Veronika Munk, Director of Innovation and New Markets at Denník N, shares insights into the outlet’s recent, highly successful campaign.

In just two weeks, we gained 24,000 new subscribers, bringing our total to more than 90,000. Even writing that number feels overwhelming. These people chose quality journalism in a world that is turning upside down – where audiences are tuning out of news, major platforms dominate and distort media markets, and anti-democratic governments are advancing, often treating independent media with hostility, even paralysing it in some regions.

Denník N is one of the market leading Slovak independent news outlets, reaching 1-1,5 million readers every month, operating with a 130 strong staff, being the largest newsroom in Slovakia. We focus primarily on in-depth, investigative, explanatory journalism in text, audio, and video, and fast short news service. We also publish a print daily, monthly educational magazines, and books.

“We are 10 years old, looking to the future, and searching for another 10,000 people who care about it.”

That was our message for our 10th birthday – and it worked.

Our 10-years anniversary campaign

We launched this campaign to celebrate Denník N’s 10th anniversary with the goal of bringing in 10,000 new subscribers. To mark the occasion, we let them bypass the fixed subscription fee and instead choose their own contribution for a 10-week trial period – however much they felt was fair for reading, watching, and listening to Denník N.

But our value proposition was more than just, “Come, get it cheaper.”

We invited our 70,000 existing subscribers to help strengthen the country and its fragile democratic system. Our request? Convince at least one friend to try Denník N for 10 weeks, and in return, we pledged to fulfil 10 key promises – each designed to make Slovakia, and European democracy at large, a better place.

Our 10 promises to Slovakia

If we reached 10,000 new subscribers, we committed to:

1. Unlocking all content published in Denník N’s first 10 years.
2. Giving a free subscription to all future first-time voters.
3. Producing significantly more free, short videos on social media.
4. Sending free print editions to all senior homes and senior clubs.
5. Conducting 100 interviews with people who haven’t given up on Slovakia.
6. Publishing special print editions dedicated to at least five Slovak regions.
7. Offering our video content for free to TV broadcasters.
8. Organising lectures on the dangers of social media for 10,000 students.
9. Launching a training programme for young journalists.
10. Dedicating 10 million ad impressions to organisations that improve Slovakia.

What we learned: 5 key takeaways for the industry

1. People will invest in a better future if you ask them directly.

Audiences care about their own future and believe in free media – but they need to be invited to take part in its operation. When framed as a collective effort, people respond.

2. Your existing audience is your valuable recruiter.

We successfully mobilised our current subscribers (and even newsroom members) to recruit new subscribers – a method proven effective by Zetland (Denmark) and Direkt36 (Hungary). We took it further with gamification: on our site, every participant could track in real-time how many subscribers had joined thanks to their recommendation. Our most successful subscriber-influencer brought us 372 new subscribers – for free.

3. People will pay for a good cause and high-quality service – especially when combined.

We told readers they could pay any amount for their 10-week subscription. Only 22% chose the free option, proving that people are willing to contribute if they believe in the mission and see value in the product.

4. The right promises make all the difference.

We spent months crafting the right commitments – pledging initiatives that served a clear public interest (such as supporting first-time voters or fact-based journalism), and also that added value to our core mission of delivering high-quality content.

5. Social media can work – when used strategically.

Slovak influencers helped amplify our campaign on Instagram and Facebook. We also used ManyChat, a chatbot and marketing automation platform, to create direct, personalised connections with users who showed interest in subscribing.

The next challenge: Retention

I could say that after thorough strategic planning, we expected exactly 24,000 new subscribers, but that wouldn’t be true. We had a plan, yes, but the plan was to reach 10,000 entirely new subscribers in ten weeks – and if we didn’t, we would shut down the campaign after six weeks. In the end, we hit the 10,000 mark in just four days, and after two weeks, we had 24,366 new subscribers. Only 22% of them chose to pay nothing for the 10-week subscription.

The trial period ends in April, and churn is inevitable – industry benchmarks suggest we might lose around 70% of our new subscribers.

Our main task now is convincing them to stay. And our most powerful tool? Quality journalism – the ultimate marketing asset. Moreover, thanks to their registrations, we are able to remain in contact with tens of thousands of new readers, giving us a direct line to continue proving our value. If we manage to retain one third of them in the long term, it will still be the most successful thing we have ever done, and successful by reader revenue business standards in Central-Eastern Europe.

I believe this campaign wasn’t just about subscriber growth – it was a statement. It proved that people still value quality journalism, that they’re willing to pay for it, and that strong reader communities can be mobilised to protect independent media.

The challenge for all of us in the industry is clear: we must continue proving that journalism is worth supporting by making it indispensable, by making it participatory, and by making it a cause people want to invest in.

Martin Kotynek, Founding Director of the Media Forward Fund, stresses the need for sustainable business models in journalism to strengthen democracy, shares insights to their funding model focusing on user-centric independent media in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, and highlights the growing role of pooled funds.

Why is it important for the Media Forward Fund to support journalism?

 We want to contribute to more quality journalism with strong business models. Right now, there is a big transformation crisis happening in the media, and we want to support the development of new business models that make journalism more sustainable in the long term. Through that, we want to strengthen democracies in our societies, which are also right now in a crisis.

Which outlets are eligible for funding, what are your criteria?

We have 24 selection criteria in five pillars. Number one is “transformation”: We fund media organisations that serve the common good and can both sustainably strengthen media’s role in society and create transformative benefits for the media sector. Other news organisations can learn from the experience of our grantees, to help the whole industry.

The second pillar is “user focus.” News products, which sound like a fantastic idea to the journalists who make it, but don’t really serve the needs of users, often fail. We want to make sure that there is a real user need, and that the information is trustworthy to the audience – also a necessity for commercial success.

We have “diversity” as our third pillar because there are underserved communities which have been widely neglected by journalism so far. We especially want to support media organisations that report for these communities. At best, these target groups are represented in the staff of the organisations.

Then we have “independence” as our fourth pillar. We do not see philanthropy as a business model for journalism. Media organisations need to be commercially independent from a single source of revenue to guarantee editorial independence. They will also be independent of us, we will never interfere in reporting.

And there is the fifth pillar, journalistic quality. We fund media organisations that base their work on recognised journalistic standards. At the heart of quality journalism are principles such as truthfulness, accuracy, objectivity, transparency, and independence. This is why we look at the organisation’s commitment to the principles of the press codex in its country of registration, the existence of established editorial standards, and institutionalised mechanisms to monitor compliance with those standards.

And there are geographical criteria, you have to have your headquarters in Germany, Austria, or Switzerland, and the majority of your revenues have to come from these three countries as well.

What do you think about the advantages of similar pooled funds?

 Pooled funds for journalism are becoming a global movement. There are MDIF’s Pluralis, IFPIM, and Civitates, with Press Forward in the US being the largest. More “cousins” of Press Forward are in the making right now; after Media Forward Fund began in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, there are now similar initiatives in the UK, Canada, Brazil, and Australia. 

These philanthropic collaborations have many advantages. If several donors with a shared vision combine their funding, they have greater leverage to make change. Secondly, a pooled fund minimises the reputational risk for a funder. If you fund one single media organisation and it makes an error in reporting, or there is a mission drift, it might backfire to you. In a pooled fund it’s the fund’s responsibility; there’s a buffer. This is one of the reasons why we have a firewall between the funders and our independent jurors, who make all the funding decisions.

