A step-by-step toolkit to help you gather the information you need to fund local news and information in your community.
Focus Area: Ecosystem News
Blog
What We Learned Through NewsMatch Can Help All of Local News
There are almost-weekly reminders about the struggles facing local news. Last week the entire staff of the New Orleans Times-Picayune were laid off when the paper was sold to a competing paper. When 14 staff were laid off at the Cleveland Plain Dealer in April, it fell to one of those laid-off staff to cover the story. Zooming out, these individual stories fit into a troubling trend: America has lost nearly half its newspaper staff between 2008 and 2017, and almost 1,800 newspapers have closed their doors since 2004.
In the face of these struggles, the annual NewsMatch campaign, now entering its fourth year, provides a number of important lessons for how we can strengthen and support local news. NewsMatch is a national campaign that helped newsrooms around the country raise more than $7.6 million from hundreds of thousands of donors at the end of 2018. Today NewsMatch is releasing its annual learning report, which documents how the campaign meets three interlocking goals: Raising awareness about the role of journalism in our society, expanding community support and funding for news, and strengthening newsrooms’ long-term fundraising capacity.
We know raising awareness is a pressing need because the Pew Research Center recently found that 70 percent of U.S. adults think local journalism is doing well financially and only 14 percent have directly paid for local news. For local news in America to thrive newsrooms will have to dramatically shift public perception by engaging more deeply with audiences, documenting the impact of their journalism, and being transparent about the challenges they face. NewsMatch is creating new pathways both to raise awareness about the crisis in local news and enabling people to take action by supporting the quality journalism our nation needs.
Building Public Awareness About Nonprofit News
Between Nov. 1 and Dec. 31, 2018, the campaign helped 154 nonprofit news organizations across the country raise more than $7.6 million in unrestricted funding, which is being invested in more and better journalism, crucial general operating support, and improved fundraising capabilities. Since 2016, NewsMatch has helped nonprofit newsrooms raise more than $15.8 million for reporting and operations.
Core to the success of NewsMatch is how the program has helped spark a new kind of local and national conversation about the role of nonprofit news in America. The campaign runs a national awareness effort, provides 500+ hours of training to local and investigative newsrooms, creates a campaign-in-a-box toolkit for participants, and coordinates a national day of action called #GivingNewsDay in partnership with Giving Tuesday. These and other resources help newsrooms communicate their value and work to their community and ask for support, reminding people that good journalism shapes every other issue they care about.
The public is noticing. In two months — November and December of 2018 — over 240,000 people gave to news organizations. That is more than digital subscriptions to the Seattle Times, Boston Globe, Star-Tribune, and Dallas Morning News combined, according to a recent Wall Street Journal report. Critically, 52,000 of those donors were new and were supporting a nonprofit news organization for the first time. The year before, in 2017, 43,000 new donors gave for the first time during NewsMatch, for a two-year total of 95,000 new donors.
The learning and evaluation report released today outlines how the team behind NewsMatch designed the 2018 campaign, what worked and what didn’t. It covers how NewsMatch operates, what we are learning about building community support for journalism and the impact the campaign is having on newsrooms, donors and philanthropy.
Helping Foundations See Local News as a Priority
In examining the lack of understanding of the local news crisis last month in Bloomberg, Gerry Smith wrote last month that many people “have yet to conceive of journalism as a critical component of a free society, and may not think of a newsroom in the same way they do the Salvation Army or the American Red Cross.” This disconnect persists even though a growing body of research has mapped our how the erosion of local news is tied to lower voter turnout, fewer candidates running for office, less responsive elected representatives, and an increase in corruption and government waste. It is not enough to expand individual donations, we must also create new on-ramps for local and national foundations to support nonprofit news. According to an analysis released last year by Northeastern University and Harvard’s Shorenstein Center local news comprised only 5% of total grants given to media from 2010 to 2015.
That is why NewsMatch is also creating new on-ramps for local and national foundations around the country to easily support and strengthen nonprofit journalism. NewsMatch has been designed as an open and trusted place for funders who want to invest in local news and investigative reporting and learn more about effectively supporting journalism. In 2018, NewsMatch continued to drive new philanthropic dollars to participating newsrooms:
- The national matching fund grew to $3.7 million, an increase of 116 percent. Seven funders contributed to the national fund.
- Regional and issue-focused funders offered partner matches for cohorts of newsrooms (for examples, newsrooms reporting on sciences and health, investigative newsrooms in the South, Colorado news outlets, etc.). Four funders set up these targeted matches alongside the main fund.
- Participating newsrooms independently leveraged their participation in NewsMatch to secure more than $675,000 in additional, direct matches for their year-end campaigns. (This was down a bit from 2017.)
The campaign helps funders make the most out of their dollars by matching them with individual donations and supporting long-term capacity building in newsrooms. That capacity building work is starting to pay off. In a year when nonprofits overall only saw 1.5 percent year-over-year growth in individual donations, the average NewsMatch participant raised 11 percent more during the campaign in 2018 vs 2017. Small and medium newsrooms saw the biggest growth in year-end support, with 30+ percent increases in individual donors, donations, and dollars raised during NewsMatch. While the dollars raised during NewsMatch 2018 are notable, the real success is how the program is building long-term capacity for newsrooms to build meaningful connections with communities as readers and donors.
Growing the Campaign in 2019
Part fundraising program, part capacity building effort, and part public awareness campaign, NewsMatch achieves a complex set of goals while making it as easy as possible for anyone — individual donor, newsroom, funder — to participate. The Nieman Journalism Lab’s Christine Schmidt described how these elements come together, writing: “The campaign caught the budding nonprofit news sector at a critical stage in its growth and is giving it a jetstream by helping coach newsrooms, funders, and individual donors into seeding its future.”
