In recent weeks, two major reports about the state of independent journalism in America highlighted the needs of the field and roadblocks to long-term viability, especially for local and regional news. The headline is that national philanthropy is not equipped to support all independent journalism organizations in perpetuity. For these newsrooms to endure, philanthropy must invest in field-wide infrastructure that supports newsrooms’ long-term stability. Institutional funders must prioritize programs that result in direct revenue diversification and generation to decrease reliance on their limited funds.
Standing ready to meet this need is a proven infrastructure solution with a decade of success: NewsMatch. Since 2017, NewsMatch has helped inspire nearly 600,000 people to make their first donation to a nonprofit news outlet. Overall, NewsMatch has helped newsrooms generate $432 million from their communities.
The first report, “Rebuilding Local Journalism at Scale: A Field-Level Analysis of Infrastructure Needs,” commissioned by Arnold Ventures, outlined infrastructure needs as sourced from nearly 560 applications to Press Forward’s open infrastructure grant call. This report analyzed the problems outlined in the applications to find throughlines and recommend areas where philanthropy should invest. The second report from the Wyncote Foundation, “Meeting the Revenue Challenge: Philanthropy’s Role in Local News Growth,” examined the revenue streams and other success factors of local news outlets that have proven sustainable or on track to to sustainability to glean lessons that could be applied to the field writ large. INN’s research team, CEO, and several INN members contributed to that study.
What stands out from these reports are three major findings:
- A common and urgent need for newsrooms to expand and deepen donor relationships at the local level, both with institutional funders like community foundations and individuals who make up their audience and community.
- The clear opportunity to advance field-wide sustainability through significant investments in infrastructure and capacity building, and to focus on what already works instead of experimentation.
- Newsroom staff must build skills and capacity to focus on revenue diversification. They must also be connected locally, regionally and nationally to share resources and solutions that will foster growth and build a financial foundation that isn’t reliant on national philanthropy.
An ideal solution to these findings is a field-wide program that simultaneously connects nonprofit newsrooms with their communities, builds their fundraising muscles, and helps them build a pathway away from reliance on national philanthropy or the generosity of a handful of donors. Newsrooms can further accelerate down that path to stability by establishing deeper partnerships within their own communities and networks, including their local institutional funders.
INN’s NewsMatch does exactly this
A key goal of INN’s NewsMatch program is to increase the donor communities for participating outlets, a nationwide network of vetted nonprofit newsrooms. It leverages a pooled fund from institutional philanthropy with a match for outlets running their own fundraising campaigns. In this way, the pooled fund motivates the giving public, activating philanthropy at all levels.
Beyond the matching funds NewsMatch offers, newsrooms receive a wide range of training formats – from 1:1 fundraising coaching to on-demand training – alongside easy-to-implement toolkits and templates. For newsrooms with less institutional fundraising experience, these resources help them build effective fundraising campaigns.
The program incentivizes newsrooms to secure their own match funds to support their campaigns, resulting in increased investments from their communities. We, at INN, have marveled at the creativity of NewsMatch participants; newsrooms that have turned a $15,000 match into six-figure end-of-year campaign results.
NewsMatch published its 2025 campaign report earlier this month, and two results stand out: over 100,000 individuals donated to INN newsrooms for the first time in 2025, and, for the fourth year in a row, newsrooms raised more funds from securing their own local matches than from the national matching pool.
“NewsMatch is a highly innovative funding strategy that creates an amplified impact far beyond the actual match amount. Participating in the program is a stepping stone to developing the strategies and infrastructure for stronger fundraising habits all year long.”
Maximilian Eyle, Executive Director, Central Current
NewsMatch is what the research says the field needs
The campaign has helped newsrooms establish and grow their fundraising capabilities, and as a result, cultivate community supporters.
“NewsMatch is a highly innovative funding strategy that creates an amplified impact far beyond the actual match amount,” explains Maximilian Eyle, Executive Director of Central Current in Syracuse, New York. “Participating in the program is a stepping stone to developing the strategies and infrastructure for stronger fundraising habits all year long.”
As the program celebrates its 10th anniversary, it continues to evolve. With the mission of increased impact, it must respond to likely decreases or fluctuations in nationwide philanthropic revenue. Therefore, in 2026 and beyond, the program will strengthen newsroom fundraising efforts with year-round campaigns. INN has already been testing campaigns outside of the traditional November-December window. It will continue to build out resources for collaborative fundraising, and it will help newsrooms secure match funds at the community level and grant dollars nationally.
Put simply, NewsMatch works. The impact of this program to spark community support for INN’s newsrooms is incontrovertible. In its ten years, nearly 600,000 new donors have supported hundreds of INN newsrooms. That figure is about the size of my hometown of Baltimore. NewsMatch funders and INN members alike recognize that it is more than a match, and a cornerstone of strengthening both individual newsrooms and the broader field. It is iterative, catalytic, and effective. It is infrastructure that is more than the sum of its parts.
