Funding from Individual Giving

Do outlets led by and for people of color report lower levels of individual giving than other outlets?

Individual giving is a major source of revenue for nonprofit news outlets, comprising just under a third of total revenue reported by INN members in 2022. Yet anecdotally, INN has heard from members that fundraising from individual donors remains a major challenge for some outlets, particularly BIPOC-led outlets serving communities of color at the state and local level. 

To explore this, we examined individual giving among state and local outlets that are both BIPOC-led and BIPOC-serving, comparing them to all other state and local news outlets (not including public media outlets). This group of BIPOC-led and BIPOC-serving outlets is quite small, comprising just 11% of state and local outlets.

The data confirm that the median amount of individual giving reported by BIPOC-led and BIPOC-serving outlets is less than half of the median among other state and local outlets (Figure 15).

This pattern is consistent across different tiers of giving, from smaller donations of less than $1000 to large donations of $5000 or more. Correspondingly, individual giving plays a much smaller role in the overall revenue reported by BIPOC-led and BIPOC-serving outlets, comprising just 9% of total revenue, compared to 38% among other state and local outlets.³¹

Interviews with BIPOC-led and BIPOC-serving outlets confirmed that these patterns in individual giving resonate with their own observations and experiences. They attribute some of it to the audience that many BIPOC-led outlets serve — for example, low-income communities that may not have much money to give and/or first-generation immigrants who aren’t familiar with U.S. norms around giving donations. This impacts where these outlets have decided to focus their fundraising efforts, in some cases targeting those who are outside their core audience. As one interviewee explained, “I know who my donors are, and they are not people who look like me. They are not people who have my history or are invested in this work because they come from this background. It’s people who are allies from other communities that have the means to give.”

Interviewees also observe that people of color encounter more barriers to accessing the networks of wealth that boost individual giving, particularly major gifts. One explained, “It’s all about who you know and the connections that you or your board or your network has. Given the realities of the racial wealth gap, BIPOC-led and BIPOC-serving organizations likely have fewer connections within networks of wealth or fewer doors opened for them.” A general lack of experience soliciting donations also plays a role, especially among smaller outlets that do not have a dedicated person on staff with fundraising knowledge and skills. This is not specific to BIPOC-led and BIPOC-serving outlets, but can compound the impact of other challenges they face in soliciting donations.

31. Individual giving makes up a similarly small percentage (median of 5%) of total revenue among the small set of BIPOC-led and BIPOC-serving outlets operating at regional and national levels (n=11).