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· Public charity
LOCAL MEDIA FOUNDATION
The purpose of the foundation is to ensure a healthy future for local journalism, which is essential to a strong democracy, by reinventing business models for news.
$3.6M
Granted FY2024
44
Grants
19
Communities
$395k
Largest
01What you fund
01
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 96% of LOCAL MEDIA FOUNDATION’s grantee dollars go to organizations outside the IRS cause taxonomy (common for large international and research funders), so a chart would be mostly “unclassified” and misrepresent the portfolio.
02beneath the categories
Past the labels — and the year it shifted
Beneath the NTEE codes, this is what the grant descriptions actually say.
…and in their own words, year by year
2021
inequity issuesissues solutionsreporting racialracial inequityreporting covidcovid issuesissues recovery
2022
voicepublishingnewspaperchicagomake
2023
stipends technologyupgrades digitaltechnology upgradespublishingchicagoweeklyblack
Words distinctive to each year’s grant purposes (TF-IDF) · event-driven terms in cyan.
03FY2024 · 44 grants
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k7 grants · $52k
- $10k–50k17 grants · $404k
- $50k–250k19 grants · $2.1M
- $250k+1 grant · $395k
$41,088
Median grant
19
States reached
$6.3M
Total assets
Largest grants
- 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
02The need
04
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.
show:
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY21–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 14% — the area typically sits at 11%. 85% of your dollars reach neighborhoods with above-average need. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP; grantee ZIP can differ from where services are delivered.
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, United Way ALICE — shown as context about the area, never attributed to your giving.
03Your edge
repeat funding
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.
80%of every dollar goes to organizations you’ve funded before.
$6.0M · 33 repeat orgs$1.5M to everyone else
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
Re-uppedFunded once
Organizations
33
25
Total granted
$6.0M
$1.1M
Median revenue growth · since first grant
+86%
+89%
Still filing today
12%
16%
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2024, 89% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $328k went to new ones.
RenewedFirst-time
Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant
Arts & CultureEducationEmploymentOther
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
- VPVOICE PUBLISHING COMPANY INC4× · 2021–2024 · $386k · revenue +86% · 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 CENTERone 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.
04Your field
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.
1
National Newspaper Association
The foundation is the educational arm of the national newspaper association. its mission is to promote news literacy, and enhance the quality, role and capabilities of community newspapers and community journalists through education.
Arts & Culture
2
Press Watch
To educate journalists and the public, and foster public debate, about improving political journalism to reflect public needs and hold the powerful accountable.
—
3
The Int'l Center for Journalists Inc
International
4
Society of Professional Journalists
To aid, encourage and promote education and training in the field of journalism.
Arts & Culture
5
Indij Public Media
INDIJ Public Media is an independent, nonprofit, multimedia news enterprise. We reach audiences through our digital platform and as a broadcast carried via public television stations. The mission is to serve Indigenous communities with…
Arts & Culture
6
Border Center for Journalists and
Arts & Culture
7
Oklahoma Newspaper Foundation
Arts & Culture
8
Oromia Media Network
He oromia media network (omn) is an independent, nonprofit news enterprise whose mission is to produce original and citizen-driven reporting on oromia, the largest and most populous state in ethiopia. omn seeks to offer thought-provoking,…
International
9
Civic News Company
At civic news company, our mission is helping people understand how america works so they can make it work better. we do so by providing deep local coverage of important issues to increase public understanding of and participation in civic…
Education
10
National Newspaper Publishers
Support of Minority Press and Journalism
—
11
Criminal Justice Journalists
Educating the public and journalists about crime and criminal justice, primarily through the publication of a daily news digest, Crime and Justice News.
Crime & Legal
12
Dallas Express Media
To provide unbiased, non-partisan news coverage for the city and county of Dallas.
Arts & Culture
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.
05the grantee network
10 grantees, every filing reconciled, 2017–2025.
Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue.
3
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
4
Early backer (in before they grew)
10/10
Grantees still filing
6/10
Grew since you first funded
Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee
Other$7,130,116Arts & Culture$224,000Education$49,537Employment$13,023
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.
Local Media AssociationMI54.8× affinity23 shared granteesties to 10 of 10Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →
Open a dossier: Local Media Association · Alternative Newsweekly Foundation · The Groundtruth Project Inc · The Miami Foundation Inc · Local Independent Online News Publishers Inc · Solutions Journalism Network Inc · The Lenfest Institute for Journalism · Borealis Philanthropy · Pro Publica Inc · American Press Institute Inc · The Int'L Center for Journalists 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 organisation 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.
2025
’20’21’22’23’24’25
no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
0get no government money at all
0rely on government for over half their income
⤢ axis zoomed · 0–5%
typical government reliance, FY20–25
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. 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.
05Through Plinth
Through Plinth
Your grantmaking, live and operational
This dossier was generated cold from public filings. In Plinth it’s a working system — every applicant assessed and every grant monitored. Here’s a taste, run on one of your grantees: OKLAHOMA MEDIA CENTER.
Agentic due diligence · confidence × risk
Financial management
low risk
~12 months of operating runway; revenue contracted over 2 filed years.
Track record & reputation
medium risk
2 years of Form 990 filings, still active.
Legal standing
low risk
US 501(c)(3); EIN 873120337 on file with current IRS Form 990 filings.
Governance
Live in Plinth
Board composition & governance documents — verified live in Plinth from the applicant.
Compliance & sanctions
Live in Plinth
OFAC / UN sanctions screening — run live in Plinth at assessment.
Program capacity
Live in Plinth
Staffing, M&E and activity alignment — assessed live in Plinth from submitted proposals.
Live · Plinth’s real DD engine
Run the actual assessment on OKLAHOMA MEDIA CENTER, cold from public data.
Generated live from public IRS filings + open web sources by Plinth’s agentic engine. Shown as an illustration of the product, not a formal assessment.
Post-award monitoring · continuous checks
- On trackFinancial stability— Roughly 12 months of cash on hand.
- On trackSustained operations— Filing through 2024; revenue contracted over the period.
- WatchReliance on your funding— Your grants peaked at 50% of their budget — load-bearing; a dependency Plinth would track.
- Awaiting reportEvidence of delivery— Plinth collects the grantee's own monitoring reports post-award.
What you see here is static and public. In Plinth it’s operational — the full six-pillar framework on every applicant (with their own documents + live registry and sanctions checks), monitoring dashboards on every award, custom board reports, and eligibility routing for intake.
Agentic due diligenceMonitoring dashboardsCustom board reportsEligibility routing
Preview generated from this grantee’s public IRS filings and independent reporting. Pillars marked “live in Plinth” require the applicant’s submitted documents. Shown as illustration, not a formal assessment.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPro
How do I get to Local Media Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Local Media Foundation through people who sit on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the introduction across shared trustees and officers.
Every link is a documented governance overlap in public IRS 990 filings — not a personal network — and each hop carries its own confidence tier. Low-confidence or distant paths are held back rather than guessed.
More from the funding graph
The regranting layer
51% of grant dollars pass through an intermediary
The DAF merry-go-round
$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds
Strange bedfellows
the named clusters of US funding
The camps
funders cluster by geography, not ideology
By state
where grant money is based, and what stays home
State money flows
the interactive map of money crossing state lines