2026 INN Index

Executive Summary

2025 was an especially volatile year for journalism, and nonprofit news in particular. From threats to 501(c)(3) status, increased safety risks for reporters on the ground, funding rescissions, and more demand on philanthropy to cover federal funding gaps across various nonprofit sectors, the latest INN Index gives us a glimpse into how INN members fared in a trying year.

New data from the 2026 INN Index, the ninth annual survey of INN members across North America, is primarily derived from responses from 412 members—a participation rate of 93%. 

This year’s findings show signs of a field that is continuing to grow, while the median individual member newsroom approaches a financial plateau. In 2025, the INN Network generated over $750 million in combined revenue, a 14% increase from 2024 and the highest total figure since the INN Index started collecting this data, which demonstrates that the field as a whole is not shrinking. But at the individual newsroom level, median annual revenues dipped slightly from 2024 figures to $525,000. Many newsrooms reported reductions in charitable revenue due to the political climate (a timely topic that was added to this year’s survey), but the data also shows a slight increase in individual donor giving as a share of total revenue, signaling that at least some of the volatility of the past year was temporarily mitigated by increased donor support. 

Local outlets and those that cover general news and events are increasingly transforming the profile of INN membership. Local outlets, once a minority of the network, now make up 54% of membership and were the main coverage area focus of all of the nine startup members that began publishing in 2025. A majority of INN members (54%) now cover a broad range of topics; 48% prioritize current news and events, a shift from the early days of nonprofit news that focused more on investigative reporting. 

On the audience side, the median web traffic and newsletter subscribers continued to tick upward. A majority of the INN network either increased or maintained their web traffic and newsletter subscriber lists, though the data shows that growth largely concentrated among particular segments of newsrooms rather than a field-wide trend. In 2025, the smallest outlets (with revenue under $2M) and the largest outlets ($5M+ revenue) saw gains in unique monthly visitors, while outlets with revenues between $2M-$5M saw losses. And while the majority of INN member outlets saw growth in newsletter audiences, the losses here were concentrated among the largest outlets (those with $5M+ in revenue).

In addition to field-wide benchmarks, the INN Index survey also examines topics of particular relevance to the field at that moment. In 2025, those topics included the adoption of artificial intelligence in nonprofit newsrooms and the effects of the current political climate on nonprofit news. 

AI-based tools are now in use at 81% of nonprofit news organizations, a sharp rise  from 63% in 2024 and 34% in 2023, when we first asked this question. Use cases are concentrated in editorial support and operations rather than in writing or editing stories themselves. On the political climate, more than three-quarters of publishers reported experiencing negative impacts in 2025, citing shrinking charitable revenue and a rise in misinformation aimed at their markets as top concerns.

This Index report also includes a dedicated highlight section on INN’s cohort of public media member newsrooms, a segment of the membership that was hit directly when the Corporation for Public Broadcasting shut down due to federal budget cuts. While the crisis led to a surge in individual fundraising for many of our public media members, it appears to have also led to pullbacks in corporate sponsorships.

The 2026 Index points to an increasingly local field that is, as a whole, continuing to grow (albeit at a slower pace). But headwinds on funding and audience fronts persist at the individual newsroom level. There are positive glimmers in the growing share of INN members that report drawing on 4+ revenue streams (now at 49%) and in the small increases we’re seeing in expenses related to revenue generation, which we’re optimistic about, point to acknowledgement of capacity-building as a budget priority. But these areas of strength will require continued support and attention as newsrooms navigate an increasingly challenging landscape.

About the Index

The INN Index is the most comprehensive dataset on nonprofit news in North America.

The Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) has conducted its annual Index survey of INN member news organizations since 2018. Those organizations act as a research consortium by sharing their business and editorial statistics to help each other benchmark their own development. This practice helps INN evaluate and better understand new media business models and operational needs to develop programming that supports newsrooms as they form and grow.

Since 2024, INN has leveraged Index data to produce actionable benchmarking data for member news outlets via INN’s Pods program. The Pods program tailors benchmarks to distinct types of nonprofit news organizations — from small hyperlocal community outlets to larger investigative powerhouses and creates opportunities for members to connect with peers facing similar challenges and opportunities.

As the nonprofit news field rapidly evolves, the INN Index serves as a vital resource for understanding what drives this growth — how it’s funded, who it serves and where it’s headed. By tracking and analyzing these trends, INN provides funders, researchers and newsroom leaders with insights that not only strengthen the work of member organizations but also inform strategies to expand access to high-quality information for the public.

Please contact INN’s communications team with any questions or press inquiries.

Index Credits

• Primary authors: Jesse Holcomb, Michele McLellan and Ha Ta¹
• Copy editor: Marquita Brown
• Editors: Lisa Artuso, Ha Ta 
• Data collection: Jesse Holcomb, Michele McLellan, Glynnis Melnicove, Melody Miller, McKenna Wilkinson, Ha Ta, and Ian Tjoelker
• Data visualization: Ha Ta

THANK YOU TO OUR FUNDERS

INN’s Index is made possible thanks to  John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, INN’s individual donors,  and general support funders, including Arthur Vining Davis Foundation, DAF Giving360 made possible by the Present Progressive Fund, Democracy Fund, Ford Foundation, Howe Foundation, Henry Luce Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, and Spear Charitable Trust.

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Network Composition

By Michele McLellan

Growth in the number of new nonprofit news organizations within INN membership has slowed considerably amid funding cuts and growing uncertainty in a polarized political environment.

Only nine new organizations began publishing in 2025 compared to a growth spurt in 2019-2020 when about 20 outlets launched each year. 

Overall, startups, which we define as organizations that began publishing within the prior three years, made up 15% of INN’s membership in 2025, down from a peak of 27% of members in 2020.  

The median age of all outlets increased, from seven years in 2024 to nine years in 2025, reflecting a field that remains relatively young.

New growth in INN membership continues to skew local. All nine outlets that became members and began publishing in 2025 covered local beats, consistent with recent years: 10 of 12 outlets in 2024 and 11 of 15 in 2023 were local. That trend holds across early-stage members: Of the 62 outlets in their first three years of operation, 77% are local.

