For the third year, The Imprint was chosen to participate in a national fundraising campaign starting November 1 that helps nonprofit newsrooms report on under-covered issues.
NewsMatch, a matching campaign spearheaded by the Knight Foundation and other national journalism philanthropy organizations, supports almost 200 newsrooms to grow reader support and revenue. This is the most successful grassroots campaign to date for news and comes at a critical time for journalism: over three years, NewsMatch has raised $14.8 million and brought nearly 100,000 donors to nonprofit newsrooms.
From 2006-2016 the newspaper industry saw revenue more than halved, dropping from nearly $50 billion to less than $20 billion. Along with evaporating revenue, the industry lost one-third of its workforce, sloughing off 19,000 reporters from 2000 to 2014. Many counties across the nation do not have a newspaper covering their community, creating news deserts of substantive local reporting.
The loss of local journalism that holds systems accountable seems to also have inspired readers to take charge and support newsrooms like The Imprint. Through its participation for the last two years, The Imprint has raised more than $150,000 through this campaign, which is critical to the national coverage of child welfare and youth justice.
These contributions allowed The Imprint to cover stories like the Family First Prevention Services Act and how it will play out state-by-state, diving into the closed-off foster care courtrooms across the nation and the nation’s only march to remember Native American victims of the foster care system.
The Imprint’s 2018 campaign was supported locally by the Zellerbach Family Foundation and the Ralph M. Parsons Foundation. Donors interested in providing local support for The Imprint’s reporting in California, Minnesota, Michigan, Arizona, Texas, New York or Florida can contact Senior Development Officer Thalia Henderson.
NewsMatch is supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Democracy Fund, Facebook Journalism Project, Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, Natasha and Dirk Ziff, and Present Progressive Fund at Schwab Charitable, in partnership with The Miami Foundation, the Institute for Nonprofit News and the News Revenue Hub. REI Co-op recently announced new first-time support to NewsMatch.