How do you provide support? Do you provide core or thematic funding? Do you also support outlets with training?

Smaller non-profit news organisations with up to 30 full time equivalent employees can get core funding. Everyone else – both for-profits and non-profits – can get project funding if there is at least a proof-of-concept and if the product or market fit can be shown. We want to see revenues first. We fund in the growth phase, because we have realised that there are several options for funding in the initial idea phase, but then there is a kind of “valley of death.” We want to bridge the idea phase and the phase when the media organisation is ready for an impact investment. Between these two phases, there is almost no money in the media market.

We support our grantees to grow their business model to show that it is sustainable. We bring in impact investors like Karma Capital Group, which is also a donor to Media Forward Fund. They get to know the grantees from the beginning, they see how they develop, how the teams work, and then it is much easier to make investment decisions for both sides. Journalists need to know that a potential investor doesn’t want to interfere in their reporting.

Our grantees also have access to our capacity building programme. They can get coaching, which is very individual, and they can take part in “deep dives” where we bring media organisations from all three countries together to share their experiences, work on their specific problems as a group, and learn from each other.

What is the most important lesson you have learned since the launch of the Fund?

 We learned that there is a lack of skill in media management, especially on the business side. We got 136 applications from the three countries in our first call, and we saw that there is really a need for upskilling in public value news organisations, especially on business issues. We want to contribute to that.

We are only half a year old, but up to this point, we thought that our capacity building and upskilling programme would be available only for our grantees.  But after we went through the applications, we realised that we have to play a role in upskilling potential grantees, too. So, we are going to extend our invitation to take part in our upskilling programme and in our “deep dives” to everyone who is potentially fundable.

What are the biggest challenges you have had to face so far?

We started with 4.5 million Euros, and half a year later we are at nine, but fundraising for journalism is quite complicated. Up until a few years ago, media was very profitable in general, and at least in our region, there was no need to make a philanthropic contribution to media organisations. But now, as the old print models are really under pressure, the transformation crisis in the media has accelerated. So we learned that first we need to explain what is going on in the media market right now, and how this affects our democracy, in order to bring additional donors into the fund. We have 18 partners so far; many of them haven’t funded journalism before.

What was the biggest success story?

To quote Maribel Pérez Wadsworth, President and CEO of Knight Foundation, which is a funder of Media Forward Fund: “Foundations need to act at the speed of news.” We have been trying to do this from the very beginning. A year ago, there were five foundations which initially came together, now we are 18. It took us only half a year from the initial idea to the launch of the Fund and of our first call, and only one year to welcome our first grantees. Philanthropy can act “at the speed of news,” if foundations collaborate with a shared vision.

Do you have any special advice for organisations that have not funded journalism yet but are thinking about doing so?

“Whatever your first funding topic is: Journalism should be your second” – that’s one of my favourite quotes from John Palfrey, President of John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which is an initiator of Media Forward Fund. Whatever you want to change in the world, you need journalism to explain it to the public, to criticise it if things go wrong, and to make sure there’s a common understanding of the facts, so that we can make informed decisions as a society.

Marit Fagnastøl, Head of Communications at Sparebankstiftelsen DNB explains how in an era of rampant misinformation, Norway’s Amediastiftelsen showcases how foundation-owned media can safeguard independent journalism. By fostering editorial freedom, supporting local newspapers, and addressing challenges like engaging younger audiences, it offers a model for strengthening democracy through philanthropy.

In early 2024, Sparebankstiftelsen DNB (the Savings Bank Foundation DNB) allocated NOK 388.5 million to the Amedia Foundation to develop it as an independent, non-profit foundation that will support projects of significance for journalism, democracy and freedom of expression.

This significant grant builds on a decision made in 2016, when Sparebankstiftelsen DNB purchased Amedia, Norway’s largest local newspaper publisher, and established the Amediastiftelsen (the Amedia Foundation) as the owner of the group.

This somewhat unusual move by a non-profit foundation brings attention to the role of foundations in supporting editor-led media.

Why support local newspapers? 

When Sparebankstiftelsen DNB purchased Amedia in 2016, the goal was to secure long-term, stable ownership for local newspapers that are vital to communities across Norway. Local newspapers play a critical role in keeping residents informed, supporting local culture, and fostering public debate.

For Sparebankstiftelsen DNB, these goals aligned well with their mission of strengthening local communities, especially initiatives supporting children and young people. 

Local newspapers do more than report the news – they help shape the identity and cohesion of communities. By covering a broad range of local issues, they provide residents with a shared understanding of what’s happening in their area. This helps prevent siloed thinking and builds connections across different groups within a community. 

As André Støylen, former CEO of Sparebankstiftelsen DNB, noted at the time of the Amedia purchase: “Local newspapers are essential to their communities, to democracy, culture, and organisational life. The goal of this acquisition is to help newspapers continue to develop for the benefit of their local environments.” 

The decision to establish a foundation as the owner of Amedia, would enable the media group to operate with a long-term perspective, ensuring independence and editorial freedom.

It was, nevertheless, an unexpected move and a surprise that a non-profit foundation would acquire a media company.

Independent media in the age of misinformation 

Editor-led journalism plays an essential role in countering misinformation. Research by The Norwegian Media Authority (Medietilsynet) in late 2023 found that 69% of respondents had encountered news stories online they suspected were false within the past six months. The majority of this content was found on social media. 

In contrast, 51% of Norwegians view editor-led media to be credible and reliable sources of information, compared to only 8% for social media platforms. These findings highlight the importance of supporting journalism that adheres to clear editorial standards and accountability mechanisms. 

In a time when misinformation can spread rapidly, editor-led media offer an essential counterbalance. By providing verified information, they help maintain public trust and enable citizens to make informed decisions as well as being an arena for the exchange of opinions.

Defining Amediastiftelsen’s priorities 

With the recent funding from Sparebankstiftelsen DNB, the board of the Amedia Foundation has during the year defined its priorities. These include: 

• Projects that promote the use of editorial media and reach new groups of media users. A key focus is to reach younger generations, who often use other sources for their news consumption.
• Support industry-wide initiatives and measures that promote knowledge-sharing and collaboration between editorial offices.
• Enhance competence in editorial offices and develop tools and knowledge that will strengthen journalism across the sector.

The first grant made by the foundation is an example of the latter and it went to the Center for Investigative Journalism (SUJO) to develop a “Democracy Database.” This searchable archive of political documents from municipalities and county councils will be accessible to journalists and the public, enabling greater transparency and accountability. 

Challenges in reaching younger audiences 

A significant challenge for the media industry is engaging young readers. While 78% of Norwegians read at least one newspaper daily, according to a recent Kantar survey, younger people are less likely to access traditional news sources. 

Amediastiftelsen aims to address this by supporting projects that explore methods to reach young audiences. For instance, creating content by and for young people or make editorial content more accessible to young audiences.

This work is especially important given findings from a 2024 survey by the Norwegian Media Authority, which showed that 66% of 13 to 18-year-olds had come across news stories they suspected were false or inaccurate in the past six months. Teaching media literacy and making reliable news accessible to this group are critical steps in building trust and awareness. 

