(December 13, 2024) —Local Media Foundation announced that the LMA Lab for Journalism Funding will expand in 2025 with three new statewide cohorts, thanks to new support from the Google News Initiative. This expansion will bring the lab’s proven training and fundraising impact to 50 publishers in California, Illinois, and New Mexico, enabling them to sustain their essential local journalism in part through philanthropy.
Since its launch in September 2020, the LMA Lab for Journalism Funding has trained 148 newsrooms in five national and two state cohorts on fundraising best practices. Collectively, those newsrooms have raised more than $28 million to support their journalism. In 2024, LMF, affiliated with Local Media Association, launched the first two state-centered cohorts of the Lab in Pennsylvania and Colorado with support from Knight Foundation and state partners PNA Foundation and Colorado Media Project. LMA has published two industry reports, Pathways to Philanthropy and Sustaining Philanthropy for Journalism to share the learnings of the Lab.
In 2025, in addition to these three new state cohorts, LMA will once again offer a national cohort of the Lab for Journalism Funding with new funding support.
“Going through the Lab for Journalism Funding has been a transformative experience for so many newsrooms, helping them better serve and sustain their civic journalism,” said Frank Mungeam, who leads the lab as LMA chief innovation officer. “We are thrilled to partner to offer this high-impact program at the state level to publishers in three more states.”
“The Google News Initiative has been a long-standing partner of the Lab for Journalism Funding,” said Tiffany Proscia, news partner manager, Google News Partnerships. “We were impressed by the success of the new state cohorts of the lab launched in 2024 and are excited to support expansion of the program to three important states. Since its launch in 2020, this program has achieved notable success. We look forward to our continued partnership with LMA and its members.”
Applications will open in mid-December for these three new state cohorts to be offered in 2025 in California, Illinois and New Mexico.
The new cohort will again be led by Mungeam and Liz White Notarangelo, LMA’s incoming co-CEO, along with a team of best-in-class Lab coaches including Joaquin Alvarado, who has been instrumental in the development of philanthropic funding at The Seattle Times and other local newsrooms; Jennifer Preston, formerly vice president of journalism at Knight Foundation; and executive coach Joanne Heyman.
Each publisher in each cohort will set a fundraising goal, receive one-on-one customized coaching, and create and pitch a journalism project to be funded through philanthropy. Applications for the cohorts open in mid-December and will be accepted through Jan. 17, 2025.
Newsrooms interested in applying can find more information and the link to apply for their state cohort below:
LMA will host an informational webinar at 1 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, Dec. 18 for news organizations interested in learning more about this opportunity. Click here to register for the webinar.
For more information, please contact Frank Mungeam at frank.mungeam@localmedia.org.