In the spring of 2026, nine local newsrooms set out on a journey to improve their fundraising strategies. Over the next three months, they participated in the Medill-LMA Midwest Advanced Fundraising Lab, a partnership between the Local Media Association’s Lab for Journalism Funding and the Medill Local News Initiative, with additional support from Google News Initiative.
This new playbook and case study from Local Media Association and the Medill Local News Initiative showcases the takeaways from the program and highlights the new organizations’ fundraising successes and lessons learned.
The news leaders explored advanced strategies for pursuing philanthropic support, and then put these lessons into practice through implementing capstone projects. Through peer sharing, personalized coaching and learning from industry experts, the news organizations left with measurable successes and strategies for sustainability to share with their peers and the industry at-large.
In this new playbook and case study, newsrooms will learn advanced fundraising strategies, including:
- Donor management and data tracking systems
- Small donor campaigns
- Finding and stewarding high net worth donors
- Planned giving
- Fundraising events
- Donor stewardship
The report includes case studies from the newsrooms, showcasing their measurable successes from building data systems, developing event strategies, creating donor stewardship models, scaling high-net-worth donor processes and more. This report features case studies from the following newsrooms:
- Capitol News Illinois
- City Bureau
- Injustice Watch
- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
- The Chicago Reporter
- The Lansing Journal
- The Record Community News Group
- Windy City Times
Interested in reading the full report? Click here to download it.
This program was a collaboration between the Local Media Association’s Lab for Journalism Funding and the Medill Local News Initiative. This report was co-authored by Nina Joss from LMA and Hannah Carroll from the Medill Local News Initiative, and edited by Frank Mungeam from LMA and Mackenzie Warren from the Medill Local News Initiative.
The LMA Lab for Journalism Funding teaches local newsrooms strategies and best practices for sustaining their journalism in part through philanthropy. Since 2020, the program has enabled more than 200 newsrooms to raise more than $44 million to support essential local reporting. The LMA Lab for Journalism Funding is made possible with support from Google News Initiative and Knight Foundation.
The Medill Local News Initiative is led by Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications. Medill, a leader in education since 1921, is conducting groundbreaking research and training a new generation of multimedia journalists and marketing professionals to thrive in an increasingly challenging atmosphere.