NewsMatch was founded in 2016 by the John S. And James L. Knight Foundation and each year the number of NewsMatch participants has grown. That growth puts pressure on the national matching fund and we are currently seeking new and additional partners to support NewsMatch for 2019 and 2020. Support for NewsMatch 2018 was provided by the Colorado Media Project, Democracy Fund, Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, Facebook Journalism Project, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Knight Foundation, Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, Present Progressive Fund at Schwab Charitable, Rita Allen Foundation, and Wyncote Foundation in partnership with The Miami Foundation, Institute for Nonprofit News and News Revenue Hub.
If we can together raise $5 million dollars for the national fund we can turn it into more than $10 million for local and investigative journalism this year. (If you are interested in exploring how to get involved in NewsMatch, or to set up a partner fund for a region or issue you care about, email Josh Stearns, jstearns@democracyfund.org.)
Based on what we learned from the 2018 campaign we are going to be making the materials and training more customized to serve the growing list of newsrooms who are at very different stages of growth and development. The NewsMatch team will also be working to better support organizations serving underrepresented communities and led by people of color. We recognize that it is critical for NewsMatch to do more to engage, listen, and serve these newsrooms, especially in light of longstanding inequities in how philanthropy has funded these organizations and communities. Finally, we will explore collaborations with others across the media landscape, beyond just nonprofit news, that can help drive more attention to the crisis in local news and the profound need to support it right now.
NewsMatch 2019 will kick off in November of 2019, but there is a lot of work to do before then. Find out more at NewsMatch.org and follow the campaign on Twitter and Facebook.
Press Release
NewsMatch Raises $7.6 Million for Nonprofit News Organizations in 2018
WASHINGTON – NewsMatch raised $7.6 million from individual donors and a coalition of major funders for nonprofit news organizations in two months at the end of 2018. During the largest-ever grassroots fundraising campaign to support local news, over 240,000 people gave to 154 newsrooms between Nov. 1 and Dec. 31. More than 50,000 new donors supported a nonprofit newsroom for the first time.
NewsMatch is a national campaign that doubles donations at the end of the year and provides expert training, individualized coaching and an everything-included year-end fundraising campaign to newsrooms to foster stronger, more sustainable local news and investigative journalism.
In 2018, the campaign saw a 58 percent jump in total dollars raised from 2017. This momentum was also seen in other areas:
- Nonprofit news organizations are getting more successful at year-end fundraising. The average NewsMatch newsroom raised 11 percent more during the campaign in 2018 vs 2017;
- Donors are embracing giving to nonprofit news. Individuals gave more than $116 million to nonprofit news from January to December last year, a 50 percent increase over 2017.
- Small and medium-sized newsrooms saw the biggest growth in year-end support, with 30-plus percent increases in individual donors, donations, and dollars raised during NewsMatch; and
- NewsMatch was a platform for local philanthropy. Participants secured more than $675,000 in additional matching commitments from major donors and foundations during the campaign.
Participating newsrooms represent 42 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, with two-thirds focused on state or local journalism. Nearly one-third were participating in NewsMatch for the first time.
Increasing the capacity of nonprofit news organizations
Since 2016, NewsMatch has helped participating newsrooms raise more than $14.8 million from local communities and partner foundations.
Working with the Institute for Nonprofit News and the News Revenue Hub, two organizations helping build more sustainable models for journalism in the U.S., NewsMatch is pioneering new approaches to supporting and strengthening local news and investigative reporting.
“In an environment where news faces growing threats, these results are a bright spot, showing how individuals from coast to coast are committed to supporting quality news.” said Sue Cross, Executive Director and CEO of the Institute for Nonprofit News.
“The success of this year’s NewsMatch campaign speaks to the growing sophistication of nonprofit news organizations who have cultivated the trust of their communities,” said Christina Shih, VP of Business Development at the News Revenue Hub, which offered hundreds of hours of training and hands-on support to NewsMatch participants both before and during the campaign.
Galvanizing foundation and corporate support for NewsMatch
NewsMatch was launched in 2016 by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. It has since expanded to include additional support from foundations and corporations including Democracy Fund, the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, the Facebook Journalism Project, the Colorado Media Project, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, the Rita Allen Foundation, the Wyncote Foundation, and the Present Progressive Fund at Schwab Charitable. The Miami Foundation serves as fiscal sponsor for the fund.
NewsMatch’s success underscores the rise of nonprofit news, which has faced sustainability challenges. Participating news organizations have helped move the needle on pressing local issues from coastal restoration in New Orleans to uncovering pattern of abuses within New Mexico’s foster care system.
“A decade ago, nonprofit news was an emerging niche in the media ecosystem, clouded with uncertainty around sustainability” said Bob Ross, Chairman and CEO of Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation. “The outstanding support from individuals and foundations through NewsMatch exemplifies the evolution from uncertainty to enthusiasm for nonprofit news and investigative reporting in communities across the country.”
“Nonprofit journalism has been a driving force for good in our communities and our democracy, and NewsMatch is making it easier than ever for people to stand up for the news and information they need,” said Josh Stearns, Program Director at Democracy Fund. “The health of American journalism is central to the health of our democracy.”
“We are thrilled that more and more people understand the value and importance of supporting journalism, and, in particular, the growing field of local and nonprofit news. These organizations produce terrific stories that hold the powerful accountable and connect people with their communities and each other. It’s clear that people are taking notice and stepping up to help sustain them,” said Jennifer Preston, Knight Foundation vice president for journalism.
