Next Tuesday marks the start of NewsMatch, the nation’s largest annual fundraising campaign for nonprofit news. For the fourth year in a row, the Rochester Beacon has been selected to participate in the campaign, which runs through Dec. 31.
NewsMatch was launched by Knight Foundation in 2016 and was run for several years by the Democracy Fund. In 2020, it became a program of the Institute for Nonprofit News.
A matching-gift campaign, NewsMatch has helped nonprofit newsrooms across the country raise $223 million from a total of more than 2.3 million individual donors. Gifts from local and national funders are pooled to match small-dollar donations by individuals to participating organizations. NewsMatch this year will match, dollar for dollar, up to $1,000 per donor.
“We are now in our fifth year of serving the Greater Rochester community and are deeply grateful to our supporters for making that happen,” said Alex Zapesochny, publisher of the Rochester Beacon. “By donating during our NewsMatch campaign, your support goes much further and allows us to do even more in the future.”
Starting Tuesday, Nov. 1, you can make a NewsMatch donation to the Rochester Beacon online by going to the donation page.
NewsMatch is managed by INN, a nationwide network of more than 400 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 a cap of $15,000 per participating nonprofit news organization.
To be eligible for NewsMatch, donations must be made by individuals–personally, or through a business they own, a family foundation or donor-advised fund. They also must be made during the campaign period, Nov. 1 through Dec. 31.
The number of participating organizations this year is 320, up from 275 in 2021. Last year, the nationwide campaign had 231,672 unique donors, including nearly 53,000 first-time contributors.
In each of the last three years, the Beacon reached its own NewsMatch campaign goal of $20,000 in individual donations. Once again, this year’s goal is $20,000.
“For the Beacon, this matching-gift campaign is critically important—NewsMatch does more to support our operations than any other source of funds,” Executive Editor Paul Ericson says.
“High-quality, nonprofit local journalism that everyone can access for free has never been more important for our community,” he adds. “A successful NewsMatch campaign will guarantee we can continue our work in the coming year.”
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 six years include the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Democracy Fund, Google News Initiative, Meta, Dirk and Natasha Ziff, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, Inasmuch Foundation, Walton Family Foundation, and several other family and private foundations.
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