Giving Compass' Take:

• Wyncote Foundation shares insights into effectively supporting media and journalism as a place-based foundation from a range of efforts across the country. 

• What does local journalism look like in your community? What organizations could do more with additional support from donors? 

• Read about a community foundation investing in local journalism.

Place-based foundations have strong ties to their communities and strive to address the distinctive concerns of the people who live there. Major national media funding efforts responding to misleading, fake, or rampantly commercial media are not always of the highest practical interest or relevance, as important as they are. Rather, local and regional funders have a unique capacity to complement such national efforts by supporting the creation and discovery of media that reports and listens, engages local communities, and elevates local voices and culture. It is media carried out by people who live and work in these same communities.

Each of the selected grantmakers supports media in a different place and for different reasons. They share the belief that funding media can reinforce their grantmaking priorities and strategies, illuminate community life in new ways, and lift up the stories and voices of people who are less visible within mainstream and commercial media outlets.