In 2017, only 23% of member organizations identified as local. Today, local organizations make up about 54% of INN membership. Local organizations have made up more than half of 1NN members each year since 2024. 

The slowdown in new outlet growth was also evident among organizations whose primary mission is serving communities of color².

Of 62 INN members that are startups, only four (6%) primarily focused on communities of color, compared to 19% of all outlets across the age spectrum. At the same time, 31% of start ups said covering communities of color was a core priority compared to 36% among all outlets.

The geographic scope often correlates to the mission and coverage priorities of member outlets.

Local outlets are more likely to focus on news and events, covering a broad range of topics — from the police blotter to the city council or school board meeting to a community picnic. In 2025, local news organizations accounted for three-quarters (76%) of outlets that cover a broad range of topics and two-thirds (67%) of those covering current news and events.

As local outlets have increased as a share of  INN membership, the percentage of outlets that cover news and events has more than doubled to 48% in 2025 from 19% in 2017. The share of outlets covering a broad range of topics (as opposed to single-topic outlets) also increased: from 39% in 2018 to 54% in 2025. The percentage of outlets that cover a single topic has dropped by nearly half, from 21% in 2018 to 11% in 2025.

The shift reflects the changing composition of INN membership over time: the number of single-topic outlets has remained relatively stable in absolute terms, but as general-topic outlets have grown, single-topic outlets now make up a smaller share of a larger field.

Unlike local outlets, news organizations with a state, regional, national or global scope of coverage are more likely to specialize in investigative or explanatory reporting, and to cover a single topic such as health or environment or a narrow range of related topics such as policy issues.

INN members published a median of 25 stories per month in 2025, up from 20 in 2024. In total, that output adds up to more than 21,000 stories published across the membership each month. Rather than reflecting a fieldwide increase, this change is largely attributable to increases by a few members that either substantially upped their production or participated in the survey for the first time.

The shift reflects the changing composition of INN membership over time: the number of single-topic outlets has remained relatively stable in absolute terms, but as general-topic outlets have grown, single-topic outlets now make up a smaller share of a larger field.

Outlets that prioritize news and events reported a median of 42 stories a month. Investigative and explanatory-focused organizations published far fewer: 12 and 15 stories a month, respectively. 

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Staff & Capacity

By Michele McLellan

The 412 nonprofit news organizations in the Index reported 4,700 full-time equivalent (FTE) staff in 2025, up from 4,300 FTEs in 2024. Because INN’s membership also grew over this period, this increase reflects a larger pool of outlets rather than an increase in staffing per outlet, which held steady. Using staffing data from participating outlets combined with estimates for those that did not respond to the survey, INN projects total employment across its full membership at 5,000 FTE in 2025³, up from an estimated 4,600 FTE in 2024.

Median staff size was five FTEs, with local outlets reporting a median of four and national outlets reporting 11.5. 

Workforce diversity remained well above industry levels, with 35% of staffers identifying as people of color — a share that is distributed unevenly across the field.

In 2025, staffing levels remained the same, with lean teams that vary in size based on geographic coverage and age of the organization

As INN membership grew in 2025, so did total staffing — the outlets participating in the Index survey reported 4,700 FTEs, up from 4,300 in 2024. This increase, however, largely reflects growth in the number of outlets rather than an expansion of staff at existing ones. 

In 2025, 3,200 FTEs (69%) were devoted to editorial work, and 1,400 (31%) handled other tasks such as revenue generation, technology and general administration. 

An organization’s staff size correlates to the geographic scope of its news coverage, with local organizations having the smallest staffs (median 4 FTEs) and national organizations having staffs nearly three times as large (median 11.5 FTEs). For example, Madison365, based in Wisconsin, reported 4.5 FTEs, which is typical for a local organization. Next City, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has 11.5 FTEs, a typical number for a national organization.

Across the board, nonprofit news organizations are devoting two-thirds or more of their staff to editorial responsibilities. The remaining staff work in other areas such as general administration, fundraising or technology. 

Volunteers provide meaningful support, especially for local outlets and for editorial duties.

Volunteers continue to play a significant ongoing role at nearly 4 in 10 nonprofit news organizations, increasing from 36% in 2023 to 40% in 2025. Overall, more than half of volunteers (52%) assist with editorial duties. Other roles include executive management (10%), revenue generation (10%) and audience development (10%).

Volunteer contributions are most pronounced at the local level. Local organizations are twice as likely as their counterparts to rely on volunteers (53% of local outlets vs. 25% for the rest of the field).

A few organizations work with dozens of volunteers. For example, Applegate Valley Community Newspaper in southern Oregon reports having 160 volunteer editorial contributors. 

Most often, outlets report fewer volunteers. For example, Root River Current in southeast Minnesota reported two volunteers in executive roles. The eight volunteers at the Ottawa News Network in West Michigan work mostly in fundraising. 

Nonprofit newsrooms remain more diverse than the field as a whole, but outlets focused on communities of color have a much higher proportion of representation 

Across the network, INN members reported that 35% of all staff in 2025 were people of color, while 58% were white and the race of another 6% was not specified. By comparison, a 2022 Pew Research Center survey of 12,000 U.S.-based journalists found that 76% were white, while 17% were Asian, Black or Hispanic, and the rest were not specified.

National/global and local organizations had higher percentages of employees of color: 38% and 37%, respectively. Percentages for state/regional organizations were lower at 30%.

While the overall numbers present a favorable picture for racial and ethnic diversity, this diversity is not evenly distributed across all organizations in our survey. Newsrooms that focus primarily on communities of color tend to have a much higher proportion of staffers of color than organizations without that focus.

Among organizations that say their primary focus is communities of color, a median of 75% of staff are people of color, compared to 11% of staffers at organizations that do not prioritize these communities. More than one-fourth (28%) of all organizations have no people of color on staff.

We saw a similar pattern in previous surveys of the top executives of INN member organizations. In 2024, people of color made up 27% of top three executives across INN membership, with that representation concentrated largely in organizations that primarily serve communities of color. About one-fifth of all organizations employed 53% of all executives of color.

