What We Fund
Funding Pillars
Our funding is focused on three core pillars:
We ensure our ecosystem serves all Coloradans by closing critical information gaps by providing flexible support to ethnic media organizations, rural outlets, and local community connectors. We invest in partners who are building relational trust and providing essential, community-centered coverage for diverse audiences across the state.
We are focused on increasing access to fact-based, trusted local information. We do this by committing 80% of our budget to “ecosystem support” to help newsrooms become more sustainable. This support includes:
- Direct grants for sustainability projects that increase revenue or decrease expenses.
- Support for partners who provide vital capacity and technical support.
- Our annual #newsCOneeds campaign, a matching grant program that helps newsrooms build support from their own communities.
- Our Newsroom Safety and Resilience Fund, which addresses emergent physical, digital, mental, and legal challenges to keep local news providers safe.
We build the essential infrastructure that supports the entire field. We bring funders and ecosystem leaders together to solve shared challenges and drive innovation, including funding the design and testing of innovative, and collaborative ideas that build a more resilient future.
Funding Strategy
Our funding strategy builds a resilient, community-centered, and sustainable local news and information ecosystem that serves all Coloradans.
We are guided by a “both/and” philosophy. We believe vital reporting is essential, and it must be supported by a strong, sustainable business model to have a lasting impact in the community. Our grantmaking is focused on reinforcing the organizations themselves, to build a resilient and efficient field for the long term.