January 6, 2025

Nonprofit journalism is rapidly expanding and evolving – and the ways of fundraising are too. The Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) thinks it’s worth exploring how newsrooms can combine their resources and strengths with one another for greater success.

Collective fundraising is defined as fundraising undertaken together by multiple organizations that establish the necessary systems, processes and structures to raise and manage those funds jointly.

To help newsrooms understand and establish collective fundraising, we have released a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Guide to Collective Fundraising, accompanied by a series of case studies to show how collective fundraising happens in practice. 

“This Collective Fundraising DIY Guide is almost two years in the making. We spent the first year gathering information, holding focus groups and listening to the needs of our members,” said Stephanie Schenkel, INN’s network philanthropy director. “We learned that newsrooms like the idea of fundraising collaboratively, but most are unsure about the process of building collectives and sustaining them over time. Our hope is that this guide will help show them the way and offer newsrooms the confidence to get started.”

The 23-page DIY Guide is structured around a set of two pillars: establishing the foundations and ways of working. The guide includes specific activities and tasks for newsrooms to complete, such as forming membership of the collective and setting up infrastructure for governance and decision making. The guide also includes supplemental resources like discussion questions and sample documents like MOUs.

The guide was published with help from Collective Mind, a social enterprise focused on improving the practice and impact of networks, whose expertise and history paired with INN’s knowledge of the nonprofit journalism industry allows us to help newsrooms navigate collective fundraising work with greater clarity, order and framework.

To accompany the guide, four case studies were published to show different approaches to collective fundraising: events, campaigns, shared or joint projects and long-term fundraising strategies. 

INN member Eden Prairie Local News co-hosted an event with its local Chamber of Commerce to inform community members on the impacts of AI. The collective attracted 150 attendees and raised $9,000 in revenue and was split by the two partners.

In addition to the funds, the newsroom gained greater visibility, new email addresses to add to mailing lists and the ability to highlight the event in future grant applications.

INN members MinnPost and Sahan Journal organized a successful joint fundraising campaign on World Press Freedom Day last year, which included a pooled fund that would pay out a match to both organizations of any gift donated to one of them. By sharing materials like graphics, email copy and a donor tracking sheet, the two organizations raised a combined $12,500 including the matching grants, exceeding the goal on both sides.

While INN members Connecticut Mirror and Connecticut Public jointly fundraise for and manage a shared Washington DC-based reporter who contributes to both organizations, Connecticut Public is also one of 10 regional news stations that form the New England News Collaborative (NENC).  

The newsrooms in New England News Collaborative, which began as an effort to share content across public media stations within the region, now also work together on the revenue side via diverse collective fundraising efforts. They work on joint grant proposals or provide talking points about the collaborative that stations can leverage in their separate fundraising efforts. 

From the case study: “A strong shared mission amongst the members of serving their communities and growing their impact and reach exists alongside a sense of peer support that stations facing similar challenges don’t have to face them alone.” 

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Interested in learning more about collective fundraising? INN will be joined by representatives from the case studies for a member-exclusive webinar on March 11 to further explore the processes and outcomes of collective fundraising. Registration will open soon.