Women continue to lead in gender representation on nonprofit news staffs. In 2025, 56% of staff members were women, similar to 54% in 2022, the last time INN members reported the gender of all staff.  About 46% of journalists were women, according to the 2022 Pew study. 

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Audience & Distribution

By Ha Ta

Audience Analytics

Web Traffic as Measured by Average Monthly Uniques

Web traffic patterns among INN members in 2025 varied by revenue size and coverage area. Unique monthly visitors for the typical INN member (the median) increased to 36,800 in 2025 from 30,000 in 2024. However, not all members are experiencing that growth the same way. Average unique monthly visitors fell by 6%, to 175,000 from 186,000, with loss concentrated among a few outlets with revenues between $2M and $5M, while smaller and larger outlets saw gains.

Web traffic patterns among nonprofit news outlets are consistent with those of the broader media landscape. Press Gazette, a U.K.-based trade journal for journalists and editors, reported that as of March, only 24% of the top U.S. news websites (12 out of 50) saw year-over-year traffic growth from March 2025. In that timeframe, 29 of the 50 top U.S. news websites saw double-digit traffic declines. These findings come from traffic data generated by Similarweb, a web analytics platform that tracks and estimates online traffic across websites and apps.

Web traffic trends are already being influenced by search engine and AI integration and continued declining referrals from social media. According to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism Digital News Report for 2025, publishers anticipate a drop of almost half (-43%) over the next three years based on these two factors. Several studies indicate click-through rates to news sites have already declined as search results are replaced by AI summaries in Google. 

To better understand the divergence between fieldwide medians (up) and averages (down) in web traffic trends, we looked at averages of subgroups from a cohort of 345 nonprofit news organizations that provided web visitor data for 2024 and 2025.

The divergence seems to be driven by web traffic losses among outlets with revenues between $2M and $5M, potentially squeezed between the loyalty that sustains smaller outlets and the brand recognition and SEO dominance that drives traffic to the largest ones. This group, which makes up 13% of INN membership, averaged a loss of over 41,000 unique monthly visitors. Smaller outlets (with revenue under $2M and making up 78% of membership) gained an average of 9,500 visitors. The largest outlets in membership (over $5M in revenue) saw greater gains, averaging 40,800 new visitors. 

A similar pattern appears when looking at outlets by their geographic scope of coverage, national/global outlets averaged a loss of about 37,300 unique monthly visitors. Local and state/regional outlets fared considerably better, posting average gains of roughly 14,600 and 25,500, respectively. 

Looking at how outlets are faring individually, web traffic growth is the more common experience. Three quarters of outlets either held steady or grew their audiences in 2025, while only about a quarter saw declines. This is consistent with the picture above: The decline in the average reflects struggles concentrated in a small segment of membership rather than a broad retreat across the field.Specifically, nearly 6 in 10 (57%) of the 345 nonprofit news organizations that provided web visitor data for 2024 and 2025 saw web traffic increase while about 1 in 5 (18%) remained flat. Nearly a quarter (24%) saw web traffic decline⁴.

Newsletter Subscribers

In 2025, nonprofit news organizations’ median number of newsletter subscribers rose to 6,500 from 6,000 the previous year. Looking at averages, newsletter subscribers fell from 24,200 in 2024 to 23,000 in 2025. The average decline is roughly in line with 2023 levels. 

To better understand the divergence between fieldwide median (up) and averages (down), we looked at subgroup data from a cohort of 338 nonprofit news organizations that provided newsletter subscribers data for 2024 and 2025.

Larger outlets make up only 8% of INN membership, but their newsletter subscriber losses seem to drive the divergence. Larger nonprofit news organizations, with more than $5M in revenue, lost an average of about 2,800 newsletter subscribers per outlet. 

Medium-sized outlets, with $2M to $5M in revenue, gained an average of 1,500 subscribers. Those outlets account for 14% of membership. 

Smaller outlets, with less than $2M in revenue, gained an average of about 730 subscribers. 

Looking across geographic scope of coverage, national/global is the only subgroup that saw a decline in newsletter audience while both local and state/regional outlets saw growth. National/global outlets make up half of all outlets with over $5M in revenue. 

On average, national/global outlets saw a loss of about 900 subscribers per outlet. Meanwhile, local outlets saw an average gain of 950 subscribers and state/regional outlets gained about 1,000 subscribers per outlet.

This suggests that small and mid-sized outlets are growing their subscriber lists while larger national outlets face greater challenges in maintaining theirs.

Newsletter subscribers proved more resilient than web traffic. More than half (51%) of the 338 that provided newsletter data for 2024 and 2025 increased the number of email newsletter subscribers while 16% experienced a drop. Outlets were also more likely to sustain their newsletter list size. About one-third held steady with newsletter lists compared to one-fifth for web traffic. 

Distribution Trends

How nonprofit news outlets distribute their content has changed substantially over the past decade. In 2017, only 1 in 3 outlets (33%) relied primarily on their own channels, while third-party platforms and mixed approaches each accounted for roughly a third of the field. Today, nearly 3 in 4 outlets (74%) distribute primarily through their own channels — a figure that has remained stable over the past three years.

This stability follows a substantial and steady rise in third-party distribution since 2017. The most rapid period of change occurred between 2018 and 2020, when direct distribution rose to 72% from 48%, likely reflecting a broader industry reckoning with the risks of platform dependency.

Between 2017 and 2025, the share of outlets using a mixed approach declined from 34% to 12%, indicating fewer outlets are splitting their distribution strategy across channels, or outlets that once straddled both strategies have largely committed to direct distribution as their primary model.

Local outlets and those covering general news continue to prioritize direct publishing. Single-topic and investigative outlets, and those covering nonlocal markets, take advantage of third-party distribution by enabling and encouraging other outlets to republish their stories to reach a wider audience.

We observe that an outlet’s coverage priority and geographic scope often influence the extent to which they rely on direct or third-party distribution.

