For the third straight year, the Rochester Beacon has been selected to participate in NewsMatch, the nation’s largest grassroots fundraising campaign for nonprofit news. This year’s campaign starts Monday and runs through Dec. 31.
Launched in 2016, NewsMatch is a matching-gift campaign that has helped nonprofit newsrooms nationwide raise more than $150 million from a total of 2.3 million individual donors. The campaign pools gifts from local and national funders to match small-dollar donations by individuals to participating organizations. This year, NewsMatch will match, dollar for dollar, up to $1,000 per donor.
“Our important work for the community would not be possible without the generous support of our readers,” says Alex Zapesochny, publisher of the Rochester Beacon. “And by donating during this NewsMatch campaign timeframe, readers can leverage their generosity and help us to expand our journalistic efforts.”
Starting Monday, Nov. 1, you can make a NewsMatch donation to the Rochester Beacon online by going to the donation page.
NewsMatch is managed by Institute for Nonprofit News, a nationwide network of more than 300 independent, nonprofit, nonpartisan news organizations. 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 $10,000 per participating nonprofit news organization. (NewsMatch will continue to raise funds through Dec. 31 and may increase the campaign cap.)
In both 2019 and 2020, the Beacon reached its campaign goal of $20,000 in individual donations. This year’s goal also is $20,000.
“For the last two years, NewsMatch has been the biggest source of funds supporting the Beacon’s operations,” Executive Editor Paul Ericson says. “Contributors’ generosity has allowed us to provide high-quality local journalism that everyone can access for free. Another successful NewsMatch campaign will ensure that we can continue to do so.”
All NewsMatch participants are 501(c)(3) organizations 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 INN.
Key funders to NewsMatch over the last five years include the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Democracy Fund, Google News Initiative, Facebook, Dirk and Natasha Ziff, Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, Inasmuch Foundation, and several other family and private foundations. The Miami Foundation is the fiscal sponsor. INN and the News Revenue Hub are nonprofit partners.