The Rochester Beacon again has been selected to participate in NewsMatch, the nation’s largest grassroots fundraising campaign for nonprofit news. This year’s campaign starts Sunday and runs through Dec. 31.
NewsMatch is a matching-gift campaign that has helped nonprofit newsrooms nationwide raise more than $100 million. Now in its fifth year, the campaign pools gifts from local and national funders to match small-dollar donations by individuals to participating organizations. The campaign will match, dollar for dollar, up to $5,000 per donor.
“Being a member of the Institute for Nonprofit News has been of great benefit to us financially and otherwise,” says Alex Zapesochny, publisher of the Rochester Beacon. “By making financial contributions during this two-month NewsMatch window, our readers can have significantly more impact on our ability to enhance our work in the year to come.”
Starting Sunday, Nov. 1, you can make a NewsMatch donation to the Rochester Beacon online by going to the donation page.
Local and national foundations provide gifts to the Fund for Nonprofit News, hosted at the Miami Foundation. The fund then matches every dollar that newsrooms raise from individual donors during the NewsMatch campaign, up to an initial cap of $11,500 per participating nonprofit news organization. (NewMatch will continue to raise funds through Dec. 31 and may increase the campaign cap.)
This is the second year that the Rochester Beacon has been selected to participate in NewsMatch. In 2019, the Beacon reached its campaign goal of $20,000 in individual donations. This year’s goal also is $20,000.
“Thanks to the generosity of our NewsMatch contributors last fall, we have been able to maintain a solid financial base amid the Covid pandemic without additional fund raising during the year,” Executive Editor Paul Ericson says. “Now, we need another successful NewsMatch campaign to stay on track toward our long-term goal: a sustainable business model for high-quality local journalism that all readers can access for free.”
The Rochester Beacon is one of more than 260 participating news organizations—up 35 percent from a year ago. All are a 501(c)(3) or fiscally sponsored by a 501(c)(3), follow best practices in financial transparency, and publish original, high-quality reporting that is investigative or public service by nature. In addition, all are full members of the Institute for Nonprofit News.
NewsMatch is supported by Democracy Fund, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Facebook Journalism Project, the Bernard and Anne Spitzer Charitable Trust, the Inasmuch Foundation, the Independence Public Media Foundation, the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, Natasha and Dirk Ziff, the Present Progressive Fund at Schwab Charitable, the S.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Wyncote Foundation, along with supporting partners across the U.S. The Miami Foundation is the fiscal sponsor. INN and the News Revenue Hub are nonprofit partners.