The significance of foundation-owned media

The Amediastiftelsen model offers insights into how foundations can play a role in strengthening the media sector. By investing in journalism, they contribute to a more informed and resilient society. 

Editor-led media remain a cornerstone of democratic societies, and their future should matter to all who value informed and engaged communities. 

As the foundation continues its work, it will undoubtedly provide valuable lessons for others interested in the intersection of philanthropy and journalism.

Facts about Amediastiftelsen

• Sparebankstiftelsen DNB purchased the media group Amedia in 2016 and established Amediastiftelsen (the Amedia Foundation) to own the group
• The foundation supports media organisations, industry organisations and educational/research institutions, within and outside Norway
• Approximately NOK 30 million will be allocated in 2025
• André Støylen, the former CEO of Sparebankstiftelsen DNB, is now the general manager of the Amediastiftelsen

Václav Muchna, Co-Founder and CEO of Y Soft, and Board Member of the Czech Endowment Fund for Independent Journalism, highlights the importance of supporting democracy through independent journalism, shares insights into the Fund’s operation, and emphasises the need for transparency among donors while cautioning against grant dependency.

What was the main reason behind creating the Endowment Fund for Independent Journalism?

Václav: It was started by a group of philanthropists who shared a view that our country, the Czech Republic, requires strong democracy for our businesses to thrive. And we have seen in surrounding countries, especially in the post-Soviet bloc, that democracy is under attack by various groups of people, and we just thought we have to take care of our democracy. That democracy is not a given, we have to nurture it. We have launched a number of initiatives to support democracy in our country, and one of them was around protecting independent journalism as a watchdog, which we consider to be a critical ingredient for any democracy.

Another reason was what we called the “oligarchisation” of media. That was more than 10 years ago, when Western owners of Czech media started to pull back from their investments as new challenges arose: the rise of social networks and the way we consume information. Because the market is small, it was easier for them to pull back; and then very rich businesspeople who made their fortunes through privatisation, i.e. business typically connected with the state, captured these media so that they could impact and alter public meaning in areas important to them. Our democracy was challenged, missing independent and balanced information sources.

One of the co-founders had this statement: that without independent media, we do not know who we depend on. And thus, the fund has been created.

Is it open for new players to join?

Yes, absolutely. It is open. I have been with the fund for over 10 years or so. I am not a co-founder, but I’ve been here from a very early time. I serve on the Board of Directors currently, I am also one of the major donors, and I’m representing the donors on the board. It has always been open, and we have had a lot of new members recently. But we have also had a transition. In the past we did not require consent to transparently publish larger donors. This has changed. And of course there is an approval process, as we want to protect the fund from getting money from questionable sources. We only want to accept what we would consider really clean money. So it is not for absolutely everyone, but it is open.

How do you provide support to journalists and news organisations? Who is eligible for support?

We have five key areas of focus. The first one is, how do we limit the impact of media that are not trustworthy? Connected to that is, how do we improve education around how to consume media and news? That is one area. The next one we are focusing on is to keep investigative journalism on “life support,” because we see the trend that it is very expensive, and without external money it is almost not able to survive. We are also focusing on how we can help journalists to improve the quality of journalism in general. The fourth area is the regional media. We consider it one of the newest additions. Last, but not least, how to provide sustainable funding for independent media.

We work differently in these five different areas. So, for example, in the first one, how do we decrease or lower the impact of not so trustworthy media? We have products that map our media market, and we qualify media based on objective parameters, for example, whether they show who the owner is, do they mark their articles properly, do they mark advertorial articles properly, do they link sources, and so on. Based on that, we rate them, we publish that rating, and some other organisations take our rating, and for example, limit access for advertisements in the lowest graded media.

In investigative journalism, it is about subsidies or grants. They apply twice a year. In the quality of journalism field, we run a number of things, for example a journalist forum where we try to link journalists together so that they can exchange experiences. We also have some grants for solutions journalism, analytical and data journalism, and geopolitical threats. So we have three sub-areas here. We also have grants for young journalists who are starting up, or for women, because they have a much more difficult situation. We see that not many women return to journalism after maternity leave and we hope to address this.

In the sustainability field, we co-funded an organisation that collectively represents a number of small media, and they are selling their advertisement space. If they go ahead and sell individually, there is a challenge: for a significant player like a big company, the small media do not have enough impressions, so you would need to combine the campaign with other sources. Companies are not going to do that. So that is why there is this initiative, Courage Media. It is an agency that is also relatively new, and it sells advertising space for smaller media, because this would be considered sustainable, right? We do not want to develop dependency. I, for example, have very ambivalent feelings on grants, because on one hand you support them, on the other, you make them completely dependent on one organisation, and that is not very sustainable.

But we are looking into grants that are for sustainable development. These are not for content, like the previous grants I talked about. For example, an outlet wants to research its readership, or wants to improve its billing engine, something like that. Maybe it is self-sufficient but does not have resources to bring itself to the next level. That is where we would support them. We consider it sustainable. I always say, either you give them fish, or you teach them fishing.

So, do you support projects, and don’t provide core funding?

Correct. We are looking into investigative journalism, and there, we are looking into providing some core funding as well. But that would be an exception.

What is the most important lesson you have learned since creating the Fund?

From my standpoint, as a businessperson, not a media expert, it was about how we balance different actors and learn that journalism is not “one journalism.” There are publishers and there are journalists, and they are a completely different set of stakeholders with completely different agendas. Then you have media owners, you have their clients, and then you can even have some activist groups, you have governments and regulatory frameworks. So you have different stakeholders with different agendas and interests, and we have to understand the complexity of it.

In some areas we are supporting the journalists, in others the publishers. If you build your editorial system, that’s publisher support, if you give a grant to a specific journalistic project, that is supporting a journalist. How do you balance that? What are the needs across the industry? This would be the number one lesson for me.

What are the biggest challenges you have had to face so far?

The biggest challenge is that the Czech media market is super fragmented. We have a lot of small media outlets, and they have, from my point of view, a lot of emotions from the past, which prevents them from cooperating. And it is a small country, so the media market is small anyway. If you take a small market and you fragment that economically, it is just a disaster. You see that from a business standpoint, but that is not the way the journalists would feel about it, and they have their reasons. But this results in lower sustainability and impact, because if you are a small media house with a readership of ten thousand or twenty thousand, then your impact is very limited. Funding any grants for investigative projects or solutions journalism is also very questionable, because the effectiveness of your investment is very limited. We are incentivising them to reunite and build some bigger impact outlets, but it is a real challenge.

What do you consider your biggest success story?

Once again this will be my personal perspective, but it is building civic society. It is not related directly to journalism, but we have successes there. The Endowment Fund and some other activities help us build a community of donors, which today consists of more than thirty people. We are also looking into how we can go beyond these rich persons, and how we can actually build a community of people who really care about democracy and who are willing to fund it.

The reason why I consider this the biggest success story is because, if I look at surrounding countries in Eastern Europe, I can’t see a single country with such a strong civic society, and vehicles such as the Endowment Fund actually help build that community. Whenever you have any pressure on democracy, and we face them incrementally more and more, active civic society will be ever more important.