“It is so important to us to support this critical segment of the news ecosystem, and to help nonprofit news organizations find a path to sustainability,” said Anne Kornblut, Director of New Initiatives, News Partnerships, Facebook. “We’re honored to partner with others who believe in this work as much as we do.”
NewsMatch has engaged Third Plateau, a social impact strategy firm, as an evaluation partner. A full evaluation of the program will be made available to the public this spring. NewsMatch is currently working with foundations and corporations to build the 2019 fund and invites potential partners to contact Democracy Fund’s Josh Stearns at jstearns@democracyfund.org to learn more.
Contact:
Jessica Harris
Senior Associate for Communications, Democracy Fund
media@democracyfund.org
About Democracy Fund:
Democracy Fund is a bipartisan foundation established by eBay founder and philanthropist Pierre Omidyar to help ensure that our political system can withstand new challenges and deliver on its promise to the American people. Since 2011, Democracy Fund has invested more than $100 million in support of effective governance, modern elections, and a vibrant public square. For more, visit democracyfund.org.
About the Facebook Journalism Project:
The Facebook Journalism Project was created in January 2017 to establish stronger ties between Facebook and the news industry. FJP is dedicated to ensuring high quality journalism thrives by delivering value through new products, partnerships with the news industry and programs. FJP works in three ways: collaborative development of new products; providing tools and trainings for journalists; and providing tools and trainings for people.
About the Gates Family Foundation
The Gates Family Foundation is a place-based philanthropy dedicated since 1946 to advancing long-term quality of life in Colorado, through support for educational equity, vibrant and sustainable communities, and stewardship of the state’s extraordinary natural resources. The Foundation has supported public and independent media for decades, especially as vital issues such as public education, rural issues, and natural resources have faced decreasing media coverage from commercial outlets. Gates also provides underwriting support for the Colorado Media Project, which aims to strengthen and accelerate sustainable, civic-minded journalism that meets the information needs of Coloradans in the digital age.
About the Institute for Nonprofit News:
The Institute for Nonprofit News is a network of more than 200 nonprofit, nonpartisan news media, together strengthening the sources of trusted information for thousands of diverse communities. INN was founded in 2009 to foster a new collective of newsrooms serving the public interest. Today it functions as an innovation network, helping members develop new ways to support journalism and engage communities, providing business, technology and leadership support and a framework for collaboration. INN’s work helps newsrooms bring investigative and civic news to more people, hold the powerful accountable and strengthen democracy.
About the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation:
The MacArthur Foundation supports creative people, effective institutions, and influential networks building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. MacArthur is placing a few big bets that truly significant progress is possible on some of the world’s most pressing social challenges, including over-incarceration, global climate change, nuclear risk, and significantly increasing financial capital for the social sector. In addition to the MacArthur Fellows Program, the Foundation continues its historic commitments to the role of journalism in a responsible and responsive democracy, as well as the strength and vitality of our headquarters city, Chicago. More information is available at macfound.org.
About the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation:
Knight Foundation is a national foundation with strong local roots. We invest in journalism, in the arts, and in the success of cities where brothers John S. and James L. Knight once published newspapers. Our goal is to foster informed and engaged communities, which we believe are essential for a healthy democracy. For more, visit knightfoundation.org.
About the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation:
Founded in 2016 and based in Berkeley, CA, the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation supports organizations that advance social justice by promoting world-changing work in investigative journalism, the arts, the environment, education, equity and inclusion and documentary film.
About the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation:
Founded by Edith Kinney Gaylord, Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation’s mission is to invest in the future of journalism by building the ethics, skills and opportunities needed to advance principled, probing news and information. For more, visit journalismfoundation.org.
About The Miami Foundation:
Since 1967, The Miami Foundation has used civic leadership, community investment and philanthropy to improve the quality of life for everyone who calls Greater Miami home. We partner with individuals, families and corporations who have created more than 1,000 personalized, philanthropic Funds. Thanks to them, we have awarded over $250 million in grants and currently manage more than $300 million in assets to build a better Miami. As the Foundation marks our 50th anniversary, we are celebrating great Miamians who have championed what matters to them, encouraging all residents to share their Miami stories and unite around the causes they care about. For more, visit miamifoundation.org.
About the News Revenue Hub:
The News Revenue Hub helps news organizations build the trust and financial support of their audiences by providing customized technology tools and proven strategies to create and sustain successful digital membership programs. For more, visit fundjournalism.org.
About the Rita Allen Foundation:
The Rita Allen Foundation invests in transformative ideas in their earliest stages to leverage their growth and promote breakthrough solutions to significant problems. It enables early-career biomedical scholars to do pioneering research, seeds innovative approaches to fostering informed civic engagement, and develops knowledge and networks to build the effectiveness of the philanthropic sector. Throughout its work, the Foundation embraces collaboration, creativity, learning and leadership.
About the Wyncote Foundation:
The Wyncote Foundation, based in Philadelphia, was founded in 2009 with funds from the Otto and Phoebe Haas Charitable Trusts, at the direction of John C. Haas. Its mission is to support efforts that strengthen and enrich culture, community and the natural environment. Wyncote’s Public Media & Journalism program works to further a thriving public media ecosystem that is vital to animating and sustaining democracy’s public sphere. Learn more at wyncotefoundation.org/public-media-journalism.
Blog
NewsMatch 2018 raises $7.6 million, fueling growth in local news and investigative journalism.
The last month has been a difficult one for journalism in America. In a span of just two weeks roughly 2,000 journalists have lost their jobs or been offered buyouts. The nation’s six largest daily newspaper companies seem caught in a dangerous dance of consolidation and cost cutting. Even the Newseum, a museum dedicated to journalism, announced that it had to sell its landmark building down the street from the U.S. Capitol in January. All of this comes after a decade of struggle that has profoundly eroded journalism’s ability to serve local communities and live up to its role in our democracy.
