NewsMatch will shift from a year-end campaign to a year-round model

Since NewsMatch launched as an experiment a decade ago, the annual end-of-year campaign has become a cornerstone in the fundraising strategy of nonprofit newsrooms across the country.

First created by the Knight Foundation in partnership with the Institute for Nonprofit News and the News Revenue Hub, NewsMatch has evolved into what many INN members think of as its flagship program. Now, INN is thinking about the next 10 years. If the first decade of NewsMatch helped newsrooms fundraise, “the next phase will focus on helping newsrooms build on that foundation with more advanced, flexible campaigns tailored to their goals and stages of growth,” according to a report INN released Tuesday. To support that evolution, NewsMatch will shift from “a single year-end campaign to a year-round model.” Next year, INN will pilot “NewsMatch catalyst campaigns” in which some INN members test new fundraising strategies, among other things.

About 600,000 first-time donors have contributed to nonprofit news via NewsMatch in the program’s lifetime, per the report. INN found that the average number of mid-level donors per newsroom (those giving between $1,000 and $5,000) more than doubled between 2021 and 2025.

In 2022, local matches surpassed national donors for the first time, a milestone for the program. The report indicates that INN’s leadership is thinking about how to keep bringing new funding to a field that has grown substantially since NewsMatch launched, even as newsrooms face funding and audience challenges. “INN fundraises annually for a program highly valued by our growing membership, but the program is not endowed,” INN executive director and CEO Karen Rundlet states in the report. “While INN has expanded support beyond the usual suspects in journalism philanthropy, cultivating these newer entrants to funding nonprofit journalism requires long lead times for donor education and buy-in.”

Read more and find the full report here.