Then you obviously have all the support we’ve built into it. We helped to create some media, and we helped to sustain some other media, that’s all great. But number one would be building an active civic society, building a group of people who understand that they need to take care of democracy, and it will cost money and time.

You mentioned that you helped create media, do you also invest in organisations?

No, we don’t invest directly. If there is an opportunity, we would broker investors, we would give grants, but we don’t invest ourselves. We think that investing in certain media would have a dramatic impact on our independence. One of our missions is that we support media pluralism. We would lose that if we invest.

Do you have any special advice for organisations that have not funded journalism yet, but are thinking about doing so?

First of all, it is really good that you are even thinking about that. That’s important. Journalism is an important part of democracy. The second thing is: think through a strategy, because starting to give money away just for interesting projects is not going to make your segment resilient. Do it systematically and in a way that, if you look back in a year or two, you can articulate your impact, things that would not be there without you.

We have a lot of different stakeholders. Of course, from me, coming from business, you would expect an impact focused behaviour. For me, it is always a question whether what we are doing will strengthen or weaken democracy. I would also advise you to challenge your thought process, and think about how different your country would be, how democracy would suffer, if you were not there.

The last thing is how you do this sustainably. What would happen to organisations that you support if you cannot operate anymore? If you make organisations completely dependent on you, then you end up concentrating power. This is super dangerous in terms of independent journalism. You must be avoiding the concentration of power, you need to support plurality.

Tetiana Gordiienko of the Media Development Foundation offers insights into the challenging task facing Ukrainian media as they navigate donor dependence, operational challenges, and the urgent need for more sustainable funding models amid the ongoing impact of war.

“I have almost stopped writing stories… We spend up to 30% of our time on [operational workload related to] grant projects. This seems to me like a lot and we can turn into a media outlet for donors and not for our audiences. This scares me a lot. I see such examples […] and I am very, very, very afraid to become the same“

“The emphasis I want to make is that donors need to sit down, look around, find ways for themselves to choose projects they trust and give them a chance to relieve a little administrative burden and give them the opportunity to secure long-term funding. […] To live and work here, you need a little more trust, because if we lose it now, we lose it gradually, then there will simply be no one to make good journalism.”

The preceding quotations are not intended as a frightening narrative for journalists as part of a Halloween prank. They are drawn from a recent research study, “The Donor Dilemma: Rethinking Support Models for Ukrainian Media’s Future” conducted by the Media Development Foundation (MDF), a Kyiv-based non-governmental organisation (NGO).

Following two years of full-scale war with Russia, Ukrainian media outlets are facing significant challenges. On the one hand, they have established close cooperation with numerous international donor organisations, which have become the main source of funding for most Ukrainian newsrooms, especially at the local level. On the other hand, such close and prolonged interaction could not fail to have had an impact.

The respondents who took part in the MDF study concluded that their media organisations develop their financial plans while taking into account the financial year of donors, or postpone major strategic decisions until they receive funding or confirmation of project agreements. They also pointed to the additional operational burden associated with project-based financing and the necessity to align their goals with the strategic goals of the projects funded by donor organisations.

This research is based on in-depth interviews with representatives of nine media outlets and consists of a thematic analysis of the collected data. Furthermore, it forms part of a number of other MDF research projects. To illustrate, MDF ran a study of the state of local media in Ukraine that comprised a survey of 37 media outlets, 12 in-depth interviews, and three expert interviews. The study revealed challenges related to funding, strategic planning, and human resources in media organisations. “The Donor Dilemma…” employs a nuanced qualitative approach to investigate these issues in a smaller sample of respondents.

As the donor and media systems become increasingly complex and intertwined, the situation is further complicated by the reduction of funding for quality journalism. The respondents observed a notable decline in the number of grant opportunities for media. Concurrently, the advertising market in Ukraine, which has been affected by the ongoing war, is only showing minimal signs of recovery. As a result of the widening funding gap, there is a risk that media organisations may be forced to downsize their teams and reduce their capacity. The least resilient players may ultimately be forced out of the media market.

“It seems to me that core support is the best model in general that can be now [for media]. I know that many Russian media outlets in exile receive core support with not so much effort, while Ukrainian editors, unfortunately, have to constantly invent some projects. Plus, these permanent projects, it seems to me, still slightly distort the reality of the needs that exist within our audience” – An editor-in-chief of a local media outlet in Ukraine.

This excerpt from the MDF report focuses on the challenge of donor relations, but there are other needs as well, including psychological support for teams under immense pressure, a crisis of human resources, and the development of a strategic planning culture.

The Ukrainian media market is approaching a point where it must undergo another round of transformation. Media organisations have already demonstrated remarkable resilience in maintaining their teams and operating effectively, despite the challenges and risks posed by the ongoing conflict.

Particularly in the Ukrainian context, the media plays a significant role at both national and local levels in supporting democratic processes, post-war recovery, and community development. While some needs, such as funding or retaining qualified personnel, are relatively visible, the research conducted by the MDF also revealed a need for solutions to maintain the progress that the media have made with an incredible effort over the last two years. One of the most urgent requests from the independent Ukrainian media is to renegotiate the funding models with the donors to allow them to work in a more sustainable and predictable way.

We encourage European partners to consider new, sustainable approaches to donor funding that will help build a resilient, independent media landscape in Ukraine, and also to join MDF in the effort to develop the Core Media Fund, an initiative designed to raise funds for sustainable ways of financing independent journalism and media advocacy in the country.

Lot Carlier, Executive Director at V-Ventures, the investment arm of the Netherlands-based Veronica Foundation, emphasises the critical importance of fostering financial independence for media outlets to maintain editorial freedom. V-Ventures supports investigative journalism, engages younger audiences, and backs regional media. Their strategy is twofold: providing funding and practical consultancy to help media companies strengthen their business model and establish sustainable revenue streams, and invest in companies that create technology, tools and channels for these media companies.

Why is it important for the Veronica Foundation to fund journalism, and what led to the establishment of V-Ventures?

Carlier: We created V-Ventures as our investment arm to focus on strategic investments, while keeping donations under the Foundation’s purview. Although part of the same organisation, V-Ventures specialises in the investment side of supporting journalism. Our roots lie in media—we were once a rebellious media company broadcasting from a ship in extraterritorial waters when we weren’t allowed to broadcast in the Netherlands. This unconventional start has defined our innovative approach and commitment to independent journalism.

Over recent years, we’ve witnessed a decline in media independence across Europe, marked by increased concentration and political influence over media outlets. Supporting innovative, independent voices, especially in regions where media freedom is under pressure, is more important than ever. We have been dedicated to supporting independent media since selling off our own media assets, and we have recently broadened our focus to also include smaller and mid-sized independent media companies that ensure pluriformity of the press and innovation in the sector.

What is V-Ventures’ approach to supporting media companies?

We have a dual approach. First, we support media companies on the business side to help them become less reliant on grants and donations and develop new revenue streams tailored to their specific markets. This support is essential because donor dependency can lead to a shift in focus away from building a strong audience and sustainable revenue generation. We support these companies to establish revenue models that fit their context, whether through syndication, subscriptions, or other methods.

