· Public charity
Alternative Newsweekly Foundation
The ALTERNATIVE NEWSWEEKLY FOUNDATION is dedicated to the promotion and support of independent journalism.anf serves as a fiscal sponsor to organizations that are building and sustaining news and information infrastructure across the country.as part of its affiliation with aan publishers (aan.org), anf supports the professional…
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 69 grants below total $2,184,624 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $2,261,335 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $76,711 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k5 grants · $39k
- $10k–50k57 grants · $1.2M
- $50k–250k6 grants · $586k
- $250k+1 grant · $375k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Oregon Journalism Project | $375,000 |
| Chicago News Weekly LLC | $151,450 |
| Grassroots DC | $109,250 |
| What's Happening Inc | $102,025 |
| Arkansas Times Limited Partnership | $99,988 |
| Milestone Communications Inc | $62,337 |
| HBCU Digital Media Collaborative | $60,957 |
| Embarcadero Media Foundation | $40,000 |
| Valeria Fernandez | $33,335 |
| Flagpole Inc | $29,300 |
| NWA News Project LLC | $25,929 |
| Beat Media Inc | $25,694 |
| Duke University | $20,000 |
| San Diego Reader | $20,000 |
| Carib News Inc | $20,000 |
Do your dollars go where the need is?
Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, then read against the area’s typical level.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY25–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 83% of your dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty linein the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP; grantee ZIP can differ from where services are delivered.
Which US states your grants reach
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are actually delivered. Need from public data — U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA — shown as context about the area, never attributed to your giving.
The map has a center of gravity: the average direction from the rest of the sector toward the organizations the foundation funds — the shape of its giving. Scoring every nonprofit along that direction surfaces the ones that look most like the portfolio. These are the closest matchesthat aren’t grantees — a resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.
To educate journalists and the public, and foster public debate, about improving political journalism to reflect public needs and hold the powerful accountable.
Through in-depth and thought-provoking journalism, prism reflects the lived experiences of people most impacted by injustice. As an independent and nonprofit newsroom LED by journalists of color, we tell stories from the ground up: to…
Educating the public and journalists about crime and criminal justice, primarily through the publication of a daily news digest, Crime and Justice News.
Build a community-supported newsroom that ignites civic engagement, educates citizens and strengthens our democracy.
Expands local news across North Carolina
To provide credible reporting and commentary on its website (counterpunch.org) and through its podcast, helping readers make informed and balanced assessments - vital for a healthy democratic society - on the public issues of the day.
We grow local news for and from the Valley to help you live a healthy and informed life. We connect Central Valley communities with the support needed to grow and sustain local journalism.
Our mission is to educate and inform public discourse and civic participation in arizona through local, independent journalism.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Lens and the most unlike its peers is Voice News Network. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 6 years old; the field is 16. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 33% of your grantees by number, and just 70% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 13% of the field you don’t fund.
Age = years since IRS exemption (a founding proxy). “Closed” = auto-revocation for 3 years of non-filing — a floor on closure, not proof, and bigger established orgs lapse least. Association, not causation.
30 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.
Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue from every source. Association, dated; never a causal claim.
Counted here: distinct organizations you funded across 2017–2025, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 30 of the 69 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile; the rest are funded organizations whose filings we could not track year by year.
Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee
Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing
Go grantee by grantee — a decade per org, and how each moved after you funded them
A decade per grantee — revenue shaded, your grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.
The grantmakers whose grantees overlap with yours far more than size alone predicts. Each orbits closer the stronger the alignment; the arcs between them show where they also fund each other. Here it reads as a tightly interlocked camp — most of these funders back each other's grantees too.
Open a dossier: Local Independent Online News Publishers Inc · The Miami Foundation Inc · Local Media Foundation · Institute for Nonprofit News · Local Media Association · The Groundtruth Project Inc · Solutions Journalism Network Inc · The Lenfest Institute for Journalism Special Asset Fund of Tpf · American Press Institute Inc · The Int'L Center for Journalists Inc · Borealis Philanthropy · Rose Community Foundation
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. A research starting point: overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.
Government reliance of your grantees
Every dot is one organization Alternative Newsweekly Foundation funds. Left–right is the share of its income from government; up–down is the share from you. Bigger dots raise more. Filter to federal or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
Government income is each org’s traced federal awards (USASpending — grants and contracts) plus state payments (open checkbooks) as a share of its total revenue (IRS Form 990); the self-reported government-grant line (990 line 1e) is carried for cross-check: a grantee that reports government grants we could not trace to a source is left off the chart rather than shown as receiving none. An association, not a claim that your grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first — a floor, not a census; state records exist for 9 states, so a grantee outside them shows no state figure (dimmed) rather than a false zero. Federal award amounts are obligations, which can span years, so a single-year share is indicative. 990 filings lag 12–24 months.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Alternative Newsweekly Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Alternative Newsweekly Foundation through trustees and officers whose names appear on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the shortest route it can evidence.
Each link is a name appearing on two organizations’ public IRS 990 filings, matched on that name and, where the filings support it, on location. A same-state match has geographic support, which is a second matching feature rather than confirmation that the two are one person; a cross-state one is the likeliest to be two people who share a name. Every hop shows its tier, low-confidence and distant paths are held back rather than guessed, and it is worth confirming the person before you use the introduction.