October 10, 2024

Since 2022, hundreds of news outlets have taken part in U.S. Democracy Day, a nonpartisan collaborative project to improve news coverage of threats to the U.S. system of government. This year, the Institute for Nonprofit News worked with the Center for Cooperative Media to offer nonprofit news organizations participating in the effort an extra incentive: a fundraising match. 

Conceived of as an experiment to explore variations on the annual year-end NewsMatch fundraising campaign that INN coordinates, this initiative offered INN members that were signed up to participate in Democracy Day 2024 a $500 match from NewsMatch to spark community support for quality news. Participants also received a campaign toolkit, which included professional graphics and sample email content to support their efforts. 

On September 15, 2024, the 47 participating INN newsrooms generated more than $57,000 in individual donations from more than 800 unique donors, a third of whom gave for the first time. Five of those newsrooms secured more than $10,000 in additional matching funds to support their campaigns.

“This campaign was a great opportunity for our small newsroom to further elevate our election coverage during a critical year,” said Andrew Phillips, executive director of Door County Knock. “The support of NewsMatch, and especially the matching funds, are crucial for us as we try to improve coverage of elections and public officials in our news-desert community. Our coverage area, a county of 30,000 residents, includes 19 municipal governments, five school boards, and a powerful county government, none of which get enough coverage. Campaigns like this help us grow and fill those gaps.” 

Through their participation in U.S. Democracy Day, the newsrooms published articles and resources about elections and democracy aimed to inform and empower voters. For example, Tucson-based Arizona Luminaria produced a three-article Q&A series featuring three civic engagement leaders — one who is Navajo, one who is Latino, and one who is Black — working for democracy and voting in their respective communities. 

Door County Knock of Egg Harbor, Wisconsin, highlighted how local election processes and infrastructure should inspire confidence in local voters, despite challenges clerks and election officials face ahead of Nov. 5. NowKalamazoo produced a guide that tells Michigan voters how to do campaign finance research.

The Current, based in Savannah, Georgia, compiled a resource page to help Coastal Georgia voters make informed decisions, including links to nonpartisan election reporting and access to tools for conducting their own research. Wausau Pilot & Review in Wisconsin explained how voters can fact-check claims made in campaign mailers and make informed decisions. 

INN Network newsrooms participating in the Democracy Day effort varied by size, location, and scope. 

• They represented 26 states, including key presidential election battleground states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Forty-two of them, or 89%, serve local, statewide or regional audiences.
• A quarter of them, 12, are led by people of color and serve communities of color. 
• Seven are startups launched in 2022 or later. Democracy Day was the first NewsMatch-related campaign for three news organizations.

The Democracy Day NewsMatch campaign was the pilot of an initiative to explore how NewsMatch can activate philanthropic and community support outside of the year-end timeframe. 

“All year long, members of the INN Network make the case to their audiences that quality news is worth paying for, even if the content is published without a paywall,” said Karen Rundlet, CEO & Executive Director of INN. “Offering an incentive for people to give at certain moments – whether that’s a crisis or celebration – is a way that INN can help our newsrooms attract more support for their work.”