• General-topic outlets and those covering news and events tend to rely more heavily on direct channels — such as their own websites, email newsletters and podcasts — to distribute their work. Single-topic and investigative outlets, by contrast, are more likely to distribute via third-party partners. This partly reflects the nature of the journalism they produce: Longer-form, specialized journalism is less conducive to the publishing frequency needed to drive consistent direct traffic, making republication a practical strategy for reaching wider audiences. The data reflects this pattern: 85% of general-topic outlets distribute primarily through their own channels, compared to 54% of single-topic outlets. Similarly, 87% of outlets covering news and events rely primarily on direct distribution, compared to 51% of investigative outlets.
  
• Local outlets continue to prioritize direct publishing. In 2025, most local outlets (89%) focused on reaching audiences through their own direct platforms, mostly online. Meanwhile, state/regional and national/global outlets are less likely to do so (58% and 56%, respectively) and are more likely than local outlets to distribute their content via redistribution partners.

Third Party Republication

Investigative and single-topic outlets have a higher number of republication partnerships compared to general news publications

The median number of republication partners among INN members in 2025 is eight. By coverage priority, investigative outlets reported a higher median of 19 partners compared to five among outlets covering daily news. By editorial focus, single-topic outlets reported a median of 21 partners compared to 5 among outlets covering a broad range of topics.

Larger outlets publishing at the national level account for the majority of third-party distribution partnerships 

In 2025, the typical INN member had a median of eight republication partners, though the average was much higher at 118, reflecting a small number of members with very large partner networks. 

Larger outlets with over $2 million in revenue reported having the majority of republication partners among INN members. They account for 63% of all reported republication partners despite making up only a fifth of INN membership. Nearly half (46%) of them have a national or global coverage scope.

As reported in our 2024 audience deep-dive research, larger, more prominent national outlets have greater visibility and capacity to build distribution networks. For local newsrooms, third-party republication simply offers fewer strategic advantages as their value to readers is rooted in geographic relevance, making wider syndication less of a priority. 

Redistributing stories through third-party partners is a key way larger state, national and global nonprofit outlets expand their reach. Their specialized, often investigative content travels well across geographies, and these outlets could be motivated to grow their audiences through partners, which can raise their profile or demonstrate impact to funders. Local outlets, by contrast, face structural limitations: Place-specific content holds less appeal for publishers with a broader scope, and the few other publications operating in their market may be direct competitors for audience and advertising revenue. 

National outlets account for 73% of members’ republication partners despite making up only 16% of the network. In contrast, local outlets comprise more than half of the membership and account for just 7% of republication partners. 

About a dozen national powerhouses reported 1,000 or more partners.

The Hechinger Report, a single-topic outlet covering education news, is one of those handful of INN members with over 1,000 redistribution partners. That reach was by design, Director of Audience Nichole Dobo said. 

“When The Hechinger Report was founded, we always planned to syndicate our work with partner publications,” Dobo said. “Our editors find at least one partner for every major story we produce.”  

Over time, a dedicated audience team has layered on broader syndication efforts and used automated tools to reduce the friction of sharing work widely. 

“We have a variety of methods,” Dobo said, “but one that has been particularly useful because it is seamless is with RSS feeds to serve our stories directly to partners.” 

Hechinger Report stories include a republication button partners can use to get content, Dobo said. 

The Hechinger Report has also allowed some partners to further distribute stories through their own networks after publication, multiplying reach beyond what direct partnerships alone could achieve.

Tracking where stories land is an involved process made easier by requiring standard language and a link back to the original story, allowing the team to search for republications that might otherwise go unnoticed.

The Hechinger Report website draws deeply engaged readers who seek out education coverage but, Dobo said, syndication lets them reach a different, larger group: the millions of casual readers who care about education but encounter news through general-interest publications. 

Rather than seeing republication and direct audience growth as competing priorities, The Hechinger Report treats them as complementary. Syndicated stories include links to their newsletter, turning a one-time reader on a partner site into a potential direct subscriber. In 2025, that approach translated into more than 1,000 third-party outlets republishing their work — a scale that remains rare across INN membership.

The Daily Yonder, a national outlet covering rural communities, is another INN member with more than 1,000 republication partners in 2025. Republication has been an intentional core strategy for the newsroom since its founding, according to Madeline de Figueiredo, the Yonder’s rural reporter and engagement coordinator. The reason, she explained, lies in the nature of the outlet’s coverage: While their stories are rooted in specific local communities, the issues they cover tend to resonate across rural America. A story about data centers or healthcare in rural Texas often mirrors what is happening in rural Maine or North Carolina, de Figueiredo said.

That dual local-national character shapes how the Yonder approaches republication. When a reporter files a story tied to a specific place, the newsroom does direct outreach to local partners in that region while simultaneously circulating the piece to its broader national network. The work is split between a dedicated communications and outreach manager and a set of distribution platforms — including Stacker, Apple News, MSN and Public News Service — that operate on a more automated cadence. Formal reporting partnerships with other newsrooms, such as recent collaborations with Canary Media and Reveal, have further expanded their reach by tapping into existing partner audiences.

To track where stories land, they rely on spreadsheets, platform analytics and a pixel embedded in a republication button on their site that follows articles across the web. The Yonder uses these numbers for grant applications and internal strategy, though de Figueiredo added that some of the most meaningful impact has been less quantifiable: Readers who encounter the Yonder’s work through a republication partner write in with coverage feedback, tips and story ideas. That feedback allows the newsroom to draw connections and raise issues it would not have found on its own. 

At both newsrooms, building a syndication network was a core strategy from the start — one they embedded directly into their distribution workflow. Reaching local audiences from a national perch is challenging, and partnering with outlets that already have those community ties has proven an effective way to close that gap. Syndicating widely comes with trade-offs: The wider the syndication network, the harder it becomes to know who you are engaging with and how many. But for these newsrooms, that reach has been worth it.

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Revenue & Expenses

By Jesse Holcomb

The INN member roster expanded in 2025, and with that came the largest annual revenue total on record across the board. Median revenue per outlet was flat compared to 2024 levels. At a business level, the overall revenue mix remained consistent — philanthropy is still the single largest driver of income, and outlets still devote a majority of their expenses to editorial operations. But there may be subtle evolutions underneath these topline figures. Individual donor giving has inched upward as a share of total revenue. And revenue generation has steadily crept up as a share of total expenses across all INN membership.