However, there is another side to the story of journalism in America today.
New data from newsrooms all across the country shows that 2018 was a record-breaking year for community support of nonprofit news. Individual donors to journalism organizations gave more than $116 million in 2018, a 50 percent increase over 2017. In November and December alone, over 240,000 people gave to news organizations and more than 50,000 were new donors who supported a nonprofit newsroom for the first time.
This growth in giving to nonprofit journalism was fueled by an innovative national campaign called NewsMatch. Now in its third year, NewsMatch doubles donations to support quality journalism at the end of the year and provides expert training, individualized coaching and a campaign-in-a-box to grow the long term sustainability of local news and investigative journalism.
Over the last year, nonprofit journalists were a driving force for good, holding elected officials accountable, revealing injustice and waste, and shining a spotlight on public safety and health. NewsMatch members have provided critical reporting on family separation in Texas, covered coastal restoration in New Orleans, revealed patterns of abuses within New Mexico’s foster care system, and drove accountability through local reporting on #MeToo in Minnesota.
Fueling a New Era of Giving to News
- NewsMatch 2018 helped 154 newsrooms raise $7.6 million from individual donors and a coalition of foundations and companies making it the largest-ever grassroots fundraising campaign to support local news.
- Nonprofit news organizations are getting more successful at year-end fundraising. The average NewsMatch participant raised 11 percent more during the campaign in 2018 vs 2017.
- Small and medium-sized newsrooms saw the biggest growth in year-end support, with 30+ percent increases in individual donors, donations, and dollars raised during NewsMatch.
- NewsMatch was a platform for local philanthropy. Participants secured more than $675,000 in additional matching commitments from major donors and foundations during the campaign.
- In the three years since NewsMatch was first launched it has helped participating newsrooms raise more than $14 million.
Community Support Drives Community Impact
The dollars raised through NewsMatch will make sure that more stories like these can be told in 2019. The funds will go to hire more journalists, engage local communities, fight for access to government secrets, and ensure that more people have access to the information they need to live their lives and make decisions about their families and the nation.
NewsMatch 2018 supported 154 newsrooms in 42 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, with two-thirds of them focused on state or local journalism. All the participating organizations are members of the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) which has guidelines about ethics, editorial independence and donor transparency. Ten years ago INN was founded by 27 nonprofit newsrooms and today the organization has more than 200 members. The remarkable growth of the nonprofit news sector — and the fact that the public is increasingly stepping up to support it — is an important counterbalance to the challenges facing journalism.
However, nonprofit news is still nowhere near filling the gaps left behind by the years of deep cuts in local and national journalism. Just this month, the Knight Commission on Trust Media and Democracy released its final report. The commission writes, “With traditional business and financial models for journalism under siege, major investments in and new approaches to supporting sustainable nonprofit and journalism collaborations are essential, particularly at the local level.”
Coming Together to Meet the Challenge
NewsMatch is answering that call by pioneering new approaches to supporting and strengthening local news and investigative reporting. The campaign created the first one-stop website where people can find and donate to multiple nonprofit newsrooms. The fund, which is housed at the Miami Foundation, is a unique platform for philanthropy, drawing support and collaboration from a diverse range of local, national and niche funders and companies including Democracy Fund, the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, the Facebook Journalism Project, the Gates Family Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, the Present Progressive Fund at Schwab Charitable, the Rita Allen Foundation, and the Wyncote Foundation. NewsMatch has created a simple on-ramp for funders who want to help rebuild journalism in America.
By combining philanthropic support with individual donations, NewsMatch focuses on not just raising money but also building the capacity of newsrooms to create durable and sustainable relationships with their audience. News Revenue Hub, a core partner of NewsMatch, provided more than 500 hours of training and consulting to newsrooms last year. Through templates, toolkits and technology tools the Hub provides newsrooms with proven models and best practices for cultivating donors and members.
That work doesn’t happen overnight. While we celebrate the remarkable progress and growth of NewsMatch in 2018 the team is already busy building the program for 2019. With the nonprofit news sector growing each year, NewsMatch needs to grow too and is currently recruiting new corporate and philanthropic partners who want to support the program. NewsMatch has also engaged Third Plateau, a social impact strategy firm, as an independent evaluation partner. A full evaluation of the program will be made available to the public this spring.
NewsMatch is helping build more trusted, sustainable local news and investigative reporting, but the real heroes here are the journalists and staff who work for nonprofit newsrooms all over the country. It is their work, their stories, their connection to community that makes NewsMatch possible. It is why NewsMatch exists, and how NewsMatch succeeds.
In the coming weeks we’ll be sharing more stories of how newsrooms made 2018 a record-breaking year and what they are planning for 2019. Follow NewsMatch on Facebook and Twitter to find out more.
Blog
North Carolina organizations building a bold future for news and information together
How can we help local news survive, transform, and thrive? This question will not be answered by one person, one organization, or one innovation. Instead, it will be answered by local ecosystems that have many players, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, coming together to be greater than the sum of their parts. It will look different everywhere around the country, but without this systemic approach, local news cannot survive.
This theory is at the core of the work of the North Carolina Local News Lab Fund, which is announcing $500,000 in grants today. NCLNL’s goal is to support people and organizations working to build a healthier local news and information ecosystem in North Carolina. It is a collaborative fund at the North Carolina Community Foundation, established by a group of local and national funders who believe in the power of local journalism, local stories, and local people to strengthen our democracy.
The grants were selected by an advisory board with representatives from the following foundations: A.J. Fletcher Foundation, Democracy Fund, Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation, Prentice Foundation, and Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, as well as subject matter experts from North Carolina Central University and NC Congress of Latino Organizations.
