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Local Fundraising Is Helping Newsrooms Find Their Footing

Report for America Aug 17, 2020
This article is deemed a must-read by one or more of our expert collaborators.
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Local Fundraising Is Helping Newsrooms Find Their Footing Giving Compass
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Giving Compass’ Take:

• Sam Kille spotlights the recent success of local fundraising for newsrooms in hiring journalists and providing reliable reporting.

• Why is local fundraising for newsrooms so important in keeping the integrity of small-scale reporting? How can you support local journalism? 

• Read more about how local fundraising for newsrooms is important in creating trustworthy reporting.


Local news has been gasping for air for several years now, exasperated by shrinking advertising revenue, and more recently, the coronavirus. Yet Report for America’s Todd Franko has more than two million reasons to be grateful this year—$2.1 million, to be specific.

Franko is leading efforts to help partner newsrooms raise funds locally to support the hiring of emerging journalists who are focused on reporting under-covered issues. In 2019, Report for America helped its partners raise more than $800,000. Now at $2.1 million to date, it is on track to quickly surpass this year’s goal of $2.5 million.

The biggest challenge, Franko says, is that with the exception of nonprofit newsrooms like public radio, fundraising is a new source of revenue for many newsrooms. Additionally, many potential funders are unaware of just how badly local news is struggling.

Report for America helps its partners overcome this by providing fundraising coaching and marketing materials. Additionally, Report for America is an initiative of the GroundTruth Project, a nonprofit media organization that acts as the fiscal sponsor for the newsrooms. One hundred percent of all donations and sponsorships GroundTruth receives for local newsrooms directly support reporting for their communities.

As important as the donations are, Franko finds equal gratification in the messages that often accompany the gifts of individual donors about what motivates their support.

“Comments that come in with donations show that regular America gets it. People see what is happening at national and local levels, and they are able to connect the dots back to lost reporting in their communities. They want it back,” he said.

Read the full article about local funding for newsrooms by Sam Kille at Report for America.

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Learning and benchmarking are key steps towards becoming an impact giver. If you are interested in giving with impact on Coronavirus take a look at these selections from Giving Compass.

  • This article is deemed a must-read by one or more of our expert collaborators.
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    Philanthropy and the COVID-19 Response in India

    As India and the world continue to confront the COVID-19 pandemic over the next weeks and months, everyone has a role to play—government at all levels, civil society, philanthropies, multinational actors, the private sector, and individuals. This memo explores philanthropy’s distinctive role—supplementing government and private sector efforts with flexible and often more nimble investments to advance innovation, fill key gaps, and anticipate and address the challenges that will continue or arise after the immediate crisis is past. This memo is mainly targeted at philanthropies, both domestic and global, including foundations, corporate social responsibility organizations and programs, high-net-worth individuals, and philanthropic collaboratives. We seek both to inspire new giving and to influence the thoughtful deployment of funds already committed in response to the pandemic in India.1 To that end, we have anchored this memo on three key questions. First, why is philanthropy important in the COVID-19 response in India? Second, what thematic areas can philanthropists support, and what types of organizations and interventions are working in these spaces? Third, in light of the response so far, how should philanthropies consider investing in terms of the critical principles that might guide their channeling of resources? We focus here primarily on the role of philanthropy in the response phase of the pandemic cycle, as illustrated in the figure below, which experts say will last for several months, or longer, and is rightly the focus of so much concern and action currently. There are some districts of India where the disease has not yet been detected in any significant numbers, so we also discuss, where relevant, several organizations that are also supporting preparedness. We recognize the importance of addressing medium-term recovery needs—such as the impact of the crisis on education or urban governance—and of building community and sector resilience in the longer term. And while this memo does not address those longer haul topics, they will be important needs in the months and years ahead. Read the full article about COVID-19 response in India by Pritha Venkatachalam, Donald Yeh, Niloufer Memon at The Bridgespan Group.


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