· Public charity
Local Media Foundation
The LOCAL MEDIA FOUNDATION's mission is to ensure a healthy future for local journalism, which is essential to a strong democracy, by reinventing business models for news.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2021–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 44 grants below total $2,921,535 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $3,617,095 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $695,560 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 · FY2024
- Under $10k7 grants · $52k
- $10k–50k17 grants · $404k
- $50k–250k19 grants · $2.1M
- $250k+1 grant · $395k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE COLUMBIAN PUBLISHING COMPANY | $394,720 |
| AMNEWS CORPDBA NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS | $155,631 |
| NEW YORK NEWS PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION | $150,480 |
| AD-MAST PUBLISHING COTHE DALLAS WEEKLY | $143,774 |
| THE WASHINGTON INFORMER | $133,305 |
| LEE PUBLISHING COMPANY INC | $129,839 |
| THE ATLANTA VOICE - VOICE NEWS NETWORK | $125,683 |
| AFRO AMERICAN CO BALTIMORE CITY | $122,544 |
| SEATTLE MEDIUM - TILOBEN PUBLISHING CO INC | $120,669 |
| AMERICAN PUBLISHING COMPANY DBA ST LOUIS AMERICAN NEWSPAPER | $119,145 |
| HOUSTON DEFENDER NEWSPAPER INC | $119,036 |
| MICHIGAN CHRONICLE PUBLISHING CO | $115,851 |
| LAMBDA PUBLICATIONS INCDBA WINDY CITY | $107,496 |
| INDIAN COUNTY MEDIA LLC | $95,000 |
| VERIFIED NEWS NETWORK | $88,350 |
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 (FY21–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 85% 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.
Who you back again
Which organizations you funded more than once, and which you funded a single time. Each grantee is matched to its own filings.
33 repeat relationships — 29 still active in FY2024, 4 since wound down; 13 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call).
How the two cohorts compare
Organizations
Total granted
Median revenue growth · since first grant
Still filing today
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2024, 89% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $328k went to new ones.
Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant
First-time = a grantee’s first year in your filing window; renewed = funded in an earlier year too. As a portfolio matures the renewed share naturally climbs — once funded, an org stays “renewable” — so the signal is the years that buck it (a new-grantee intake wave). The earliest year is left-censored: relationships that predate the data read as “new.” Theme is the grantee’s IRS cause.
Backed again, and grew
- TCTHE COLUMBIAN PUBLISHING COMPANY3× · 2022–2024 · $1.1M
- VNVOICE NEWS NETWORK4× · 2021–2024 · $386k · revenue -7% · 26% of their budget
- ACAMNEWS CORPDBA NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS4× · 2021–2024 · $324k
Funded once
- WIWORD IN BLACK PBCone grant, 2023 · $350k
- MJMAINE JOURNALISM FOUNDATIONone grant, 2023 · $178k
OKLAHOMA MEDIA CENTER INCone grant, 2023 · $157k · 50% of their budget
Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.
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.
Educating the public and journalists about crime and criminal justice, primarily through the publication of a daily news digest, Crime and Justice News.
Expands local news across North Carolina
The organization is non-profit organization working to build and sustain local news and ensure that local news organizations across new england are supported with the kinds of tailored problem-solving, training and partnerships they need…
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.
Citizens news guild educates the public by publishing non-partisan state and local news.
Producing journalism that matters to Arkansans.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is New York News Publishers Assoc Inc 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.
10 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. 10 of the 71 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 Media Association · Alternative Newsweekly Foundation · The Groundtruth Project Inc · Local Independent Online News Publishers Inc · The Miami Foundation Inc · The Lenfest Institute for Journalism Special Asset Fund of Tpf · Solutions Journalism Network Inc · The Int'L Center for Journalists Inc · Pro Publica Inc · Borealis Philanthropy · American Press Institute Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc
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 Local Media 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.