Second, we also invest in media tech companies that support content creators, such as those developing innovative tools to enhance efficiency. Additionally, we have initiatives like SV-Docs, a documentary fund to support journalistic storytelling. This holistic approach allows us to create a blended return on our investments while fostering growth across the media ecosystem.

In which regions does V-Ventures focus its investments?

Our focus is on Europe, and we target three main topics. First, we support news and investigative journalism in countries where media freedom is at risk or where there’s a significant concentration of media ownership, which reduces pluralism. Second, we focus on media companies that are engaging younger generations (Gen XYZ) who are not as connected to traditional media; reaching them with independent news is crucial. Third, we prioritise regional and local journalism as trust in national media declines. We are exploring sustainable business models for all media to replicate. Additionally, as already mentioned, we invest in tools that make the sector more efficient and effective and in channels, like podcast companies. Lastly, we invest in funds to broaden our reach, such as Mercuri and NBM.  

Do you provide only capital, or do you also offer guidance or training?

For media companies, we offer more than just capital. We often provide a three-day consultancy programme where we work closely with the entire team to identify the best ways to generate revenue. We may fund specific business roles, like a publisher, for one or two years to help build the business side until it becomes self-sustaining. This approach is different for media tech companies, which operate with their own market strategies.

What is the most important lesson you’ve learned through investing in media companies?

The most critical lesson is that financial independence is key to maintaining editorial independence in the longer term. Media companies must generate revenue beyond donor support to remain free from external influences. In the early start-up phase, donor funding may be necessary to build an audience and establish a critical mass of content. However, as the organisation matures, it must develop diversified revenue streams to become truly financially independent.

What challenges have you faced in funding journalism in Europe?

One major challenge is that many smaller independent media organisations haven’t developed a business strategy yet. Journalists often focus on creating impactful content driven by their convictions, and shifting attention to revenue generation can be challenging. This is where editors sometimes step in to handle subscriptions or other business tasks, but it’s tough to balance this with their focus on high-quality journalism. Dedicated staff to take care of the  business side allows journalists to focus on what they do best—creating valuable content.

What has been your biggest success story so far?

While we’ve completed successful exits on the business side, our blended investment approach combining business and content-focused support is still relatively new. We have seen promising indications of a solid blended return over the past five years, although it’s too early to present final financial results. We aim to demonstrate this model’s viability to other impact investors in the coming years by showing that media investment yields reasonable returns while having a huge impact on democracies.

Do you have advice for organisations considering funding journalism for the first time?

It’s crucial to raise more awareness about the need for support in this sector. The current state of media in Europe, and globally, is challenging, and more help is needed to preserve independent voices. Impact investors can create immense change. The message should be clear: funding journalism isn’t just valuable—it’s essential for sustaining democracy and informed societies.

George Leech, Director of Outreach and Communications at the Prague Civil Society Centre, emphasises the importance of providing institutional funding for independent journalism. By offering flexible support, the Centre helps media outlets continue their vital work, even in exile or under authoritarian pressure across Central Europe and the former Soviet Union.

Why is it important for PCSC to support journalism? How did you come to the decision to include media in your programme?

Leech: We’re approaching our 10 year anniversary next year, and we’ve been supporting the media since 2016-2017. So really, as soon as we started, we kind of realised that the media had to be part of the strategy and can’t really be taken apart from civil society. It’s so important for amplifying the voice of civil society, exposing the failures of authoritarianism, promoting reform, accountability, it’s a key component. If you don’t have robust, strong, independent media, then all these groups doing all this amazing work, in a way, are losing a point of access to the population.

We also recognised the gap in donor funding, that a lot of media support was technical support, or it was very project-driven, whereas our approach since the very start has been to try and provide institutional support for media, funding to pay journalists’ salaries, pay for rent, and cover the costs of doing journalism. We don’t have a kind of editorial approach or thematic priority approach. We are not a donor that is interested in X, Y, Z and would like to see articles on those topics. We really want to fund the media to achieve what they want to do, reach their audiences, and be journalists. Our approach has been to decouple it from thematic priorities and really have it as a core media support programme.

It has also taken a lot of convincing at certain points within the donor sector, and convincing large institutional government donors that actually providing this institutional support is necessary and valid, because it also takes a lot of trust from people giving the money, right? It’s very easy to form a project where you say, at the end of this, we’re going to have had 30 articles on this topic, and we’ll have had five training sessions on these various topics. Whereas if you’re just giving institutional support, you’re saying that the media is going to continue to work, it might grow its audience. It’s very hard to package that into a very nice, clean project. But working with the big donors and convincing them of our approach has been part of our work and has been successful. We have grown our media support programme substantially over the years and really had a lot of buy-in from large donors, such as the European Union, on the necessity and validity of this kind of support.

In addition to providing grants for institutional funding, is anything else included in your support programme?

Leech: It’s a combination. Most of our support goes through grants, as we are a re-granting organisation. The Prague Centre exists to take large, predominantly government, donor money, and repackage that into smaller grants and try to remove a lot of the burden that comes with, say, being a USAID grantee, or a Foreign Office grantee, or a European Commission grantee. We’re like the middle man in making that money accessible.

But we do also have a full capacity building programme, and that ranges from many different kinds of support. In general, we don’t have media technical expertise in house. Rather, we have a wide network of trusted providers, and we talk with the media. When we’re in the process of making a grant, or we’re discussing their projects with them, then they self-identify that it would be really good to have training on security, or some kind of audience research. And we know people, we can put them in touch.

So we really try to empower the media we support to get the best support that’s tailored to their exact needs, rather than saying, here’s the Prague Centre’s media capacity building, this is our prescription. We listen to the needs and suggestions of our media partners and have a network of proven and trusted providers that we can recommend to circulate, and if someone is necessary and relevant, that’s perfect.

What kind of media are eligible for your support?

Leech: A huge range of media. From traditional newsroom media focused on Eastern Europe and Central Asia, to investigative media, various niche media, all the way down to various social media channels. We also include in our media support programme NGOs that have kind of advanced media arms. We also support them in similar ways, to do campaigning and communication. So our grantees range from traditional large newsroom-style media to people with a YouTube channel across the whole region where we work.

Which region do you work in?

Leech: We have a mandate to work in all the countries of the former Soviet Union, apart from the Baltic States. Two years ago, we started a media support programme for Central Europe. So Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and Slovenia were added onto that.

What is the most important lesson you have learned from the programme?

Leech: I will reiterate the necessity that we must provide institutional support. There’s not enough of it in the sector. There is a cost of being the kind of flexible donor that we are. We pride ourselves in making this funding as adaptable, as flexible, as useful as possible for the grantees that we work with. But that requires, of course, a lot of talking with them, adaptation of proposals, changing proposals mid-project, which really puts a lot of extra work on our grants team, and I really wouldn’t underestimate the work it takes to stay true to the commitment to be flexible, adaptive, and responsive.

For example, when the full-scale invasion happened in Ukraine, we were making grants immediately as part of our emergency response to civil society and the media. There was one media [outlet] to whom we gave a grant to relocate from Kyiv, as the Russian army was advancing. When it became clear that Kyiv wasn’t going to be overrun and actually they’d be able to remain in Kyiv, we were then able to basically change the grant and say, OK, hang on, you don’t need to relocate, but you still have all this money, let’s see what we can do, and use the money in the way that you need it most. That’s a sensible and obvious thing to do, but you still have to change the project and work out how to manage it, what the new objective is. This is constant change, especially when you’re working in an area as volatile as those we work in. This just requires constant communication, adaptation, and tailoring.