Financial health is steady for now

For the second year in a row, a majority of INN members (51%) generated at least $500,000 in annual revenue. Median revenue per outlet was $525,000, down slightly from $532,000 in 2024, but still one of the strongest years on record. At the same time, median expenses per organization rose to $449,000 from $434,000 in 2024, possibly a result of inflation. INN members had to stretch their dollars a little further last year. 

Overall, INN estimates that the more than 400 digital-first nonprofit newsrooms in its membership took in more than $750 million in combined revenue in 2025⁵. That makes 2025 the most successful year on record for the nonprofit news field by that particular metric. This figure does not include startups that began publishing in 2025 and did not have a full year of financial accounting on record, nor the several dozen public media outlets within INN’s membership. 

Organizations that take in larger amounts of revenue tend to differ in geographic focus and years of operation from more modest operations. For instance, INN members with annual revenue of at least $2 million in 2025 were more likely to be national or global in geographic focus, editorially oriented toward analysis and explanatory journalism, and older. INN members that generated less than $250,000, by contrast, tended to be more local, focused on general news content and younger.

Most INN members draw upon multiple revenue streams to support their operations, and this pattern hasn’t fluctuated much over the years. Still, there are signs that revenue diversity within the field is increasing: Between 2022 and 2025, the share of INN members drawing on four or more distinct revenue streams increased from 38% to 49%. Outlets with at least four revenue streams are disproportionately local and statewide, focus on general news topics, and are much less likely to prioritize serving communities of color as a mission. By contrast, outlets that rely on a single revenue stream are more likely to be nationally or globally focused,  emphasize explanatory content, and heavily rely on foundation funding. And more than half of outlets reliant on a single revenue stream say that serving communities of color is their primary focus. 

Foundation grants remain the single largest revenue stream INN members draw from, at 48% of total intake across the group. Individual giving, including small and major donors, accounts for another one-third (33%). Earned revenue, — a category that includes sponsorships, advertising, events revenue and more — amounts to 17%. Finally, other charitable revenue — a category containing miscellaneous sources that don’t fit elsewhere, including grants from nonprofits, universities, businesses or government — accounts for 2%.

In a sector dominated by philanthropy, signs of a subtle shift? 

One of the most consistent findings over the last eight years of surveying INN members is that foundation funding accounts for about half of all fieldwide intake. Last year was no different, with foundation funding accounting for 48% of total INN member revenue. The median INN member brought in about $200,000 in foundation revenue in 2025.

Some outlets rely on major philanthropic investment much more than others. 

Individual giving has inched slightly upward in recent years, from 29% in 2023 to 33% in 2025. Individual giving derives from small, mid-level and major donors. Across INN membership, about two-thirds of individual giving (64%) comes from major donors. While the typical size of a major donor gift is sizable, INN members tend to secure a small number of these donors, a median of five per outlet in 2025. By contrast, members had secured a median of 12 mid-range donors and 317 small donors per outlet in 2025. At an average of $32,000 in 2025, a single major donor gift is roughly 20 times the size of a mid-level donation ($1,600) and nearly 300 times the size of a small donation ($110). Both small and mid-level donations have grown modestly in average size over the past few years. Small donations rose from $96 in 2022 to $110 in 2025, and mid-level donations grew from $1,300 to about $1,600 in the same period. 

Other charitable revenue remains marginal, but worth following

The median outlet took in around $25,000 in other charitable revenue in 2025. This includes a mix of corporate donations and grants, funds from other nonprofit support groups for services rendered, and some state-level tax credits. At 2% of total INN membership revenue, this still amounts to a rounding error, but is worth noting as nonprofit news outlets continue to experiment with business sustainability solutions.

Earned revenue is stable, with signs of advertising headwinds

Earned revenue is a broad category that encompasses all noncharitable sources of income. Across INN membership, it accounted for 17% of all revenue in 2025. As far back as 2019, this figure sat at 11%, illustrating how the membership base has evolved to include more local outlets and even community newspapers, which historically tend to rely more on advertising and sponsorships.

These two earned revenue streams, advertising and sponsorship, account for nearly half (43%) of all earned revenue across INN. This is down slightly from 47% in 2024, perhaps reflecting a broader challenging climate for advertising and sponsorship-driven media businesses today. 

Subscriptions and events are the other two significant contributors to the earned revenue portfolio. Subscription revenue accounts for 21% of earned revenue in 2025, up from 19% in 2024. This source, which accounts for just 4% of total revenue across all members, is likely concentrated in the small number of newspapers that have converted to nonprofit status in recent years. 

Events revenue now accounts for 10% of all earned revenue, up from 8% since last year. Other income that didn’t fit any other category accounted for 23% of all earned revenue; members frequently cited investment yields and merchandise sales as examples.

On the expenses side of the ledger, a slight shift toward capacity-building 

Aside from revenue, operating expenses are another important part of the financial picture for nonprofit journalism. In 2025, a majority of all operating expenses across all INN membership (62%) went to editorial operations, including reporting and editing. The rest went to administrative, revenue generation and technology-related work. 

An organization that devotes resources to revenue generation (fundraising, donor development) can build capacity for future business growth. Resources devoted to revenue generation have increased incrementally over recent years among INN members. In 2019, just 10% of membership-wide operating expenses went to revenue generation. By 2025, the share was 16%, the highest on record, which shows a modest and incremental shift.

High-investment outlets, which devote a substantial portion of their expenses to revenue generation – defined here as at least 25% of their budget – tend to be older and well-established. Nearly half (46%) of this group are older than 15 years. Only 23% of the low-investment group – defined here as outlets devoting less than 25% of their budget to revenue generation – have been around as long. The high-investment group is slightly more likely to contain high-earning outlets overall: 41% of these high-investors generate at least $1M a year, whereas 33% of low investors bring in that much annually. Otherwise, these outlets look like their peers in most ways.

