Knight Foundation is matching up to $1.5M in gifts to nonprofit journalism
January 19, 2017 Category: Featured, Funding, ShortThrough the rest of today, the Knight Foundation has pledged to match donations to 57 nonprofit news organizations across the country — including three in Philadelphia — up to $1.5 million.
The initiative, called the Knight News Match, will match up to $25,000 per organization and individual donations up to $1,000.
The three news organizations from Philly — The Philadelphia Public School Notebook, WHYY and Institute for Journalism in New Media (which was formed last year and includes the Inquirer, Daily News and Philly.com) — as well as the 54 others chosen to participate are already a part of Knight’s grantee network or are public media stations within the communities Knight funds, according to Jennifer Preston, Knight’s VP of journalism.
Read moreWHYY and The Notebook have already reached their funding match limits, and as of yesterday, the Institute for Journalism in New Media had received $13,000 in support.
Though it appears that the Knight News Match is meant to build on the national post-election momentum of donating to nonprofit news (and a score of other nonprofits), Preston wrote in an email that it’s instead about “continuing our commitment to the essential role that local and nonprofit news organizations play in building stronger communities,” which includes Knight’s research on nonprofit news sustainability.
“For more than a decade, Knight has been a leading supporter of nonprofit news organizations and projects that advance the future of journalism in the digital age,” she said. “The foundation continues the legacy of its founders John S. and James L. Knight, newspaper publishers who believed that informed and engaged communities are essential to a healthy democracy.”
Accordingly, the date of the end of the campaign was not explicitly chosen to coincide with tomorrow’s inauguration, she said, but is simply a month from the campaign’s start date — Dec. 19 — so participating organizations had enough time to acquire donations and to help them capitalize on end-of-year giving campaigns.