North Carolina · Nonprofit
BEACON MEDIA
BEACON MEDIA (North Carolina) receives grants from 4 organizations whose IRS filings report $230,000 to it, the largest being TIDES FOUNDATION ($100,000). 1 of them have funded it in more than one year.
- Revenue FY2025
- $428k
- Funders on record
- 4
- Grants received
- $230k
- Net assets
- $237k
What Beacon Media does
Mission
To promote public education, we will partner with existing media outlets across platforms to share the ideas and voices of those advocating for a more equitable democracy throughout North Carolina. Beacon Media aims to make these ideas and supporting information more available and accessible in communities where the media predominantly represents other viewpoints or limits information that citizens should be able to access. We will also syndicate other forms of stories and content related to our mission to inform rural and exurban area communities through local media outlets. In addition, Beacon Media will conduct an educational program for grassroots and other community leaders whose important voices are underrepresented in mainstream media and other public fora. Beacon Media will provide such persons training and workshops to help them develop better written and oral communication skills so that they become better public advocates for their ideas and communities.
As stated on its FY2025 Form 990.
Programs
Beacon Media's Radio + Digital initiative (social media and digital channels coupled with radio syndication) goes beyond the typical digital-only approach to ensure that our content and voices reach underserved audiences at the community level. This strategy across North Carolina offers a significant opportunity to reach underserved and under-communicated audiences, including rural, Latino, Black, and working-class communities, and present a vision for a more inclusive democracy. In 2025, Beacon began brainstorming for a new Radio + Digital show partnership with two young mayors from Western North Carolina, Preston Blakely and Dalton George. Both are excellent examples of the kinds of leaders and trusted messengers who Beacon Media is building around to ensure those who have the most at stake in our democracy have the platform and support to tell their stories directly and persuade new and often disengaged audiences that they, too, have a stake in our collective future. We began pre-production work and developed a partnership for a podcast called Do You Even Live Here? to deliver vital storytelling to rural audiences in Western North Carolina and grow and develop these key voices.…
$146,098 spent$146,098 earned by the program58% of program spendingBeacon Media continued to work with our Beacon Voices cohort throughout 2025, talented grassroots leaders whose vision and voice will lead to a better North Carolina. Beacon produces regular weekly columns and syndicates them to more than 100 newspapers across the state, reaching marginalized audiences in rural areas, along with Black and Latino communities. In the fourth quarter of 2025, we also began a push to increase our Voices presence and narrative on social media, including in Spanish and to North Carolina's Spanish-language newspapers and outlets. Beacon Media's Executive Director met frequently with those Voices to develop pro-democracy messaging and content to diagnose a difficult moment in American democracy and provide a vision for the future. Those Voices included but were not limited to the Rev. C.J. Brinson, Gwen Frisbie-Fulton, Stevie Brooks, Kimberly Jones, Sam Grote, Melissa Castillo and others. In late 2025, Beacon Media expanded its model to include planning for a new hyperlocal site alongside partner We Are Down Home in Franklin and Granville Counties, North Carolina. Aside from its El Faro Latino community media initiative, which delivers key reporting…
$42,918 spent$42,918 earned by the program17% of program spendingBeacon Media continued to make substantial progress toward its fundraising goals in 2025 and was able to onboard its first additional full-time employees, an El Faro Associate Producer and our Community Media Liaison to expand Beacon Media's programming and reach. Key investments from Way to Rise, Rural Democracy Initiative and the Marguerite Casey Foundation and individual donors across North Carolina allowed Beacon Media to continue and expand its mission to reach marginalized communities with the information and vision of a brighter future that NC's communities need to thrive.
$61,712 spent$61,712 earned by the program25% of program spendingOther program services, not described on the e-filed return.
$0 spent0% of program spending
The 4 programs described on its FY2025 Form 990, listed largest first by expense. Program spending in total: $250,728.
The organization over time
Each line starts at 100 in 2023, so what you read is the shape rather than the size: 150 means half as much again as 2023, 50 means half. The number beside each label in the key is where it ended. The shaded band is where the middle 50% of its peers' revenue would sit, given their growth.
Balance sheet
Total assets and total liabilities at each year end, in dollars. The largest one-year move in total assets was 2024 to 2025, from $125k to $237k (+90%).
How it's funded, over time
Each bar is one year's revenue split into where it came from, and every bar is the same height — these are shares, not amounts, so a year that raised twice as much looks the same size. Hover a bar for the split.