In addition to the war in Ukraine, what are the biggest challenges you have had to face?

Leech: I think the war has dominated this region since 2022. Pre-2022, we were working with some exiled media, but now that has increased substantially. There’s a lot of media now located in the EU that present opportunities, but also challenges […]. Also, as a donor, you have media in exile that are still targeting audiences inside the country where they’ve come from, facing attempts to block them. So from investing in technology to circumvent censorship, there are different kinds of needs for the media to be able to continue doing the work. There’s obviously also the increased costs of being located in the EU rather than in your country of origin.

We’re leading a project called Free Media Hub East, which is a consortium of media support organisations funded by the European Union. We provide the re-granting component, but there are also organisations like People in Need (Czechia), Warsaw Helsinki Committee (Poland), Media in Cooperation and Transition (Germany), Sustainability Foundation in Latvia, and Baltic Centre for Media Excellence, also in Latvia, and together we’ve created a body of established practitioners that are providing the full scope of support for media in exile. So from the Prague Centre there’s funding available; from other organisations, there’s visa support, relocation support, psychological support, registration support, language classes, people that will help navigate the bureaucracies of Berlin, Warsaw, Latvia, wherever it may be, help advocate the case for exile media. So the move to exile and the needs that have come with that have also required slightly different solutions that we’ve also had to adapt to as an organisation.

What was the biggest success story?

Leech: The fact that a lot of the media that we support are still running, still managing to engage their audiences, and in some cases, managing to increase their audiences, despite efforts to liquidate the space for freedom of expression, to shut down any kind of independent voices. I think the continuation and ability to still reach audiences is, if not a glamorous success story, a really important one.

But also the ability to respond so quickly. I gave that example of finding the media to relocate during the full-scale invasion. We’ve been able to mobilise a substantial amount of support for Ukrainian media, large, small, regional. Exactly with this institutional support logic that I was talking about before, which has been kind of outsized in its help for the sector, because there has been so much donor funding that’s gone to Ukraine, which is fantastic, but also so much of it is tied up in certain requirements, certain topics, certain training, you know, it comes with a lot of strings attached. The fact we’ve been able to mobilise millions in unrestricted institutional support is something that I’m really proud of.

Do you have any special advice for organisations that have not funded journalism yet, but are thinking about doing so?

Leech: First of all, it is great to do it, 100%. If you’re thinking about doing it, keep thinking along those directions, but also question yourself about why you want to do it, and what the results are that you want to achieve through your media support programme.

There are lots of different entry points to supporting media, or lots of different reasons to support media. Know yourself what you’re trying to achieve. If that is to shed more light on the area that you’re focused on, that’s great, but know that this is what you want to do it for. If you believe that independent media is vitally important, it’s underfunded, and needs more support, then do that, and really I’d encourage anyone to go down the core support and institutional funding route.

And partner up! There are a lot of established media support organisations in Europe that have been doing it for a long time. I don’t think people need to always think they need to go alone, or try to do everything themselves. Share, talk to people about their experiences, and identify your niche. There’s always power in the aggregate, right? So maybe, if you can join something that’s existing or amplify something that’s already going on, maybe that’s the way to go about it.

Also, if you’re getting involved in the geographies that we are involved in, then security risk is a really important thing to consider. Understand the operating context of the media, where you’ll be working. You know, we work in Central Europe, in Eastern Europe, in Central Asia, all of those carry very different risk profiles, very different processes, very different approaches to grant-making and supporting media. It’s not a one-size hat that fits all.

Pierrick Judeaux, Director of Portfolio and EU representative at the International Fund for Public Interest Media (IFPIM), explains the critical role of funding independent journalism in low and middle-income countries, and shares his insights into the Fund’s commitment to providing flexible, long-term financial support.

Why is it important for IFPIM to fund journalism? Which outlets are eligible for funding?

Judeaux: The Fund was created as a new multilateral and independent vehicle to fund journalism in low and middle income countries. We created this new vehicle because independent media globally are facing a major economic and financial crisis. The business models that have underpinned independent journalism in past decades have been under massive pressure. And the current level of support that is dedicated to independent media is not of the scale required to meet the challenge.

What we’re seeing globally, with even more acuteness in low and middle income countries, is a lot of outlets shutting down, or being captured by private or political interests. Perhaps more frequent and less visible, but extremely important, is a slow degradation of the capacity of media organisations working in the public interest to maintain their coverage and to hold power to account. That slow degradation is deeply worrying for the future of our information ecosystems and for democracy.

All of this is happening in the context of growing threats to information ecosystems and information integrity, including disinformation, misinformation, and various campaigns and operations led by a number of authoritarian actors. For all of these reasons, we created the Fund as a way to drastically scale up the amount of funding that is being made available to support public interest media in low and middle income countries.

How do you provide support? Are you cooperating with other donors?

Judeaux: Yes, we work very closely with other media funders. We’re very conscious that there are a number of other actors that have been doing really important work in terms of supporting journalists and media organisations for a long time. So we work extremely closely with other actors that fund journalism, and local market actors, journalists, researchers, and civil society actors that follow the information space closely. It’s a very important principle for us to fully acknowledge that we don’t operate in a vacuum, and we want to make sure we use the funds and financial capabilities to be complementary to the support that already exists.

In terms of how we provide support, we’re trying to be as driven as we can by both the local context and the needs of our partners, our grantees. So the types of grants we provide will be slightly different from one grantee to the next. There are, however, a couple of principles.

The first is that we strive to provide institutional support and mid- to long-term support. We’ve realised that the need for core funding or institutional funding is really acute. There is a lot of project funding, there is a lot of short-term funding. This kind of support is very important, of course, but it most often doesn’t allow organisations to cover their core costs and to invest in the future and future-proof their organisations at a time where markets are deeply changing. So we endeavour to provide relatively long term support that gives media outlets visibility. These are two- or three-year grants that can be renewed. In the vast majority of cases, it is core institutional funding rather than project-based.

The size of our grant varies, but because of the core funding and the long-term funding, they tend to be relatively large compared to other funders. We do pay a lot of attention, however, to the risk of being too large a source of revenue for a given outlet, and so we ensure that in almost all cases, with a few exceptions, we fund no more than 30 percent of the operating costs of an organisation.

Finally, how do we identify the organisations we support? We source future grantees through four complimentary channels. We run open calls for proposals. We do a lot of proactive engagements, within countries where we work, with a lot of market actors to identify potential partners. We have a system for referrals from trusted partners, such as other funders and development organisations, to suggest partners we should support. And finally, any media organisation that is interested in collaborating and working with us can submit an expression of interest on our website. So we have these four channels to identify potential partners and then all relevant independent media that meet our eligibility criteria (which are described on our website) go through the same assessment and due diligence process.

