While the study found that support for journalism and media funding is limited, the support that is given is quite varied.
Within our sample, allocations vary substantially. The median organisation allocates 6% of its budget to journalism and media, while some dedicate their entire budget to the field and others allocate less than 1%. Most allocations cluster below 20%, while the few remaining funders allocate between 60% and 100%.
When comparing the combined total annual expenditure to the combined annual expenditure for journalism and media in Europe (excluding the largest funder in the sample to improve representativeness), just 3.2% of the total budget of the funders in our sample is directed to journalism and media. If we compare this to similar studies in other fields of interest, journalism and media funding allocation appears to be relatively small. For instance, a comparable calculation from a 2022 Philea study on philanthropic funding for arts and culture suggested that around 25% of annual budgets were directed to arts and culture with a median of almost 41%.
Financial or non-financial support
The primary form of support is financial (in some cases including impact investments in addition to grants). However, the majority of respondents do provide non-financial support as well, representing an important complement to the financial support given (for more details, see section “Key Finding 2: Support spread widely across type, content and geography”).
Type of financial support
Regarding the type of financial support provided, the majority of portfolios are evenly split between multi‑year unrestricted core support and short‑term project‑based support ‒ underscoring the importance of flexible funding in this field.
Grant duration
For over 2/3 of the organisations, the typical grant duration is 3 years or less, with only 3 respondents providing support for more than 5 years.
When looking at additional information provided by respondents to complement the quantitative data, we see that, in some cases, where support begins as short term, funders extend grant duration. As one funder noted: “Grants are usually provided for the duration of 3 years but renewed to a longer period between 10-20 years.”
Grant size
In terms of grant size, about 1/2 of the respondents who answered this question provide grants up to €100,000. About 1/3 provide grants larger than €100,000 including 2 funders providing grants of more than €500,000. For 4 respondents, it was not possible to select one range as grant sizes for these organisations range from small to very large; e.g. one organisation specified a typical range of €10-100k for grants, while investments and loans can be up to €3 million.
Type of non-financial support
The most frequent types of non‑financial support are networking, organisational development, and business‑model development.
Intermediaries
Intermediaries play an important role as roughly 1/2 of the funders in our sample route their support through these actors. Among those using intermediaries, the share that goes through them varies greatly, from as little as 4% up to a full 100%.
Unsolicited funding
Unsolicited funding is uncommon, accepted by less than 1/3 of respondents.
Dedicated staff member
More than 1/2 of the organisations have at least 1 full‑time equivalent staff specifically dedicated to journalism and media funding.
Financial or non-financial support
The primary form of support is financial (in some cases including impact investments in addition to grants). However, the majority of respondents do provide non-financial support as well, representing an important complement to the financial support given (for more details, see section “Key finding 2: Support spread widely across type, content and geography”).
