Some for-profit newsroom leaders believe reader support is a chance to keep pace with rising costs while keeping their publications available to the public

Maya Dawson is a rising senior in the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism. Dawson previously presented this study’s key findings at the 2025 Local News Researchers Workshop in North Carolina. She conducted this research as a Stamps Scholar, under the mentoring of School of Journalism assistant professor Nick Mathews.

As traditional revenue sources decline, some for-profit local newspaper organizations are turning to reader donations — long central to nonprofit models but a relatively new (and necessary) endeavor for for-profit organizations — as a “third leg” alongside subscriptions and advertising. This shift introduces new obstacles, including ethical concerns, implementation issues and messaging challenges both within the newsroom and with audiences.

In-depth interviews with 12 newsroom leaders from local and regional news organizations with  donations strategies suggest that donations are seen as a promising piece for the future of local news. 

A strategy born from necessity

Ultimately, newsroom leaders pursued donations in hopes of bringing future financial stability to their newsrooms. Sometimes, it was a last resort.

“Well, it’s easy,” one participant said. “You can see that you’re probably going to close soon, and that your readers think that the papers are fine. … They have no idea that reporters are working for nothing.” (To encourage candor, all participating leaders were granted anonymity).

News organization leaders lamented that larger nonprofit news organizations are drawing the attention of large-scale philanthropy, making it extraordinarily difficult for smaller, traditional for-profit newspaper businesses to compete for funding.

“One of the problems that newspapers like mine face is that all the big nonprofits are getting all this big money,” one publisher said. “They’re not actually sustainable, but they get all this money, and then they offer their content for free, and then that makes it like, ‘Well, why should I pay for news?’”

Soliciting donations offers a way to offset increasing costs, particularly in communities where raising subscription prices or increasing advertising prices might spark backlash. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, one newsroom launched a fundraising campaign as advertising revenue collapsed, raising nearly $70,000 from hundreds of donors.

“We hear from a lot of folks who are on fixed income,” another leader said. “They’re older. They value the newspaper. They want us to know that they support us, and they hear our message, and they want to engage, but they’re on a fixed income, and they have to pay their bills.”

One leader viewed donations as a form of shared community investment in news, describing it as a “lighthouse concept,” where a smaller group of donors supports a resource that benefits everyone, including those who cannot afford to contribute.

Planning for the future

The newsroom leaders overwhelmingly agreed that donations are becoming an essential part of financing local journalism.

“I think that philanthropy has to be a key part of keeping news alive,” one participant said, while another described donations as a future “major revenue pillar.”

Leaders often emphasized the importance of flexibility when soliciting donations, allowing them to meet the needs of their communities and stay within the capacities of their paper. Donation revenues among those interviewed varied from $1,000 to more than $1 million annually.

However, leaders acknowledged that predicting donation contributions can be difficult. To turn the boom-bust cycle of donations into something stable, many publications are working to establish recurring donations, endowments and long-term donor relationships rather than relying on one-time gifts.

“We’ve learned a lot over the years about what can be planned for, what cannot be planned for, what’s opportunistic, what’s reactive, and how to build multi-year support funding,” one leader said.

Small changes, like hosting donor appreciation events and sending handwritten thank-you notes, have helped publications increase engagement and contributions.

Most leaders reported a positive community response to their fundraising campaigns, including handwritten notes from supportive readers or donors who would drop off their contributions to the newsroom in person.

“I think it’s become more common for people to be asked for money, and so I don’t think we get a lot of pushback on the low [donation] end,” one leader said. “The criticism we get sometimes is when we list our funders, which we do in stories.”

For publications looking to avoid actual or perceived conflicts of interest, donor relationships and transparency must be handled with care.

Ethics of relationship building

All of the newsroom leaders interviewed emphasized the importance of maintaining a clear separation between fundraising and editorial decision-making. However, standards for defining and enforcing that separation varied.

“(Donors) want to feel like they’re a part of a team,” one leader said. “And so how do you do that while also maintaining all your editorial firewalls and all that stuff? I think part of that is also having a really good relationship, as the person who’s leading the philanthropy efforts, with folks in the newsroom.”

Still, maintaining editorial independence is not new, as newsrooms have historically maintained a wall between editorial practices and business strategies, something noted by one leader: “There’s already an understanding in the community that the (paper) is deeply independent, so that’s actually one thing that I don’t worry too much about in terms of communication.”

There are dramatic differences in organization strategies. Some news organizations have prohibited donors from interacting with reporters or editors altogether, while others encourage donors to meet their staff, hosting meet-and-greet events for reporters to share more about their work.

Policies around donor transparency also differ. Some outlets publicly list all donors, regardless of contribution size, while others allow anonymous donations or list donors as anonymous publicly while retaining internal records of their identities.

“One thing you have to absolutely make perfectly clear,” one leader said, “is anybody that donates to the journalism fund, they have no say over journalism.”