Government-grant reliance: 2024 0% · 2025 71%. Grants only. Government contracts and fees sit inside program revenue.
100% of BEACON MEDIA’s revenue is contributions — more reliant on donations than three-quarters of its peers (64% for the typical peer).
Surplus & reserves
Operating surplus or deficit each year, and months of liquidity in hand. 0 of the last 3 reported years ran a deficit.
reserve
Leadership and staff
The officers, directors, trustees and key employees listed on each return. Joined and no longer listed compare each filing with the year before, matching people by surname and first initial; a year after a gap, or a roster under three people, has no comparison.
Board chair
Brandy Bynum Dawson
Chair
As listed on its FY2025 Form 990.
Who funds it, year by year
Grant support over time, funder by funder — shade shows the grant size each year.
2 of 4 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 48% of grant dollars received. That money is really individual donors directing a sponsor; the institutions to cultivate are the non-DAF funders.
From the IRS filings of BEACON MEDIA’s funders (the co-funder graph). Association, not causation. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
How concentrated its funding is
BEACON MEDIA leans on a few funders — its largest provides 43% of grant income and the top three 96%; half comes from just 2 funders.
the vertical line marks half of all grant income — 2 funders to its left
100% of the income these shares are computed over arrives through pass-through sponsors or from payers whose filings do not say what kind of payment it is. Concentration is still measured over all of it, because the money is real; what it does not support is a claim about how many institutions have chosen to fund BEACON MEDIA.
“Effective funders” = inverse Herfindahl index (1 / Σ shareᵢ²) — the number of equal-sized funders that would give the same concentration. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
Where its funders are
BEACON MEDIA draws 100% of its grant income from funders outside North Carolina, across 1 state in all.
Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $110k arriving through sponsors registered in 2 states is excluded from the map and the split above: a sponsor holds money on a donor’s behalf, so its registered address would place those dollars somewhere no donor need ever have been. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
Against its field
BEACON MEDIA runs a healthier operating margin than three-quarters of the 11,634 arts & culture nonprofits its size.
this organization peer median middle 50% of peers· 11,634 arts & culture nonprofits $100k–$1M, FY2025
Organizations like BEACON MEDIA
Organizations whose mission and program text most resemble this one, by semantic similarity over every organization in the US filings — the closest peers, and often the clearest route to shared or prospective funders.
In North Carolina
Nationally
Read directly from this organization’s own Form 990, as neutral context.
Where the money goes
80% of spending goes to programs.
Governance
Public support
100%
Share of support from the public (Schedule A) — the basis for its public-charity status.
Screen this organization
A dated, signed PDF of the compliance screen for BEACON MEDIA: IRS status (Business Master File, Publication 78, auto-revocation), the OFAC sanctions lists, the Internal Revenue Bulletin, and California registration, with the Rev. Proc. 2018-32 §8.01 reliance elements stated element by element. Generated from the current files at the moment you download it.
Screens are triage, not determinations; a source that cannot be read reports not screened, never clear. Screen this nonprofit · How the screen works · on the API as GET /api/screening/{ein}?format=pdf
Questions and answers
- Who funds BEACON MEDIA?
- BEACON MEDIA (North Carolina) receives grants from 4 organizations whose IRS filings report $230,000 to it, the largest being TIDES FOUNDATION ($100,000). 1 of them have funded it in more than one year.
- How many funders does BEACON MEDIA have?
- IRS filings report 4 organizations giving $230,000 in grants to BEACON MEDIA, 1 of which have funded it in more than one year.
- Who is the largest funder of BEACON MEDIA?
- TIDES FOUNDATION is the largest funder on record, with $100,000 in grants. The full list of funders is on this page.
- How can an organization like BEACON MEDIA find more funders?
- Start with the funders already giving here, then look at the foundations that back similar organizations in North Carolina. The funding by cause and by state pages list the largest funders for a given area and how to approach them.
Play a game about who funds Beacon Media →
These figures are read directly from IRS Form 990 / 990-PF e-file XML: this organization’s own return for FY2025 (financials across 2023–2025), and the filings of 4 funders that report grants to it. “On record” means captured in the filings we have parsed — a funder that does not e-file, or whose grant detail is not itemized, will not appear. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind. Trends on this page end at FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving; later years are shown and marked, and move no figure. Data on this page was exported October 14, 2026. What this page cannot tell you · view filing