INN members were also asked, for the second year in a row, how much of their budget is devoted to marketing for audience growth. Each of the past two years, that number was a median of 1%, suggesting room for growth.

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Timely Topics

By Michele McLellan

Each year, INN’s Index survey examines topics of particular relevance to the field at that moment. In 2025, those topics were the adoption of artificial intelligence in nonprofit newsrooms and the effects of the current political climate on nonprofit news. 

Artificial intelligence use is widespread

AI use among INN members has grown rapidly, rising from 34% of outlets in 2023 to 81% in 2025.

Publishers use AI for a variety of fundraising and editorial support activities, most commonly for summarizing or transcribing meetings (60%) and data analysis (36%). Reported use of AI is rare for editorial tasks such as writing (3%) or editing (12%) stories.

Fundraising: Some organizations use AI as a fundraising tool. About one-fifth of outlets (22%) use AI to personalize emails to funders or to draft grant applications (18%). One-tenth (11%) use AI to identify potential funders.

Outreach: 1 in 4 organizations (26%) say they use AI to draft social media copy or personalize emails to members of their audiences. 

Editorial: It’s less common among nonprofit publications to report using AI for editorial tasks typically done by journalists. That’s the case amid controversy about accuracy, plagiarism and threats to the jobs of working journalists. One recent study by the Center for News, Technology & Innovation detailed the concerns.   

Among INN members, editorial uses of AI include editing stories (12%), identifying sources or story ideas (11%), drafting interview questions (9%), tailoring content for newsletters (8%) or other platforms (5%), and drafting stories or editorial content (3%).

Nonprofit news outlets also use AI to translate stories or other copy (14%). Some publishers reported using AI for tasks including web development, editing images, recruiting and marketing.

Only 13% of outlets said they use AI to scrape data from websites. Conversely, 19% block scraping of their own websites. Many publishers, including news organizations, have begun using tech tools to block scraping by AI because of concerns about copyright violations and plagiarism.

Organizations with more staff are more likely to be using AI: 90% of organizations with five or more full-time equivalent (FTE) employees compared to 71% of outlets with fewer than five FTEs. AI usage is fairly consistent across market size, geographic scope, and coverage priorities. 

Impacts from the 2025 political climate were felt across the network

Nonprofit news organizations are strictly nonpartisan. But they have not proven immune to negative impacts of today’s divisive political climate, contending with decreases in charitable funding and more misinformation in their communities.

Three-quarters (76%) of nonprofit news publishers in our survey said their organizations have experienced negative effects in the current political climate. They most frequently cited reductions in charitable revenue (36%) and growth in misinformation targeting their markets (35%).

Charitable giving from individuals has been declining across the U.S. as residents face economic uncertainty, new tax laws and a shift toward donating more to political candidates and causes. Meanwhile, social media platforms such as Facebook and X have loosened controls, allowing misinformation by political figures and other actors to occupy a prominent place in political discourse.

Other harms reported by INN members include declining audience trust and engagement (18%), online harassment of staff (17%) and threats to staff safety (16%). 

National and global outlets were more likely to report negative effects. Organizations that focus on a narrow range of topics, typically covering government or policy issues, were also slightly more likely to experience problems. These factors suggest, as one might expect, that political coverage is a trigger point for heated responses.

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Public Media

By Ha Ta

In 2025, amid reports of negative impacts from the political climate, several INN public media outlets posted record individual fundraising results in 2025, with some citing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) funding rescission as a catalyst for stronger donor engagement. INN’s NewsMatch campaign, supported by the MacArthur Foundation, provided additional momentum; outlets that participated in both 2024 and 2025 saw their total donor counts grow year over year.

This resilience came on the heels of an unprecedented year for public media funding. In July 2025, Congress rescinded $1.1 billion in federal funding from the CPB, ending federal support for NPR, PBS and member stations, followed by the agency’s closure in September. This year’s Index includes updated analysis of this small but critical subset of INN’s membership, building on our first dedicated public media analysis published last year.

The INN Network includes 35 public media outlets in 2025, accounting for approximately 7% of INN members. That year, 22 organizations participated in the Index. However, because many public media outlets cannot provide revenue and expense data specific to their news operations, they are excluded from the main Index analyses.

Most of these 22 public media member outlets are radio or digital organizations, and they represent a small portion of the estimated 1,500 locally owned and operated media stations. A majority of INN public media members (55% or 12 outlets) are local. They tend to serve much larger audiences than a typical INN digital newsroom, with 64% or 14 outlets indicating that they target populations of 1 million to 10 million or more.

Half of these public broadcasters (11 outlets) list serving communities of color as one of their several core coverage priorities. None of the 22 indicated that they focus primarily on serving communities of color.

People of color make up 35% of the staff employed by the 22 public media outlets, while women make up 54% of staff. This group produces a monthly median of 126 stories.

Audience and Distribution

INN’s public media broadcasters report a median of about 167,000 average monthly unique visitors, up 14% from 147,109 the previous year. Newsletter subscribers grew substantially, rising 75% from 10,130 to 17,700. Podcast downloads, however, declined from 15,574 to 9,745 during the same period. 

Public media broadcasters also emphasize building direct audience relationships: The median outlet derives 95% of its reach from its own channels. 

Nonpublic media INN members are also forming meaningful republication relationships with public media broadcasters in general: 57% of members indicated that a public media outlet has republished their work in 2025. 

Of the 22 public media outlets surveyed, 91% reported using AI in some aspect of their work, up from 81% in 2024; only two reported no AI usage. This is higher than the rest of INN’s membership, of which 81% reported AI usage. Transcribing or summarizing interviews is the most commonly cited use, followed by data analysis and drafting or personalizing emails to audience members or funders.

Impacts of Federal Funding Cuts on Public Media

The rollback of federal support for public media and declining institutional trust created compounding challenges for many public media outlets — and the data reflects it. All 22 respondents indicated their organization experienced negative impacts resulting from the 2025 political climate, and all reported government and state funding reductions. 