I’ll end with a very important point. When we created the Fund as a multilateral financing mechanism, we were extremely careful to strike the right balance between creating a partnership that would mobilise many government funders while ensuring the Fund would make funding decisions independently. None of our funders can direct or influence which media organisations the Fund supports. All funding decisions are made under the control of an independent board made of independent experts who don’t serve any specific organisation or government. This was always absolutely central and non-negotiable. It allows [us] to shield donors from allegations of interference. But most importantly, that’s the only way to guarantee the editorial integrity and independence of the media organisations we support.

You have just announced a new round of support in Latin America. Are you planning to expand your programme in Europe as well?

Judeaux: The mandate of the Fund is to work in low and middle income countries. We don’t work in high income countries. In Europe we currently operate in four countries, in the Eastern Partnership: Armenia, Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine. We’re currently finalising a number of additional grants and we’ll be supporting a new cohort of partners in those countries.

We will also be looking at potentially expanding the set of countries in which we work in the near future. The fund is currently in its first phase of operations, but later this month, we’re going to be launching a campaign for fundraising and replenishment of our financial resources for the next phase of our development. As we raise additional funds, we’ll be able to expand geographically as well.

Now, coming back to the four countries where we work, we’re currently finalising the selection of a new cohort of grantees based on the global open call that we’ve launched on World Press Freedom Day [3 May]. And so, relatively soon, within a month or two, we’ll be announcing a new set of grants across those countries.

What is the most important lesson you have learned since the launch of the Fund?

Judeaux: The one thing we are hearing constantly from almost all our partners is how important unrestricted institutional funding is and how critical it is for them to adapt to the future and survive in contexts where they are facing a lot of pressure. That’s true in all of the Eastern European countries that I just mentioned, and it’s true globally as well. It’s the single most frequent piece of feedback that we get from the partners we work with. The acknowledgement that there is really a market gap when it comes to providing that kind of unrestricted, flexible, long-term funding, is the most important lesson to date.

What are the biggest challenges you have had to face so far?

Judeaux: We need to make difficult choices all the time. We have raised a significant amount of money for the first phase of operations, close to EUR 60 million, but this is a drop in the ocean compared to the needs. Independent journalism outlets that do really important work for society need funding, and hard decisions have to be made, because there are a lot more needs than actual funding available.

Yet the unmet need remains vast. Following the launch of two calls for proposals, the Fund received expressions of interest from over 600 organisations, requesting grant funding worth a total of US$ 120-130 million. These calls were limited in scope and applied to only a small subset of countries. Globally, the level of demand is many times higher. Scaling up the capital available for public interest media remains of paramount importance.

A second challenge, I think, has been that a lot of media organisations are now asking themselves questions around how to adjust their editorial practices to meet the audience where it’s going to consume content. That’s particularly true in case of younger audiences. We’ve tried to identify those actors that pay particular attention to trying to find ways to cater to the needs of younger audiences. This is part of a broader approach of the fund, to ensure that audience needs are at the core of how media organisations think about their work. We are trying to ensure we identify media organisations that do the best job possible to address the needs of younger and underserved audiences.

We’ve learned a lot of lessons as a community, but it’s still very complex for many organisations, especially those that have existed for some time, to design and execute a strategy by which you not only think about your distribution and your marketing, but also about the types of formats, the topics you cover, also the composition of your newsroom, and make sure you have more diversity and representation within your newsroom.

The shift that’s required to make sure you talk to everyone and address all audiences is far bigger than just thinking about meeting people on social media. Identifying and supporting those organisations which try to go through that transformation has been a challenge, but it’s a very promising area of work.

Finally, in many markets it’s hard to see a future for sustainable independent media without deeper, more structural changes. That’s why we also invest in supporting initiatives that look to create new ways to finance journalism and change the rules of the games that shape the environment independent media operate in. For instance, we’re supporting the creation of several new National Journalism Funds, such as in Sierra Leone and Brazil. We’re also working closely with actors that design models and advocate for fairer value sharing between big tech and the media.

What was the biggest success story in your programme?

Judeaux: There have been a number of media organisations we’ve supported that have highlighted that we’ve allowed them to survive and continue to play a really important role for the community in difficult times, whether it is one of the oldest community radio stations in South Africa, called Bush Radio, or whether it is independent media in Georgia, Netgazeti, or Mtisambebi. We have a number of cases where our partners have highlighted how critical core flexible funding has been to maintaining the ability of these outlets to continue their work.

However, it is not only survival that the grants provide. We also have a number of, I would say, early success stories where we see media organisations that are able to pilot innovation and roll them out in a way that’s proven very successful. Let me share a few examples.

One area relates to the point I was making earlier around transforming newsrooms. For instance, Himalmedia in Nepal has improved its reach and coverage of underreported issues affecting marginalised communities, facilitated by a fellowship programme for young journalists from underrepresented backgrounds.

Experimentation with new revenue streams has been another area of transformation to support growth and independence. For example, in Colombia, Mutante launched its production arm, Mutante Estudio, which within a year has already generated about 10% of its revenue in 2023.

Finally, we’ve also seen several of the media we support experiment very successfully with new formats and distribution strategies and grow their audiences rapidly. In Eastern Ukraine, News of Donbas’ new tailored content for social media has quickly generated a significant increase in traffic. Videos on its YouTube channels were seen over 40 million times in the first three months of the year and their newly created TikTok channel has also rapidly accrued millions of views.

Do you have any special advice for organisations that have not funded journalism yet, but are thinking about doing so?

Judeaux: I have three pieces of advice. First: do it! Do it because the integrity of our information ecosystem and the existence of independent trusted voices in the countries where your foundation or your institution is working is critical for almost anything else you want to achieve, whether you’re working on issues like social justice or climate change, you name it. It’s certain that having a healthy information ecosystem is central to achieving your goals, so investing in stronger independent media is actually instrumental in advancing your objective as a foundation or an institution.

Second, there are lots of ways to do this. Maybe you don’t feel like you have the bandwidth or the desire to create an entire programme and to build the capacity to do this, because media funding is quite complex, in the sense that you need to understand not only media, but also the politics in a given country. You need to be very careful about media capture. So if you either want to protect yourself, or don’t want to build the entire infrastructure to do this, then there is an existing structure called the International Fund, a pooled global funding mechanism that allows for organisations that care about information integrity, but might not want to develop an entire programme on media funding to be able to do that very efficiently and quickly.

Then third, invest in local capacity. The field of media development and media support has evolved a lot over the past couple of decades, and the funders that are doing the best work are those which invest in local resources and local capacity, because media is so complex and so embedded in the fabric of society and politics. Being able to work and to be driven by people that live in these environments is extremely important.

Joanna Krawczyk, Member of the Management Committee at the European Media and Information Fund (EMIF), talks about the importance of supporting fact-checking and media literacy to combat disinformation, which can disrupt democratic processes and societal stability. EMIF focuses on funding diverse, collaborative projects across Europe to strengthen these efforts.

EMIF focuses on fact-checking and media literacy initiatives. Why do you think it is important to support such initiatives in Europe?

Krawczyk: We do pay special attention to fact-checking and media literacy in Europe, and I believe that these two areas are especially crucial due to the very pervasive nature of disinformation in general. Disinformation can, and does, impact public opinion. It can disrupt democratic processes and, in turn, it can undermine societal stability. We have many geopolitical crises right now; the invasion of Russia in Ukraine; the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza; and we also have a full cycle of elections across the world. With this kind of accumulation of crucial geopolitical moments, there is an urgent need to empower citizens with the skills to read and evaluate information critically.