The fund’s first grants go to organizations working to expand access to critical news and information for all North Carolina communities. This cohort represents the fund’s commitment to supporting a diverse set of organizations pursuing meaningful projects to better serve local communities and strengthen the news and information ecosystem overall. Each of these grantees also represent vital networks of people, communities, and organizations that will engage and collaborate with their work.
It is, as Fiona Morgan wrote in “Learning from North Carolina,” a manifestation of how “North Carolina’s news ecosystem will likely succeed best as a network of networks, with distinct areas where people join forces, share resources or collaborate.”
These grantees are working to build new infrastructure for independent media, recognizing that we have to work together to meet the full needs of our communities. Across these efforts we saw a deep commitment to community and collaboration and a generosity and determination to openly share and jointly build a bold future for North Carolina.
Individually these are all great projects and organizations, and taken together they begin to connect people and communities across North Carolina in new ways. We are thrilled by the work these organizations will do, but this is just the beginning. We had more than 70 ideas submitted to the NCLNL through the application process, many of them addressing important needs and opportunities that we want to work on in the future.
Word on the Street/La Voz de los Jóvenes trainees learn how to tell stories in Asheville. Photo by Sekou Coleman.
The grantees are:
- Asheville Writers: Word on the Street/La Voz de los Jóvenes – Asheville Writers in the Schools and Community provides creative writing and arts programs for young people in local schools and community programs. Word on the Street/La Voz de los Jóvenes is an online magazine with a program that mentors and trains youth of color to gather and publish news that engages their communities and builds racial equity.
- Carolina Public Press: North Carolina Investigative Journalism Collaborative – Carolina Public Press is an independent nonprofit news organization established in 2011 with a focus on in-depth and investigative news in Western North Carolina. In 2018, it expanded to cover the entire state. CPP will lead the North Carolina Investigative Journalism Collaborative, which will launch collaborations between state and local media outlets, organize listening sessions between residents and members of the media statewide, and experiment with new ways to generate its own self-sustaining revenue.
- Colectivo de Comunicación Participativa de Carolina del Norte (CCPNC): Enlace Latino NC – Enlace Latino NC is a Spanish-language website that offers local, state, and national immigration and policy news during a critical time of need in the Latinx community in North Carolina. With this grant, Enlace Latino NC will focus on building their capacity, adding more resources, and reporting on key issues.
- Duke University Reporters Lab: North Carolina Fact-Checking Project– The North Carolina Fact-Checking Project is a collaborative effort focused on the 2018 state elections and 2019 state legislative session, providing rigorous fact-checked content for publications and broadcast programs statewide. The project aims to increase fact-checking coverage of public officials and candidates. It brings together partners with deep experience in substantive fact-checking with an innovative edge, including the Duke Reporters Lab, the News & Observer, and the Reese News Lab at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
- NC Health News: General Operating Support – North Carolina Health News is a leading news source on information about health care for residents, policymakers, lobbyists, and healthcare workers across North Carolina. With this grant, the NC Health News staff will continue and strengthen the organization’s work.
- NC Press Association: Training Program – The North Carolina Press Association (NCPA) supports newspapers statewide, offers a legal hotline, and hosts an annual convention. The NCPA is focused on a defending “the public’s right to know” by advocating for open government and championing First Amendment freedoms.
- UNC Center for Public TV: Public Media NC and HBCU Radio Together – Radio stations at historically black colleges and universities in North Carolina are a valuable resource for local, relevant, and timely news for the communities they serve. This collaboration between HBCU radio stations and UNC-TV will give all involved an opportunity to learn from each other and collaborate across mediums.
- UNC School of Media and Journalism: Trail Blazer – The Trail Blazer project will help sustain long-term coverage of stories by simplifying the research process for journalists in North Carolina. Through a mobile-friendly website, it will provide a comprehensive, updated, simple-to-navigate repository for journalists, including limited-scope facts, timelines, annotated documents, and links to existing articles. The core concepts of the Trail Blazer project were developed by veteran journalist Vaughn Hagerty, who broke a story about the presence of the chemical GenX in Cape Fear River.
- WNCU: Advancement of Emerging Young, Diverse News Journalists – WNCU is a public radio station that serves partly as a hub to train young journalists at North Carolina Central University. The Advancement of Emerging Young, Diverse News Journalists project will train a diverse, inclusive, and underrepresented group of student reporters via the WNCU radio station and the student newspaper, The Campus Echo.
- Working Narratives: Wilmington Ecology Project – Working Narrativesfocuses on reporting on pressing social challenges such as media justice, mass incarceration, and health equity. Founded in 2011, the organization works at the local and regional level to “tell great stories that inspire, activate and enliven our democracy.” The Wilmington Ecology Project will train citizens to produce and report their own stories through performance, radio, video, and other forms.
The advisory board of the Fund — Brett Chambers (North Carolina Central University), Elena Conley (Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation), Damon Circosta (A.J. Fletcher Foundation) Teresa Gorman (Democracy Fund) Bobbi Hapgood (Prentice Foundation), Ivan Kohar Parra (NC Congress of Latino Organizations), Sorien Schmidt (Z Smith Reynolds Foundation) and Josh Stearns (Democracy Fund) — were inspired and challenged by the scope and creativity of the proposals we received. It was incredibly difficult to pick just a few grantees in this round.
In partnership with the advisory board, funder partners, and others, including Democracy Fund Senior Consultant Melanie Sill, the NCLNL will continue to explore ways to support and strengthen North Carolina’s local news ecosystem. This will include future grantmaking and convenings. It will not be done in a vacuum. We will strive to live the NCLNL’s stated values of learning, diversity, equity, inclusion, innovation, and transparency, and continue to share updates from our grantees and others here on the Local News Lab.