The second most frequently cited impact was growth of misinformation targeting their markets, which more than 1 in 3 respondents (8 out of 22) reported. Staff-related threats were another notable concern, with some respondents citing online harassment of and threats to staff. 

Fewer outlets reported declining audience trust or engagement, and one flagged regulatory investigations targeting critical coverage. Small, independent local stations raised concerns about their audiences conflating them with national public media outlets — a distinction that became critical when opposition to national public media translated into reduced community support or endorsement of CPB cuts.

Revenue pressures were widespread, with both charitable and non-charitable revenue reductions appearing frequently, and often together. 

In response to these challenges, many respondents turned to community fundraising to cover funding loss while using the crisis itself as a mobilizing message.

Many ramped up their fundraising efforts, launching emergency fundraising campaigns, reframing the case for support around funding loss and the disproportionate impact of CPB cuts on small, local stations. Alongside fundraising, outlets also doubled down on efforts to maintain their quality journalism, making commitments to unbiased, community-focused reporting, increasing transparency with their listeners/readers about their reporting processes, paying scrupulous attention to accuracy and using editors’ notes and targeted communications to address challenges to their coverage.

Some pursued longer-term revenue strategies including major donor campaigns, planned giving, and capital campaigns. Some have had to restructure budgets and expenses to adapt to reduced government funding, with some undertaking formal strategic assessments to chart a path toward long-term sustainability. Not all challenges were as easily addressed: A number of outlets noted difficulty replacing underwriting revenue, citing corporate sponsors pulling back to avoid association with public broadcasting controversy.

When asked to rank their top fundraising priorities, 17 out of 22 public media outlets responded. Six respondents cited major donations as their top priority. Five outlets ranked small donations as their top priority, and three gave mid-level donations their top ranking. This pattern holds when using a weighted scheme, with the first priority given three points, two points for the second and one point for the third. Major donations ranked first (29), followed by mid-level (23) and small donations (22). Foundation revenue appeared across rankings.

Individual donor fundraising successes amid federal funding rescission

Individual fundraising emerged as a bright spot in 2025, with many outlets reporting record results despite — and in many cases because of — the federal funding crisis. The CPB rescission galvanized donor communities across the membership: Outlets that had invested in fundraising infrastructure and donor communications were well-positioned to convert the moment into meaningful revenue, with some reporting their best individual fundraising years ever and single-month donation records. While individual giving remains a long-term structural challenge, 2025 demonstrated that readiness and clear donor messaging can turn a funding crisis into an opportunity.  

Many public media outlets within INN membership delivered record-breaking individual fundraising results in 2025. The Pittsburgh Community Broadcasting Corporation called it their best year of individual fundraising ever, crediting a strong community response after losing federal funding in July. That loss triggered momentum that carried through fall and into December, becoming their single best fundraising month on record. 

“The message that we are now 100% community funded has worked exceptionally well with our fundraising efforts,” they noted. 

Similarly, WFAE, a public radio station in Charlotte, North Carolina, and CoastAlaska found success by linking donor outreach directly to the CPB funding retraction.

PBS News pointed to tactical improvements, such as making monthly giving the default on donation forms, adding EFT or digital payment options, and integrating QR codes into YouTube videos to drive stronger and more sustainable individual giving. 

For KOSU, an Oklahoma-based public radio network, preparation yielded positive results: “We had positioned our organization to take advantage of individual giving in the event that funding was rescinded,” they explained, adding that clear, multi-channel donor communication made the difference when the moment arrived.

In 2025, INN organized a dedicated public media partner fund in its annual NewsMatch campaign, a national matching program that incentivizes individual giving to nonprofit news organizations. The fund,  supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, was designed to generate support for NPR and PBS affiliates in the wake of the CPB funding rescission. Community members responded strongly, and public media outlets that participated in NewsMatch in both years saw their total donor counts grow between 2024 and 2025. A total of 23 of INN’s 35 public media member outlets received support through the fund.

A small portion of the broader public media field is represented in the Index, but their participation highlights the vital role public broadcasters play in the nonprofit news ecosystem. 

INN PUBLIC MEDIA MEMBERS (AS OF MAY 2026)

Abridged by PBS KVIE	PBS NewsHour
Center for Broadcast Journalism and WEQY POWER104.7FM	WESA
Connecticut Public	The World
WTIP North Shore Community Radio	WABE 90.1 FM
Delaware Public Media	WHAVWavelengths
Jacksonville Today	Radio Catskill
KOSU	Red Canary Magazine
KPBS	Science Friday
KPCW	Tulsa Flyer
KQED	WCBU 89.9 FM and WCBU.org
PBS39, WLVR 91.3	WFAE
KHNS News	WGLT 89.1 FM and WGLT.org
Mendo Local	WXPR Public Radio
MPR News	WHRO Public Media
Nevada Public Radio (KNPR 88.9, KCNV 89.7, Desert Companion Magazine)	WHYY News, BillyPenn at WHYY, Plan Philly
KERA	WITF
KAXE	WVIA News
Northern Kentucky Tribune

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Methods & Definitions

Our research team’s methods and defined terms are explained below. Please email any questions to INN’s researcher Ha Ta at ha@inn.org.

Methods

About the survey: INN distributed the Index survey online in January 2026 to 471 INN Network newsrooms, excluding service organizations that are also INN members. Ninety-three percent, or 437 organizations, completed the survey. Survey responses reflect performance in the calendar year 2025. Previous years’ surveys were generally representative of INN Network newsrooms, with response rates ranging from 54% to 94%. Starting in 2020, INN began requiring outlets participating in NewsMatch to complete the Index survey, which raised completion rates for subsequent surveys. The survey language is provided here. The data do not scientifically represent all North American nonprofit news outlets because not all of them belong to INN, including an array of public media stations. Cautiously interpret specific year-over-year comparisons; this report draws directional trends across the nonprofit news field.

A note on the cohort used for this report: The Index tracks parent organizations rather than individual publications under the same parent. In cases where an organization produces multiple outlets, we collect data only from the parent organization. This report includes the data of 412 of the 437 news organizations that completed the survey. Three outlets were excluded because they are not primarily publishers. Chapters 1 through 5 of this report exclude data provided by 22 members from the public media sector due to systematic differences in how they report revenue and expenses. Chapter 6 presents data exclusively from those 22 outlets. 

