(December 13, 2024) —Local Media Foundation is pleased to announce that the LMA Lab for Journalism Funding will expand in 2025 with three new statewide cohorts including a cohort in Illinois, thanks to new support from the Google News Initiative. LMA will collaborate with Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism to bring the lab’s proven training and fundraising impact to 12 publishers in Illinois, 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, LMA launched the first two state-centered cohorts of the Lab in Pennsylvania and Colorado.
“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’s 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.”
Community-based, locally controlled news organizations in Illinois are invited to apply to join this cohort. Applicants must be producing original, local news for audiences within their state at least weekly; priority will be given to newsrooms with philanthropic giving programs that are less than five years old. Local news partnerships or coalitions are also encouraged to apply, particularly if they have a joint initiative that they are seeking to fund via philanthropy.
Preference will be given to media organizations that:
- Have strong local leadership with deep ties to the community.
- Are focused on high-quality local journalism.
- Have leadership-level buy-in to participate in this lab and make the time/resource commitment.
- Value staff and leadership diversity.
- Are relatively new to raising philanthropic support for local news (membership and/or grant programs of less than five years OR new staff members who could benefit from this training and cohort).
Each publisher in each cohort will set a fundraising goal in consultation with their coach that is in line with that publisher’s market size. They will also develop a list of fundraising prospects, create a pitch deck and campaign materials and seek funding for their project. Selected newsrooms will also have airfare and hotel covered to convene for a one-day fundraising summit to meet with funders and other fundraising lab participants. Case studies and a report will be published, sharing best practices and lessons learned. The lab will culminate in a Pitch Day and the top three winners will receive seed funding stipends.
Applications will be reviewed and accepted on a rolling basis until 5p PT on Monday, February 3.
For more information, please contact:Frank Mungeam at Local Media Association: frank.mungeam@localmedia.org