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Environmental Media Grantmaking: How Funders Are Tipping the Scales Toward Change

June 10, 2020

This report aims to highlight trends in environmental media grantmaking, impact studies and examples of promising media projects, and insights from funders in the space. This report focuses on U.S. funders who give in the U.S. and globally, with funding data covering 2009–2019. Some grantmakers are newer to the field of environmental media philanthropy, and other earlier funders have shifted priorities to non-environmental media work. The big picture shows that while some funders have changed focus, overall funding is going up.

Decoding Media Impact: Insights, Advice & Recommendations

January 23, 2020

This report provides an examination of the current state of the field of media impact assessment, which Media Impact Funders (MIF) has been tracking for seven years. It is meant to serve as a practical resource for funders who want to understand where to start. Informed by feedback from our network, it represents a synthesis of the past seven years of work we've done in the impact space, and includes examples of successful media impact evaluation, tools and frameworks for assessment, and the challenges of defining and measuring impact in a rapidly-shifting media landscape.Our years of research have led us to four key insights, and this report includes a deep dive into each of them, as well as companion guest essays from leaders in the field. We hope you will use this guide to inform your own practice, and to continue this critical conversation.

Journalism Grantmaking: New Funding, Models and Partnerships to Sustain and Grow the Field

September 12, 2019

Funders have a long history of supporting social issue media; since 2013, Media Impact Funders (MIF) has been tracking grantmaking in the growing fields of media and philanthropy with our media grants data map, developed in partnership with Candid. In 2016, we released a report on trends in media grantmaking, which revealed the field is growing rapidly and is far larger than previously expected.Following that research, with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, we examined the international funding picture in our 2019 report, Global Media Philanthropy: What Funders Need to Know About Data, Trends and Pressing Issues Facing the Field. Having focused on broad national and international trends and data, MIF is creating a series of smaller reports to identify trends, questions and examples of innovation around key issues of interest to our members and supporters.In spring 2019, we published Radio & Audio Grantmaking: Reaching New Audiences Through Old Platforms on audio and radio funding, and examined how both formats are being used to reach new audiences, spark civic engagement and dialogue across diverse communities, examine science, advance disability education, and much more. With continuing concern about the state of the news ecosystem among MIF members, this report focuses on journalism philanthropy in the U.S., with a special emphasis on community foundation support for local journalism. Presenting and identifying funding models and best practices for supporting local journalism was identified as one of four key learning priorities during MIF's year-long strategic planning process. In addition, engaging with community foundations that support a range of media projects was identified as a key area of concern.

Radio and Audio Grantmaking: Reaching New Audiences Through Old Platforms

May 17, 2019

Both radio and audio are being used in exciting ways to reach new audiences, spark civic engagement and dialogue across diverse communities, examine science and advance disability education, and much more. Radio, in particular, is garnering significant support from philanthropy across a range of programming themes. While perhaps considered a less dynamic media format in recent years, compared to extraordinary growth in web- and mobile-based media grantmaking, funding data tell a different story. Radio receives a significant share of philanthropic funding, particularly when compared to television and film and video.

Global Media Philanthropy: What Funders Need to Know About Data, Trends and Pressing Issues Facing the Field

March 28, 2019

With support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Media Impact Funders has been researching trends, challenges and opportunities for global media funding. The research in this report draws on a variety of sources: data from the media data map through 2015, results from a survey of leading organizations engaged in funding media-related projects around the world, analyses of existing literature and reports, and insights offered by experts across a range of media funding issues.

Funding Journalism, Finding Innovation: Success Stories and Ideas for Creative, Sustainable Partnerships

June 20, 2018

Produced by Media Impact Funders in collaboration with Harvard University's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, this case study report surfaces pioneering funding practices in journalism. It highlights five foundations and their grantees, and describes the innovative ways in which philanthropic support can revive quality journalism.

