About our grants

We make philanthropic investments to support the operational and revenue capacity of nonprofit newsrooms, including funding new revenue and other business roles, technology and other related costs. We provide intensive venture support throughout the grant period to ensure that organizations complete their grant significantly larger, stronger, and more sustainable than where they started.

The ultimate objective of our grants is to catalyze our grantees’ transitions to multiple — and sustainable — revenue streams, including a mix of commercial media tactics and sophisticated charitable fundraising. We aim to achieve at least 2-3 times our annual investment so that by the end of our grant organizations have increased their revenue far beyond the financial investment we made. 

Since our launch in 2019, we have made several different types of grants. As we work with and learn from our grantees, we have and will continue to evolve our grantmaking program to have the most impact. To date, we’ve made grants in the following categories: 

Accelerate: Our portfolio is largely made up of multiyear (usually three-year) investments to help organizations poised for growth to expand their business and operations teams. 

Incubate: Short term (usually one-year) investments in startup teams that have outstanding visions, leadership, and the internal and external conditions to be a success. These highly competitive smaller grants are intended to give startup teams the runway to develop their business plans and raise initial rounds of funding. We pair these grants with intensive incubation support from our team. If successful, organizations receiving incubation grants are then eligible for Accelerate grants.

In addition, we have piloted other shorter-term investments to support early-stage organizations with outsized impact that need basic business infrastructure or need to develop their strategic plans. We continue to evolve our approach as we learn from our investments.