The year-over-year revenue analysis portion in Chapter 3 excluded nine startup organizations, all younger than one year, as they did not have annual data to compare. Another six organizations did not provide revenue data. Thus, the revenue section of the report is based on the information provided by 397 outlets. 

The year-over-year audience analysis portion in Chapter 5 reflects all outlets that reported complete audience data — either web visitors or newsletter subscribers — for 2024 and 2025. Sample sizes vary slightly by metric, depending on data availability in each year: 

• 345 outlets provided complete web visitor data for both years.
• 338 outlets provided complete newsletter subscriber data for both years.

A note on medians vs. averages vs. ranges: The Index authors believe median calculations are more representative due to several significant outliers that skew averages. However, we can’t calculate the median for some survey questions, like the average donation in dollars, because we do not have a list of relevant data points. In these cases, we default to averages. We supply a range of cases where knowing the upper and lower limits of a data point helps with understanding the field. 

A note on the representativeness of the INN Index sample:

The Index began in 2017 as a tool to capture the state of INN’s membership. As the network has grown, however, the Index has become increasingly representative of the broader nonprofit news field, reflecting the expanding diversity of INN’s membership and consistently higher survey response rates. 

To assess how well the Index sample represents that broader field, we identified 115 nonprofit news outlets operating outside the INN Network (excluding public media) and compared their characteristics with those of the 376 outlets included in the 2024 Index. Together, these account for roughly 77% of the known nonprofit news sector.

To compile this comparison dataset, we drew on established industry resources including The LION Publishers’ Project Oasis database and INN’s own membership data, supplemented by ongoing monitoring of the field and publicly available sources such as IRS Form 990 filings and outlet websites.

When we compare non-member outlets with Index respondents across key characteristics, the distributions are broadly similar. Local outlets make up 56% of non-members and 51% of INN members; state and regional outlets account for 23% and 26%, respectively; and national and global outlets represent 21% and 24%. The outlet age distribution is similarly close, with startups founded between 2021 and 2023 comprising 24% of non-members and 19% of INN members. These modest differences are consistent with those found in comparable efforts, including Pew Research Center’s 2013 survey of nonprofit news outlets, which found only minor variation between respondents and the broader population on three measures. 

We are therefore confident that findings from the Index can be reasonably generalized to the wider nonprofit news field, not just INN’s own membership.

Definitions

• People of color: This is an extrapolated category that we have defined, for this report, as encompassing individuals who identify with a racial or ethnic category other than white, including multiracial.
• Core group of digital-first, independent publishers: This term refers to the digital-first outlets that are not public broadcasters. For chapters 1 through 5, the research team excluded financial data from the two dozen public broadcasting INN members due to systematic differences in how they report revenue and expenses. Chapter 6 presents data exclusively from these 27 outlets. 
• Direct audiences: Direct audiences use and engage with a news outlet’s platforms, including its website, email newsletters and social media platforms. Direct audiences are largely interpreted in this report as a news organization’s web traffic (measured by average monthly unique visitors) and its number of email newsletter subscribers. 
• Earned revenue: Earned revenue is the funds a nonprofit organization generates by providing value to businesses, including events, sponsorship, advertising and underwriting. This contrasts with funds received from philanthropic sources, such as grants and major gifts. Earned revenue is one of the three major revenue streams for nonprofit news. 
• Foundations: Foundations are nonprofit organizations that support charitable activities to serve the common good. Foundation funding is one of three major revenue streams for nonprofit news. 
• FTE: full-time equivalents, referring to both salaried employees (including staff, executives and managers) and significant contractors. We count FTE for all paid personnel rather than individual staff members. A full-time employee working 40 hours a week is one FTE; a half-time employee working 20 hours is 0.5 FTE.
• Global news: Global organizations cover broad world topics or produce news about a country or region outside of the United States. 
• Individual giving: This umbrella term encompasses financial contributions from individuals, including small-dollar (less than $1,000), mid-level ($1,000 – $5,000) and major donors (more than $5,000). Survey respondents use these shared definitions for their Index survey reporting. Individual giving is one of the three major revenue streams for nonprofit news. 
• Local news: Local news organizations cover part or all of a community, municipality or county, or a cluster of them, ranging from large metro areas to neighborhoods. 
• National news: National organizations focus on public affairs issues that affect, in this context, the United States, except for two survey respondents in Canada. 
• Regional news: Regional news outlets cover news within two or more states or parts of states making up a region, such as the Midwest. 
• State news: State news outlets primarily focus on government policy, politics or topics of public interest, such as health or the environment, in one state. 
• Third-party audiences: This term refers to audiences interacting with a news outlet’s coverage or services but on a platform not managed by the news outlet itself. We refer to the organizations managing these external platforms as “third-party publishers.” Third-party audiences largely come from other news outlets republishing or rebroadcasting content, including on social media and other digital platforms.

1. Authors are listed alphabetically by last name and contributed equally to this work. ↩︎
2. Defined as organizations where people of color comprise a majority of the audience and a majority of the organization’s funding, resources, and staff time are dedicated to stories for people of color. ↩︎
3. The 5,000 FTE figure combines direct survey responses from nonpublic media member outlets (4,621 FTE across 412 outlets), estimates for five outlets that completed the Index but did not provide staffing data (62 FTE, derived from prior-year Index responses and website audits), and estimates for 26 INN members that did not participate in the Index. ↩︎
4. In this report, we define an increase as growth of 10% or more, a decline as a decrease of 10% or more, and flat as less than 10% change in either direction. ↩︎
5. The combined revenue figure includes direct survey responses from 397 INN members budget or expense estimates submitted by three members in lieu of revenue data, and internal estimates for 29 members that either did not provide financial information in the Index or did not participate in the Index this year. Estimates for nonreporting members were derived on a case-by-case basis using prior-year Index responses, IRS Form 990 filings and other publicly available financial documentation. ↩︎