Journalism and Media Grantmaking: Five Things You Need to Know and Five Ways to Get Started

February 14, 2018

This booklet is a starter guide for foundations interested in exploring how to make impactful journalism and community-information grants. Foundations do not need to have a formal journalism program to make grants that support healthy news and information flows. Nor does a foundation need large dollar investments to get started. Even a small grant may help citizens in a given community or demographic gain access to credible information that will help them participate in civic life.

Foundation Maps for Media Funding

June 28, 2016

This report offers an overview of Foundation Maps for Media Funding, a free, interactive mapping and research tool that shows the full scope of philanthropically-funded media projects worldwide since 2009. Developed by Foundation Center and available on the Media Impact Funders' website, this new tool enables users to see, understand, and dig deep into the numbers, networks, and trends surrounding media and philanthropy.

Impact Assessment for Nonprofit News Projects and their Funders

September 1, 2015

This is a how-to guide for funders and nonprofit news organizations looking to develop media assessment strategies.

Funder Perspectives: Assessing Media Investments

January 23, 2015

How are funders evaluating the outcomes of the media productions and campaigns that they support? Over the past five years, this question has informed a growing array of convenings, reports and research initiatives within the philanthropic sector, driving the emergence of a small but increasingly visible field of analysts and producers seeking to both quantify and qualify the impact of public interest media.These examinations have stimulated debate among both funders and grantees. Calls for the creation of a single media impact metric or tool have been met with both curiosity and skepticism. Those in favor of impact analysis cite its strategic usefulness in this moment of myriad new and untested media platforms, the importance of concretely tying mission to outcomes, and the need to justify media investments rather than programmatic ones. Detractors raise concerns about how an excess of evaluation might stifle creativity, needlessly limit funding to those projects whose short-term impact can be conclusively proven, or simply bog grantees down in administrative tasks that require entirely different skills, as well as resources.However, these debates have taken place in somewhat of an information vacuum. To date, the conversation about media impact has been led by a limited group of foundations. Little substantive information is available about how a broader range of funders address questions of evaluation. This research project aims to help fill that gap.The report, Funder Perspectives: Assessing Media Investments explores the multiple and sometimes overlapping lenses through which grantmakers view media evaluation, and confirms that there are still many unanswered questions.

Communications Strategies That Fast Track Policy Change

September 5, 2014

Partnering with Media Impact Funders for Communications Strategies that Fast Track Policy Change, The California Endowment aims to identify and share examples that use media and communications grantmaking to create a more receptive environment for dialogue about potential solutions, build public momentum and generate political will for policy change.

Molto+Media: Digital Culture Funding

December 17, 2013

This report profiles nine organizations identified by grantmakers and independent research as adventurous in their use of digital media. They represent a mix of arts disciplines, geographies, organizational sizes and media purposes. Some are using digital tools to extend organizational capacities in new ways while others are creating, documenting and disseminating the art itself.Conversations with these nine organizations revealed common themes:Organizations describe the work as building capabilities, not "doingprojects." Digital tools and platforms are now essential building blocksin an organization's work and need to be created accordingly.Leading digital culture entrepreneurs want grantmakers to makebigger bets on organizations with strong track records. Building newcapabilities is expensive, particularly at the scale of large culturalinstitutions.There is a sense that, globally, U.S. organizations lag. The E.U. hassupported open culture, digital initiatives aggressively, making Europe,in particular, a hotbed of digital cultureOrganizations are looking for much greater risk-taking from thefunding community. "Grantmakers still expect only home runs," saidmore than one organization, and they point out that in for-profitindustry many tech projects failDigital culture projects are helping organizations reach massaudiences as well as niches. Both are important.Several of the organizations in our profiles had received no dedicatedfunding for their work. "Our funders are not ready to do this, so wehave to do it ourselves," said interviewees.The most important theme of this report, though, is the incredible creativity and energy of these digital culture entrepreneurs. Cultural organizations and artists are using digital media to invent new ways to create and distribute art and to reach and engage audiences.