I recently contacted nonprofit news funders, editors and analysts to see if the field experienced a post-election “Trump Bump” in funding similar to what we saw in 2016 and early 2017.
The consensus was that while there isn’t irrefutable evidence showing a direct correlation between donors’ concerns with the election results and increased funding, the field was rife with promising anecdotal data points that, coupled with Americans’ growing dissatisfaction with the administration’s draconian funding cuts, could contribute to a more pronounced and slow-burning Trump Bump in 2025 and beyond.
One of the most encouraging data points came from the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN). In late March, INN reported that the 381 nonprofit outlets participating in 2024’s NewsMatch campaign, which ran from November 1 to December 31, raised more than $55 million in individual donations plus $7.1 million in local matching gifts for a grand total of approximately $62 million. The $7.1 million raised from individuals is an 18% increase compared to 2023 and the highest in the program’s history.
Better yet, the field is awash in new funders. The Barr, Henry Luce, McKnight and Tow foundations supported NewsMatch for the first time in 2024, as did 75,000 individuals. This represents a promising shift for a field previously dominated by a handful of national funders directing support to large outlets based in familiar coastal enclaves. Now, the field’s funding base is deeper and wider, which bodes well for outlets’ ability to develop sustainable business models consisting of a mix of philanthropic dollars and earned revenues like subscriptions and advertising dollars.
In addition, NewsMatch is no longer exclusively a year-end campaign. The NewsMatch 2024 Annual Report documents two pilot fundraising initiatives that complement the standard NewsMatch campaign — Democracy Day 2024, in which INN provided $500 in match funds to 47 organizations, and Give to the Max Day, where six Minnesota-based outlets received matched funds from the McKnight Foundation and over $42,000 from more than 520 unique donors.
Of course, this support doesn’t materialize out of a clear blue sky. Rather, it’s the byproduct of NewsMatch’s methodical efforts to help outlets appeal to funders across the demographic spectrum who appreciate the role of local news in their communities, including foundation leaders who hadn’t considered themselves journalism funders in the conventional sense.
“The most remarkable aspect of NewsMatch 2024 was the fact that, year over year, the public has continued to expand support for nonprofit news organizations,” said INN Executive Director and CEO Karen Rundlet. “Look at the record number of local matches at the community level in 2024 — more than 1,000! — to see the public’s willingness to help fund quality news and information.”
NewsMatch has dramatically expanded its funders and total support since 2016
NewsMatch began in 2016 as a project of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation with $1.5 million in matching funds for 57 newsrooms. Under its current operational model, INN raises money to seed a pooled fund for matching gifts held at The Miami Foundation and participating outlets fundraise in November and December to become eligible for those gifts.
INN and the outlets in its network have raised more than $400 million over nine NewsMatch campaign cycles, including contributions from nearly a half-million first-time donors. In addition, the pool of NewsMatch’s institutional funders has expanded from one in 2016 (Knight) to a record 21 last year that pooled $7 million in direct investments for newsrooms. The list of the 21 funders reads like a who’s who of the philantrosphere’s leading grantmakers, including the Democracy Fund, the MacArthur, Joyce and Hewlett Foundations, plus the Jonathan Logan and Walton family foundations.
Again, this is a stark contrast to the state of play in 2016, when many outlets were reliant on a single foundation or civic-minded donor whose sudden cessation of support could have devastating consequences. INN’s press release explained that back then, “program evaluators noted that some nonprofit news organizations had not been asking their audiences to donate at all.” Now, outlets are confidently and thoughtfully making the ask.
Last year, NewsMatch and its partner News Revenue Hub offered 174 coaching sessions on topics like campaign readiness, donor cultivation and board development, and hosted more than 170 individual coaching sessions and 15 webinars on topics like setting campaign goals, stewarding donors and optimizing newsletters and websites for giving. Over 250 newsrooms used these services to hone their fundraising strategies.
“Simply put, the nonprofit news movement is still relatively young, and many nonprofit outlets don’t start out knowing where to start with their individual fundraising,” Rundlet said. “The training from INN and News Revenue Hub has shown NewsMatch participants how to convert their audiences to donors. Then, year-round, INN members can take advantage of other programs and services to turn small or first-time donors into major donors.”