As we continue this work, please share your comments, feedback, and ideas to localnewslab@democracyfund.org.
Blog
2017 Was a Record Breaking Year for Giving to Nonprofit News, Here is Why
As trusted information providers, local and nonprofit journalism organizations play an essential role in providing news that communities rely on to stay informed, make decisions and participate in civic life. In the wake of the digital disruption of news and declining trust in the media, there is an urgent need to redouble funding for local and state coverage to ensure the nonprofit journalism sector can fulfill its democratic mission.
That is why the Democracy Fund, Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, Knight Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation came together in 2017 to launch NewsMatch, a national matching-gift campaign to grow fundraising capacity in nonprofit newsrooms and promote giving to journalism among U.S. donors.
A new study released this month by the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University revealed that from 2010 to 2015 nearly $1.8 billion in grants were given in support of journalism. However, only a small fraction, about 4.5%, went toward nonprofit local and state reporting. The report also found significant and troubling geographical gaps, with the majority of philanthropic dollars ending up in a few coastal cities.
NewsMatch was designed from the ground up to respond to the gaps that the Harvard research now highlights so clearly. It supported newsrooms in almost every state, brought new foundations and donors in, and expanded the capacity of journalism nonprofits to develop support from their community.
In 2017 NewsMatch provided 109 newsrooms with more than 500 hours of fundraising training, a professional campaign toolkit, national marketing around the importance of contributing to nonprofit news, targeted advertising using $100,000 in ad credits donated by Facebook, and a 1:1 match of individual donations, up to $28,000 per news organization. Nearly all 109 organizations who participated in NewsMatch raised more money, from more donors than ever before. In total NewsMatch helped raise nearly $5 million for local and investigative journalism and inspired 43,000 new donors to give to nonprofit news. Those are just the topline results. The report dives deep into how NewsMatch was structured, what worked and what didn’t.
We are currently raising dollars for NewsMatch 2018 in hopes of making it even bigger than last year. Several updates to the 2018 program reflect the evaluation’s suggestions:
As in 2017, NewsMatch is open to members of the Institute for Nonprofit News. The deadline to apply is Aug. 1, 2018.
- We will support nonprofit news organization’s membership models by matching the full-year value of new recurring donations during NewsMatch.
- We will offer extra bonuses to small and medium organizations that show they have measurably improved their fundraising capacity over 2017.
- We recognize that individual donors support nonprofit news in many ways and will match gifts made by individuals through their businesses and family foundations.
Blog
NewsMatch Leads to Record Setting Year for Nonprofit News
We launched NewsMatch — a $3 million fund to match donations to nonprofit newsrooms — because we believe that strengthening local and investigative journalism is critical to a healthy democracy. The fund was a partnership with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation designed to make 2017 a record-breaking year for giving to local and investigative journalism.
The results are in, and NewsMatch was a resounding success. Nearly every one of the more than 100 newsrooms who participated raised more dollars from more donors than ever before.
- From October 1 to December 31, NewsMatch raised more than $4.8 million from individual donors and a coalition of foundations.
- Local newsrooms raised even more on top of NewsMatch: in total, more than 202,000 donors contributed $33 million to local, nonprofit newsrooms.
- Of those 202,000 donors, 43,000 were new donors giving to an organization for the first time.
There is no doubt that NewsMatch helped strengthen journalism in America over the last three months, and supported the growth of charitable giving to newsrooms. Together, the 100+ local and national participants received nearly 320,000 more donations, from 77,000 more donors in 2017, compared to 2016.
What made NewsMatch a success? We are undertaking an in-depth evaluation of last year’s program to see what lessons we can learn from our efforts. However, we know three key things that made NewsMatch stand out this year.
1. Creating New Platforms for Journalism Philanthropy
We created the first one-stop platform for donating to nonprofit news. At NewsMatch.org, donors could give to more than 100 newsrooms with one transaction — simplifying the process for donors and inviting more to join.
Beyond individual donors, we also built the NewsMatch campaign as a platform for partnerships between local and national foundations. Over the course of last fall, the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, the News Integrity Initiative, the Wyncote Foundation, The Gates Family Foundation, and the Rita Allen Foundation all joined NewsMatch as partners, creating double and triple matches for many of the participating organizations. Around the country, local newsrooms also set up at least 20 other matching efforts with local funders and donors, further extending the reach and impact of this program.
2. Building the Capacity of the Nonprofit News Sector
NewsMatch has always been about more than raising money. From the start, our campaign was designed to build the long-term capacity of nonprofit newsrooms to connect with their communities and cultivate support from their readers. In partnership with the Institute for Nonprofit News and the News Revenue Hub, we created a stockpile of campaign templates, provided weekly guidance for small newsrooms who lack big fundraising teams, and offered weekly coaching and training webinars.
We have seen the impact of this work in the dramatic increase of year-by-year giving and in the boost of new donors — both of which bode well for the field. “With the support of NewsMatch, we had a record setting year, more than doubling the donations we received in past years,” Lauren Fuhrmann of the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism told us. “NewsMatch provided the roadmap, tech support, and national exposure that we needed to have our most successful year-end fundraising drive ever.”
3. Raising Awareness About the Need to Support Nonprofit News
While public media and some nonprofit magazines have been around for decades, the current generation of local and investigative journalism organizations are relatively new. For the most part, people aren’t accustomed to giving to nonprofit news. We understood that it wasn’t enough for NewsMatch to double donations if people didn’t understand the importance of donating in the first place. NewsMatch elevated nonprofit news through #GivingNewsDay, which saw journalists, celebrities, and politicians on both sides of the aisle talking about the importance of donating to nonprofit newsrooms. Public voices like Mark Ruffalo, Michael Kelly, Cara Mund (Miss America), Katy Tur, Greta Van Susteren, and others joined the effort. Additionally, Facebook donated $100,000 in free advertising to publicize NewsMatch and its participating newsrooms.
