As some nonprofit news organizations report five- and six-figure spikes in contributions amid concerns about the rise of “fake news,” the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation said Monday it is matching up to $1.5 million in donations made up until the day before Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Jennifer Preston, vice president for journalism at Knight, said the matching dollars are meant to bolster “what appears to be growing awareness about the need for quality journalism” and to give the leaders of nonprofit news organizations meaningful talking points to use with donors during the all-important year-end fundraising season.
“We are just hoping it will drive awareness of the great journalism that these nonprofit news organizations are delivering at both the national level and the local level and also generate dollars so that they can do the work,” Ms. Preston told The Chronicle on Friday before the grant money was made public.
Fifty-seven nonprofits will benefit. All are former or current grantees of the Knight Foundation, one of the biggest supporters of journalism, with $25 million in grants annually. The maximum match per group is $25,000 for donations made by January 19. Among the groups to receive the money are local and state news sites like the Rapidian and MinnPost, investigative organizations like the Center for Public Integrity and Oklahoma Watch, and numerous public radio and television outlets.
The Future of News
The idea, Ms. Preston said, was conceived less than two weeks ago during an event called Newsgeist at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. Hosted by Knight and Google, it brings together journalists and technologists to discuss the future of news. This year, “there was a lot of concern about fake news,” Ms. Preston said, and discussion about the increase in small, individual donations to nonprofit news organization after Election Day.
Many such groups rely heavily on foundations for support, and it struck her during Newsgeist that this might be a moment to help some of them build out their individual donor rolls. She floated the idea with Knight Foundation President Alberto Ibargüen, who took it to the foundation’s board a few days later. And she worked with Sue Cross, the executive director of the Institute for Nonprofit News, to hammer out the details on how such a fund might work.
Andy Hall, executive director of the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, said he was notified Thursday that his organization would benefit. He founded the group in 2009, and it now has an annual budget of about $500,000, three quarters of which comes from foundations.
Mr. Hall’s nonprofit had a brush with authority in 2013 when a provision was slipped into the state budget bill to bar it from using office space at the University of Wisconsin at Madison’s journalism school, also home to Wisconsin Public Radio and Wisconsin Public Television. The provision was ultimately struck. He never figured out which lawmaker introduced the provision, Mr. Hall said.
He anticipates his staff can raise enough money in the next month to secure the maximum $25,000 match from Knight — they had already logged a 50 percent increase in new donors this year over 2015.
“We already know of at least $5,000 just from a very fast conversation with board members and volunteers who are active with the center,” he said.
And as they promote the match by email, on the organization’s website, and on social media, he expects some donors to accelerate gifts.
“Somebody who might have otherwise sent us a contribution at the end of 2017 might send us instead all that money in the first half of January, so that it qualifies for the match,” Mr. Hall said.
In notes included with donation checks, recent donors encourage the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism team to keep digging, Mr. Hall said.
“They talk about how now more than ever it is important for the public to have access to accurate information,” he said.
Combative Relationship
Maria Archangelo, executive director of the Notebook, a 22-year-old news organization that covers the Philadelphia public school system, said that the matching dollars from Knight would allow her to expand multimedia work in the coming year.
The nonprofit hopes to raise $20,000 at year-end and is already doing well, she said. It raised more than $6,000 on Giving Tuesday, including a matching donation, which was a record.
“Because of the interest in what might be happening to the media and what might be happening to education, we are seeing some of those donations come in quicker this year than we have in past years,” she said.
Nonprofit news groups are benefiting from Mr. Trump’s election and his combative relationship with journalists, she added, which is “revealing our worth all of a sudden.”