INN offers crucial support to help newsrooms identify what makes major donors tick by running a yearly Major Gifts Cohort, a program that helps newsrooms launch or grow major gifts, defined as those at $5,000 or greater. It also provides outlets with subsidized wealth screenings to evaluate a donor’s capability to give and discounted subscriptions to DonorSearch, the online prospect research tool.
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Foundations supporting NewsMatch for the first time were drawn to the program’s “proven model”
As noted, one of the big themes in the NewsMatch report and, for that matter, the successes of Press Forward and the American Journalism Project, another philanthropic initiative committed to helping local news outlets build sustainable business models, is this idea that the funders who historically lacked a substantial footprint in the nonprofit journalism space are now ramping up support for the field.
I reached out to leaders of the foundations that supported NewsMatch for the first time in 2024, and two key themes emerged. The first is that its leaders acknowledge how trusted local news strengthens the body politic. In addition, these leaders see NewsMatch as a trusted partner that could help them advance their aims without having to launch standalone journalism program from scratch.
“NewsMatch plays a uniquely critical role in sustaining local journalism by helping newsrooms build the resources and relationships they need to serve their communities,” said Emily Tow, president of the Tow Foundation. “Their focus aligns with our belief that everyone should have access to reliable information so they can actively engage in their communities and make informed decisions.”
Barr Foundation Director of Communications Stefan Lanfer picked up on this theme in INN’s press release, noting that the foundation “had been one of those funders thinking, ‘We’re really not journalism funders.’ At the same time, we were growing increasingly concerned about the state of local news and impressed by how important strong local news can be to the communities we care about.”
In an email to IP, Lanfer said Barr’s pre-NewsMatch journalism funding was “primarily through our programs — to increase the quantity and quality of coverage of our focus areas.” And when COVID hit, the foundation’s leaders paused discussion on what the next iteration of its journalism work would look like.
Fast-forward to 2024. “We picked up the question of whether there were opportunities for Barr to make modest but timely, meaningful contributions to help get more resources and targeted supports into local newsrooms in communities we care about,” Lanfer said. “I’m leading this work on a part-time basis — maybe 10% carved out of my time as communications director. So I knew I’d never be in a position to build relationships and get to know the needs and opportunities in a lot of different newsrooms and communities across the region. That made a partner like NewsMatch ideal.”
NewsMatch’s value proposition also appealed to the McKnight Foundation. “With their proven model,” said Program Officer Tim Murphy, “McKnight and Institute for Nonprofit News piloted a state-based fundraising campaign that was tied into an existing day of giving — Give to the Max Day in Minnesota — to help newsrooms around the state build on the energy and infrastructure already in place.”
NewsMatch aims to double funder commitments to $10 million in 2025
As someone who covers journalism for a living, I’m paid to worry, and as I worked through NewsMatch’s 2024 Annual Report, I tried to think of ways in which the encouraging infusion of funding for outlets could be problematic.
The only legitimate angle I could come up with involved market oversaturation. That is, with more outlets coming online and so much money — relatively speaking, of course — sloshing around the nonprofit journalism ecosystem, perhaps there’s a limit to how much donors are willing to give, particularly during this time of growing need stemming from the administration’s spending cuts and recession fears. What if a former news desert is now home to three nonprofit outlets when, philanthropically speaking, it can only support one over the longer term? If there’s some truth to that theory, the field could contract in some capacity.
A 2024 article INN published on Medium dug into this issue by exploring how outlets in INN’s network were exploring collaborations and consolidations to strengthen their collective long-term sustainability. This trend of what INN calls “collaboration over competition” is another encouraging development in the nonprofit journalism field.
Looking ahead, NewsMatch will continue innovating and fundraising in 2025, noting recent experiments with pop-up newsroom fundraising campaigns during the year. INN has also set a goal of doubling the $5 million in funder commitments for NewsMatch 2025 to $10 million.
“Here’s the most important point,” Rundlet said. “INN’s NewsMatch is a democratic funding base. The public decides our newsrooms are worth it with their dollars. Of course, we’re tremendously grateful to institutional philanthropy for the grants they’ve made to our members. But being in conversation with your core customer — the reader, the block captain, the lawmaker, the PTA president, the teacher, the renter — is essential to making sure nonprofit newsrooms remain in good financial shape.”