“One of the most important things we can do is increase awareness about the need for and benefits of nonprofit journalism — that is, to add to the usual American philanthropic checklist of schools, hospitals, churches, and cultural institutions the possibility of donating to journalism. NewsMatch helped enormously in that effort,” Richard Tofel, president of Pulitzer Prize-winning nonprofit news organization ProPublica, wrote to us in an email.
This work would not have been possible without our partner funders, grantees, and newsrooms who brought such creativity and passion to the project. We are especially grateful to Lindsey Linzer at the Miami Foundation — which hosted the fund — and Jason Alcorn, who served as project manager.
NewsMatch catalyzed a lot of energy and proved that people support reporting they trust and rely on: but it is just one piece of a much larger puzzle. No one campaign can reverse what has been lost from local news and investigative journalism over the last decade of layoffs and cutbacks, but we are nonetheless optimistic. We continue to be encouraged by the rising nonprofit news sector and intrigued by what it can mean for renewing public service journalism as a core part of our communities. At Democracy Fund, we are committed to investing in the people and organizations who are helping build a brighter future for local news, and we look forward to continuing this work with NewsMatch in the future.
Blog
Local People Will Create the Future of Local News
Josh Stearns co-authored this piece with Teresa Gorman.
Local news is critical to a healthy democracy, and we believe that the future of local news is local. This simple idea has shaped the way Democracy Fund has thought about its work to support and strengthen the public square in America.
Today we are announcing two new locally-based and locally-driven funds — totaling more than $2 million — that will invest in ideas, people and organizations that are working to ensure people have access to the news and information they need in these communities. The funds will focus on building more vibrant news ecosystems as vital parts of just communities and a healthy democracy.
These funds are not focused on maintaining the status quo in local news, but on pushing forward changes that improve how journalism serves the public and makes news and information more resilient over the long term. Through these funds, we will work closely with local partners to increase giving to local news and invest in long-term solutions — over short-term fixes — especially in the areas of business models, collaboration and community engagement.
In New Jersey, we will build on our previous work in partnership with the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and the Knight Foundation by establishing the New Jersey Local News Lab Fund with $1.3 million over two years. New Jersey has become a bold laboratory for new models of collaboration, revenue experiments, and community engagement (read more about previous work in New Jersey in this report). This new fund will continue that momentum and help broaden the work there beyond newsrooms to other civic information networks and institutions.
The North Carolina Local News Lab Fund is the start of a new multi-year commitment to the state. We are kicking off the fund with $700,000 for the first 18 months. The work we’ve done in New Jersey to strengthen their news ecosystem will inform our work, but we recognize that this new fund must be built to respond to the unique local context of North Carolina. To that end, we commissioned local journalist and community organizer Fiona Morgan to undertake a year-long research project on the strengths and challenges of local news and information in North Carolina.
The two funds, housed at the Community Foundation of New Jersey and North Carolina Community Foundation, will be managed by advisory groups made up of local stakeholders and Democracy Fund. As a national funder we recognize that we are guests in these communities and have set these funds up to ensure funding decisions are rooted in local knowledge and experience. We take seriously the advice from longtime philanthropy leader Pru Brown who wrote in a paper prepared for Democracy Fund, “ultimately, perhaps the most useful lens for place-based philanthropy is asking at every stage whether the decisions the national foundation is making and the way it is operating promote or undermine local ownership.”
A key goal of these funds is to catalyze new momentum locally around supporting local public-interest news that serves all communities. As such, both funds are built as open platforms for partnership with other funders and donors. We are working closely with local and regional foundations in each state to expand the size of the funds, leveraging even more dollars to support local news and information efforts. That work is ongoing, and we look forward to sharing more about the amazing partners we are working with in the coming weeks and months.
This work is just a piece of Democracy Fund’s broader work on local news, which includes the national NewsMatch campaign, revenue research, and shared services like Membership Puzzle Project and News Revenue Hub. Additionally, Democracy Fund supports bridge builders and network connectors in local regions who are on the frontlines of weaving together stronger news ecosystems through collaboration and capacity building.
We are thrilled and humbled by this work and by the people who are working with us. Democracy Fund is committed to working in deep partnership with local communities, to learning, and to operating transparently and openly. If you are interested in working with us reach out at LocalNewsLab@democracyfund.org and sign up for our weekly newsletter The Local Fix.
Brief
Learning From North Carolina
Democracy Fund’s Public Square Program defines a local news ecosystem as the network of institutions, collaborations, and people that local communities rely on for news, information, and engagement. Healthy news ecosystems are diverse, interconnected, sustainable, and deeply engaged with their communities. When an ecosystem is healthy, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Looking at local news and information through this ecosystem lens raises new, compelling questions. For example, instead of asking how do we save traditional models of local news, we ask about ways of strengthening people’s access to information that is central to a healthy democracy. Instead of asking about the health of any one organization, we examine the robustness of the relationships between them. Instead of asking how we can get people to pay for news, we ask what might be a range of models to support news as a service to communities.
To that end, we commissioned a series of reports from regions around the country to better understand the complex forces shaping local news ecosystems from North Carolina to New Mexico. In this report, the authors have sought to ask these questions, and map out the strengths and challenges facing North Carolina as the landscape of local news continues to shift due to economic and technological change. This report, researched and written by Fiona Morgan, with Melanie Sill contributing significant insights and feedback, seeks to map out key contours of the news ecosystem in North Carolina. Although the report’s initial purpose was to inform our investments in local news, we are making its findings available to the public. We do so to help serve the field and welcome further feedback that will inevitably add new layers and richness to our understanding of the field.