Even with safeguards in place, ethical tensions remain. Several newsroom leaders reported turning away donors who attempted to use their contribution to exert editorial influence over the publication. Others expressed concern that even the perception of influence could undermine trust.

“If I get a whiff of you expecting anything in terms of editorial influence, I will gladly return your donation,” one leader said, speaking about a donor they rejected.

Audience acceptance

Criticism from audiences has been relatively limited. Leaders feel that skepticism about bias or influence often reflects broader distrust of media rather than concerns specific to donations.

“There will be people who say we’re just in the tank with rich people funding our journalism,” one participant said. “But they’re going to attack us either way.”

Despite broad acceptance of donation solicitation by readers, not all newsroom leaders are convinced that donations are the right path forward. Some argue that relying on reader contributions undermines the traditional business model of journalism.

“The whole business is predicated on the fact that our product is valuable enough for people to subscribe to it,” one leader said, regarding their publication ceasing to solicit donations. “It was a bit disingenuous to go to you, hat in hand, and say, ‘Hey, we can’t prop up a viable enough business on our own. Can you fund our business?’ And then we’re gonna turn around and charge you for it?”

This tension underscores a central reality. Without broad newsroom and community support, soliciting donations may damage trust.

Marketing and messaging

Beyond ethical concerns, donation-based funding requires newsrooms to explain their value and ask directly for support.

“We’ve been trained for centuries to stay out of the story,” one leader said. “Now we have to tell our own story.”

For many, this has been one of the most difficult aspects of adopting donations. Newsroom leaders expressed discomfort with asking for money, as well as concern that appearing financially vulnerable could deter both readers and advertisers.

“It’s hard to communicate what trouble you’re in without scaring people off,” one participant said.

To navigate this tension, publications have experimented with a range of messaging strategies. These include editorials explaining the importance of local journalism, video interviews with reporters and public presentations about newsroom impact.

Cracking the donation code is about more than the right story, though. Newsroom leaders used innovative billing strategies to make donations more appealing to larger contributors. By partnering with nonprofit organizations, community foundations or press associations, for-profit newsrooms are able to offer tax deductions to donors, even if the newsroom itself remains for-profit. Some publications have faced internal opposition to this strategy.

“The journalists were the ones that were like, how is this legal?” one participant said, “So we explain funds are going to a nonprofit so that the donor can get that tax deduction, but they can give it to us if that piece of the organization is in a bubble.”

This approach, while effective, can be complex. Funds routed through nonprofit partners may come with additional restrictions, making the model better suited for larger donations than for smaller, community-based contributions.

A culture of collaboration

Journalism can be fiercely competitive. Interestingly, though, newsroom leaders felt an obligation to share their learning with papers attempting similar donation campaigns.

Participants frequently described exchanging fundraising materials, legal agreements and campaign strategies with other publications. Some worked through state press associations to distribute the materials, while others formed informal networks or regional collaboratives.

“I’ve shared our fund agreement with probably a dozen newspapers,” one leader said. “It took me months to figure out, why wouldn’t I share it?”

This collaboration further emphasizes the fact that the challenges facing local journalism are industry-wide. While publications still compete editorially, many leaders see cooperation on business strategies as essential to survival. In some cases, this collaboration has extended to the creation of formal news partnerships, allowing organizations to pool resources and experiment with new funding models together.

“If you’re all spending your resources trying to solve the same problem, how inefficient is that?” one participant said. “You’re still going to compete for the story, because that’s one of the things that motivates journalists, but if you can compete on the editorial side and collaborate on the business side, as long as you’ve got really crisp expectations and guidelines around all that, there’s no reason you can’t do so successfully.”

These partnerships included sharing a nonprofit arm between publications that were too small to operate one independently, or partnering with community foundations to serve as a nonprofit conduit for donations.

An evolving model 

Donations are not universally viable. Their success depends on alignment among a newsroom’s business model, its leadership’s beliefs and the acceptance of its community. Without that alignment, donation efforts risk eroding trust rather than strengthening sustainability.

The flexibility of this model allows newsrooms to adapt fundraising strategies to fit their precise needs and bandwidth. Because donations can fluctuate from year to year, long-term planning can be difficult. To counter this, many publications are focusing on recurring contributions, donor engagement and diversified funding strategies.

To connect with donors, newsroom leaders report focusing on self-branding. In addition to reporting the news, they must advocate for their own survival through explaining their value, and building relationships with supporters.

Ultimately, newsroom leaders at for-profit publications agreed that philanthropy alone cannot sustain local journalism, but can be used as a complement to traditional revenue streams to help ensure that local news continues to serve the public in an uncertain media landscape.

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Cite this article

Dawson, Maya (2026, July 22). Donations are becoming a lifeline for local newspapers, but not without tension. Reynolds Journalism Institute. Retrieved from: https://rjionline.org/news/donations-are-becoming-a-lifeline-for-local-newspapers-but-not-without-tension/