Index Pods

About Pods

Pods is a member-only program that leverages INN’s Index data to deliver benchmarking data for distinct types of nonprofit news organizations – from small hyperlocal community-connectors, to larger investigative powerhouses. Focusing on particular types of nonprofit news outlets allows Pods to provide actionable benchmarking data and peer connections between similar INN’s member outlets.

INN MEMBERS’ BENEFITS

Benchmarking data: Pods provides benchmarking data across revenue and expenses, audience and distribution, and staffing that can be used for your strategic planning, revenue and audience goal setting, and fundraising.
Peer connection: Pods connects you with your peer nonprofit news outlets, including outlets that overlap with yours in revenue, staff size, target audience size, geographic scope of coverage, and growth stage.

METHODS

Pods is possible thanks to members’ completion of the Index Survey earlier this year. Leveraging Index data on the geographic scope of coverage, estimated audience size, revenue, and staff size, INN’s research team partitioned all members who took the survey into 16 Pods.

We’ve found the geographic scope of an outlet’s coverage to be an effective distinguishing factor as they have been observed to affect revenue streams, staffing capacity, and audience strategy for news outlets.

The four geographic scope categories are: National + Global, State + Regional, Local, and Hyperlocal. Hyperlocals are local outlets that have an estimated target audience size of less than 100,000.

We incorporated growth stages as the second dimension in our partitioning scheme: Startup, Small Sustainer, Mid-level Sustainer, and Large Sustainer. See definitions for each of the growth stages below:

Startup: Startups are defined by INN as outlets that are in their first three years of operation.
Small sustainer: Sustainers represent outlets beyond their startup years whose revenue and staffing capacity are relatively small. They’re stabilizing existing revenue, growing audiences and experimenting with new revenue streams. Small sustainers make up about a third of non-startup members in each geographic scope.
Mid-level sustainer: Mid-level sustainers represent outlets beyond their startup years whose revenue and staffing capacity are mid-size. Many of these outlets have established one or two steady revenue streams. Mid-level sustainers make up about a third of non-startup members in each geographic scope.
Large sustainer: Large sustainers include well-established outlets that have a comparatively higher revenue and staff size, serving larger markets than many other nonprofit news organizations. Large sustainers make up about a third of non-startup members in each geographic scope.

This method enables us to identify 16 distinct groups, or “pods” as shown below.

Explore 2025 Pods Benchmarking Data

The benchmarking pages below are members-only resources and require a password to access. Please reach out to Ha Ta, INN’s Researcher for assistance.

Hyperlocal

Local

State, Regional

National, Global

How to Join Pods

You must be an INN member and have completed the 2025 Index Survey (covering CY2024) to join the program. Get in touch with our Research team if you have questions.

Ha Ta, Researcher: ha@inn.org

About INN Index

The Index is the most comprehensive study of the state of nonprofit news.

As the nonprofit news field rapidly changes and grows, INN tracks and studies what’s happening behind-the-scenes. Through exploring Index data, you can learn what drives nonprofit news, how it’s funded, who it serves, and how we can continue expanding sources of high-quality information for the public. Jump here to explore the INN Index.

Interested in reviewing last year’s benchmarking data?