The report is based on interviews with more than two dozen people from different sectors and geographic areas in North Carolina that took place in the spring of 2017. It also pulls from previous research by Morgan and by Democracy Fund Senior Fellow Geneva Overholser. Morgan discusses journalistic and financial challenges facing local news in North Carolina and identifies bright spots in the ecosystem — for example, audience engagement initiatives, promising business models, and emerging collaborations. Her report concludes with 10 suggestions for developing a more robust ecosystem in North Carolina, ranging from convening conversations to forming partnerships to tackling concrete problems by building practical solutions.
Democracy Fund is grateful for the thoughtful reporting and analysis by Morgan and Sill, who are well-connected journalists and students of media in the state. (see “About the Author”). The report has also profited from the insights of many people in and out of North Carolina, including Overholser, whose earlier interviews with North Carolina journalists and publishers provided a foundation, and Dr. Phil Napoli of Duke University, a grantee of Democracy Fund who is mapping the health of media ecosystems across the country. We are also grateful for the work of Penelope (Penny) Muse Abernathy who has been a stalwart advocate for local news and a chronicler of its challenges in North Carolina and across the United States.
This report presents an overview of North Carolina’s local news and information ecosystem but does not attempt to catalogue or cover every part of it. We welcome feedback, further information, and questions about North Carolina’s local news and information ecosystem, our ecosystem approach to supporting local news, and Democracy Fund’s Public Square program to localnewslab@democracyfund.org.
Blog
News Match Grows as New Funders Step Up to Support Nonprofit News
News Match is already the largest grassroots fundraising campaign for nonprofit journalism ever. More than 100 newsrooms across the United States are working together to raise $6 million dollars—or more —by the end of 2017. NewsMatch.org, the home of the campaign, is an innovative new hub where people can search for trustworthy journalism outlets by geography or topic and then give to multiple newsrooms with one donation. The effort is designed to mobilize thousands of new people to donate to local news and investigative reporting.
But News Match is more than a fundraising campaign. It’s a call to action for all who are concerned about the news and information needs of our communities and the role of a strong fourth estate in our democracy—and it’s growing.
For those in philanthropy, News Match offers an opportunity to not just provide financial support to outstanding newsrooms, but to invest in the long-term sustainability of these organizations by equipping them with the in-depth training, technology, and capacity building they need to reach new readers and foster a community of donors.
News Match began with a small team at the Knight Foundation who had a big idea to ramp up donations to nonprofit newsrooms at the end of 2016. That year Knight matched $1.2 million in donations to 57 newsrooms. This year News Match has doubled the number of eligible newsrooms and nearly tripled the total dollars in the News Match fund.
News Match has become a unique platform for local and national funders to collaborate in the interest of fostering more sustainable and vibrant public interest media.
Today we are announcing four new foundation partners have joined News Match:
- The Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation is contributing $100,000 to the national News Match fund, while also matching donations to five local newsrooms as part of its ongoing grant making.
- The Wyncote Foundation is providing an additional match of up to $10,000 each for Next City, Philadelphia Public School Notebook, and NJ Spotlight in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
- The News Integrity Initiative is contributing $50,000 to match donations to a group of newsrooms that cultivate diversity and inclusion within their organizations and serve underrepresented communities.
- The Gates Family Foundation is matching donations to Chalkbeat in support of their education reporting in Colorado devoting up to $10,000 during the Colorado Gives campaign that kicks off December 5.
Each of these new commitments is above and beyond the original $3 million donated by the Democracy Fund, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, who together launched News Match at the beginning of October.
In ten other states, individual donors and local foundations have stepped up with challenge grants to encourage people to give to nonprofit news, adding at least another $500,000 to support quality journalism this year. In total, more than 20 foundations, corporations, and individual donors are offering matching challenges, most of which were developed independently by local leadership at nonprofit news organizations.
- In Texas the John & Florence Newman Foundation is offering a $100,000 matching grant for San Antonio’s Rivard Report and The Kirk Mitchell Public Interest Investigative Journalism Fund is matching gifts to the Austin Bulldog.
- In Michigan, Bridge Magazine has built strong relationships with local funders and three of them, the Herbert H. and Grace A. Dow Foundation, Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan, and Glassen Memorial, have matches to support the newsroom.
- In Vermont, corporate donors and local funders such as Vermont Coffee Company, Sustainable Future Fund of the Vermont Community Foundation, and the Fountain Fund are providing matching funds for VTDigger.
- In Louisiana, The Reva and David Logan Foundation is matching donations to The Lens in New Orleans as part of their ongoing grant making.
- In California, The Community Foundation for San Benito County is matching donations to BenitoLink and The Jonathan Logan Family Foundation is matching donations to FairWarning as a part of their ongoing grant making.
- The Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation is matching donations to the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, Pine Tree Watch, Connecticut Health I-Team, New Mexico In-Depth, and Rocky Mountain PBS.
- Individual donors have also risen to the occasion, creating challenge funds at Wisconsin Watch, The War Horse, EcoRI, and InvestigateWest.
In the face of profound challenges facing journalists today there is enormous momentum gathering to support nonprofit news. However, because all of these are matching programs, newsrooms won’t be able to unlock those dollars unless people donate.
Quality journalism makes a difference every day. Without you, stories don’t just go unread — they go untold. As we head into the giving season, it is critical that we support the news we rely on.
Find a newsroom and donate today at www.newsmatch.org.