds flow in three ways. The first is through Press Forward Locals, regional chapters bringing together place-based funders, civic organizations and outlets to strengthen their area’s news ecosystem through grantmaking, professional support and other activities. Press Forward has 41 chapters operating today across 31 states.
Funding also flows through the Press Forward Pooled Fund, which channels contributions to local newsrooms and support organizations, as well as into “aligned grantmaking,” a process by which funders who give directly to local news initiatives join the coalition by committing to make grants that map to its strategic priorities.
Press Forward’s success lies in its tireless field-building activities and ability to bring in funders that hadn’t historically supported local news. That said, membership comes with an important precondition. “To join Press Forward, you agree to give more money to the news than what you gave before,” Anglin said. “The bottom line is, we’ve moved a lot of money into the field that would not necessarily have been there if we hadn’t been in existence.”
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Press Forward has brought on funders with a small footprint in local news funding
Few will dispute the contention that a grantmaker, regardless of its priority areas, should consider supporting local news, since an educated populace can help maximize the impact of charitable endeavors. Things get tricky when a funder pivots to the operational mechanics of grantmaking. For example, a family foundation with limited staff may be unable to conduct the requisite due diligence to identify new outlets to support.
Press Forward provides an elegant solution by eliminating barriers of entry for funders with a historically low — or nonexistent — giving footprint in the space. “This is such a brand-new field for many foundations, and it’s just easier to join a collective where we can give you technical assistance,” Anglin said. “We truncate the learning process for you. We give you access to peers, so a program officer talks to a program officer. That’s harder to do if you’re doing this on your own.”
Press Forward’s efforts have paid impressive dividends. According to its impact report, 39% of its funders have joined the field of journalism philanthropy in the last five years. Moreover, 67% of its pool of funders — which includes stalwarts like the Knight, MacArthur and Wyncote foundations — have increased their local news funding since joining the initiative.
Participants talk to each other and have created an organic recruiting effect. “People call us because they talked to somebody in the field, even though they hadn’t necessarily focused on journalism,” Anglin said. “They start to ask questions like, ‘How can this look in our community?’ and, ‘If we could partner, what’s the best way to do that?’”
Press Forward is playing an important role in supporting outlets grappling with terminated Corporation for Public Broadcasting funding. It gave the Public Media Bridge Fund $250,000 from the Press Forward Pooled Fund, and Anglin and her team are also encouraging funders and Press Forward Locals chapters to contribute to the PMBF and alert media outlets about how to apply for funding. “We want to save those stations,” Anglin said. “And we want to figure out how to transform them.”
Press Forward is leaning into policy advocacy
Historically speaking, many grantmakers have been reluctant to engage in sustained and robust policy advocacy. “I’ve been in philanthropy for 20 years, and it’s something that’s foreign to them,” Anglin said. “It’s messy and funders don’t control all of the inputs. But if you don’t start now, you won’t get to where you want to be in five to 10 years.”
While some funders may be revisiting their hesitancy at a time when the stroke of a pen can undo their best-laid philanthropic plans, Press Forward had been focused on policy activity from the jump.
“When we were designed, we couldn’t do everything at once, so policy became one of the four pillars that we were going to focus on,” Anglin said. “Most people think of news as something almost like water — it’s important, but you don’t pay attention to it. It’s a public good that everyone wants, like libraries and museums, but given the market failure in the industry, audience dollars aren’t enough to support it.”
In June, Press Forward announced its first investments in public policy by supporting five state-level public policy grantees and two national media policy advocacy organizations, Rebuild Local News and Free Press (not to be confused with The Free Press). “Our approach is to give money to state and national groups to help them experiment and build coalitions with all types of people — not just foundations — in the space to say, ‘If we believe we want and need this, what’s the best way to do it in our state?’” Anglin said. “And you need money to make that happen.”
Press Forward also assembles working groups consisting of funders focused on specific issues. Its largest working group, which consists of more than 50 foundation leaders, is focused on public policy. “Half of them haven’t done a lot of policy of any kind before, but they’re willing to learn,” Anglin said. “We’re committed to getting people more comfortable in that space.”
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A to-do list for the field’s stakeholders moving forward
While Press Forward clearly has the wind at its back, Anglin is clear eyed about the future of nonprofit philanthropy geared toward a field that is in a perpetual state of churn.
“We’re not going to fix it all,” she said. “We understand that. But our donors still have an important role in their information ecosystem. Should they be paying attention to radio or broadcast? What’s going to go missing if they go dark? What are the ways that we can work together to support each other?”
Anglin cited three ways the field’s stakeholders can collectively address these questions. The first is partnering with community foundations with access to countless civic-minded individuals moving money through donor-advised funds. “We’re never going to do this with just institutional donors,” Anglin said. “Sometimes, community foundations have been seen as a ‘less than’ compared to big foundations, but between COVID response and the rise of individual donors, they are pretty powerful — or they can be.”
The sector also needs to look beyond the familiar philanthropic partners. “The news industry can be pretty siloed,” Anglin said. “We’re trying to spend time speaking to different types of groups, to get everybody to feel like they’re part of the solution.” For instance, in June, Anglin spoke with leaders from housing nonprofits and children’s organizations in New Jersey. “I said to them, ‘Don’t wait for an outlet to come to you. Figure out who’s in your network and how you can have ongoing relationships with them,’” Anglin recalled. “They had never heard that message before.”
Lastly, Anglin encouraged nonprofits to pursue the Rosetta Stone of nonprofit news: a diversified revenue model that includes a combination of philanthropic dollars and earned revenues like subscriptions and event income. “There’s no way you’re going to survive with just one revenue source,” she said. Press Forward has been relentlessly conveying this message to nonprofit leaders as well as foundations. In May, it sponsored the 2025 Lenfest News Philanthropy Summit, which was dedicated entirely to fundraising and development.
Two years into its existence, Anglin and her team are building a robust knowledge base gleaned from real-time feedback from funding and organizational partners. These conversations have left her feeling cautiously optimistic about what comes next.
“There are so many outlets that have sprouted up that can be sustainable, but it takes a while to get there,” she said. “I want people to understand the nuance. I know our brains go to the negative, which means we all have to do a better job of telling people that there are amazing things happening in every state that just need more support.”