We believe in EMIF that the right to be informed is a human right, and being able to evaluate information, to be critical towards information that surrounds us, is also one of the skills that adds to being able to execute this human right. So, yes, fact-checking and media literacy are the areas providing us with skills that are crucial in managing the complexities of our geopolitical surroundings and circumstances.

On which regions do you focus? What kind of organisations do you support?

Krawczyk: As the very name of our fund suggests, we are a European pooled fund, which means that we have a regional focus, we do focus on European Union and EFTA [European Free Trade Association] countries and the UK. But we also extend the scope of our activities towards other countries, in the sense that we support organisations that are based in eligible European countries; however, in their projects, the scope of analysing or countering disinformation is broader. This is important to understand that we do not focus just on disinformation happening only here in Europe; we look at it on a wider scale, since disinformation disregards any geographical borders.

When it comes to the type of organisations we are supporting, they are really diverse. We support, first and foremost, independent fact-checking organisations and media literacy groups, mostly NGOs. Because we also fund research, so obviously we support academic institutions and research-focused entities. We also support independent quality media outlets.

It is important for us to value collaboration: the majority, if not all, of our funded projects are collaborative projects of at least two entities. And then, they are also very often cross-border. It is our preference to make sure that the project supported by us is addressing the challenges of not only one community, and also that the solutions designed and implemented in the project are the result of different approaches presented by different organisations. This produces an added value of joint work of different organisations from different backgrounds and with varied experiences. In short, EMIF is a European fund funding different types of independent entities.

What does the support look like? Do you provide grants, do you offer training, knowledge-sharing among grantees, etc.?

Krawczyk: In general, we were designed as a grant-making mechanism, which means that we provide financial support for projects focused on fact-checking, media literacy, and disinformation research. Since we began our operations, we have approved grants up to almost €12.5 million, and we have funded 87 projects in 26 countries. The scale of our grant-making is quite substantial on the background of European media and information funding. We believe this, and our evaluations prove we do have a big impact on the disinformation countering field. And our support is something that organisations active in this field are looking forward to.

Grant-making is the core of our activities. However, we have a few other satellite activities. We do knowledge-sharing in the form of conventions organised twice a year: EMIF conferences, usually one in the autumn and one in late spring or summer. Actually, there’s going to be one in Lisbon on the 15th and 16th of July [2024]. These are the conventions to which we’re inviting our current and past grantees, so that they can exchange knowledge and experiences and share good practices. So, we do invest in these networking and knowledge-sharing opportunities.

And, of course, EMIF is active in its expert role and we participate in different types of conferences, workshops, and seminars, speaking about our experience in disinformation countering activities. But, and this is the least visible part of our work, we also support research. We work very closely with the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, and we support academic courses and research done there by young researchers and students. The array of our activities is vast, with grant-making at the centre of it, but we want to be, and we are, active in other areas as well.

What is the most important lesson you have learned from this programme?

Krawczyk: It is something we have been discussing a lot in the previous year: global threats and more local conflicts, the pandemic, elections disruption – all the turmoil we have witnessed and experienced in the last years has showed us that the biggest challenge that we had to face was the need for rapid responses to very quickly developing or changing circumstances. It is all about the ability to react swiftly to approaching change, challenge, or threat.

We learned, and we did it the hard way, that what is really needed in funds like ours is flexibility and adaptability in responding to this fast-evolving nature of disinformation. Thus, last year, we adjusted our funding strategies for building project support, adding rapid response grant-making to address these emerging threats as well as possible. We want to ensure that the initiatives that we fund stay relevant and effective in responding to these abrupt changes in our reality.

Our revised approach allows us now for a swift mobilisation of funding and targeted interventions during critical periods, such as election cycles and some geopolitical crises.

In general, how do you assess the success of your programme? What do you deem as the biggest success story?

Krawczyk: After funding over 80 different disinformation-countering projects, it’s difficult to name just one success story. There are plenty. We generally believe that it is the big impact the projects funded by EMIF make on their communities and broader society that is our biggest success story. And every success story of our grantees is a success story of EMIF.

Of course, I have my favourite projects. There is, for example, the FRAME project, which is very timely because it has developed an AI tool transcribing and fact-checking political statements in real-time, a resource that is acutely important and needed today amidst this election cycle. There is also an amazing project from Poland that is taking emotions as the departure point for working with youth in recognising disinformation. This is a very interesting approach, quite new, I suppose, to turn to the emotional side of a human being when faced with disinformation.

And then there are also projects whose deliverables have a broader political impact. One of them is Information Laundromat, which was designed and implemented by the Alliance for Securing Democracy: their tool detecting banned Russian propaganda across hundreds of websites has been used by many think tanks, and the results of the Laundromat activity have very broadly discussed, for example, in the American Congress, and are of interest to Polish policy-makers as well.

Our impact is visible and growing, but again, I want to highlight that EMIF’s impact and our success story is always the success story of our grantees.

Do you have any special advice for organisations that have not funded journalism yet, but are thinking about doing so?

Krawczyk: The first thing I would say: don’t be afraid of it. Funding journalism, funding quality media, funding organisations that are making sure that our societies are well informed and immune to propaganda and disinformation, are all really the key to sustaining democracy, across our countries and continents. I firmly believe that this is one of our main responsibilities as citizens, but also as funders, to make sure that members of our communities well understand the disinformation processes that are happening around them, and they are equipped with tools and skilled enough to be able to respond to them adequately.

There is a great opportunity for new funders, for organisations that are new to funding journalism, to join dedicated funds like EMIF. When I analyse the philanthropic scene of Europe, I see how many shared goals and shared values EMIF has with organisations that, at first sight, have not got much in common with journalism. They do care about backsliding of democracy, equality, justice or environmental issues, and these are the areas where disinformation and propaganda are often very active; these issues are also addressed by EMIF-supporting projects countering disinformation in their fields. We believe that by supporting quality journalism and projects that are fighting disinformation, malign foreign interference and propaganda spreading, such organisations will also support their own goals.

In my view, we haven’t explored the whole potential of cross-cutting goals of EMIF and philanthropic organisations, multilaterals, corporates and government funding. The time to start joining forces is now.

Mia Vukojević, Program Director for the Western Balkans at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, emphasises the crucial role of supporting independent media in fostering democracy. The Fund aims to strengthen democratic governance, accountability, and transparency in a region marked by political fragility, in part through investigative journalism.

Why is it important for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund to support media in Europe?

Vukojević: The Rockefeller Brothers Fund identified the Western Balkans as one of the regions we consider a pivotal place for our focus areas: democracy, peace and climate. We believe that there cannot be true democracy without strong independent media. In situations where democracy is as weak or fragile as it is in the Balkans, supporting independent media, investigative journalists, and other media organisations is absolutely critical to strengthening democracy.

What kind of news organisations do you support?

Vukojević: We mostly support investigative media organisations and independent media that cover the topics we focus on, such as democracy, governance, accountability, transparency, peace, and climate, […] around 15 organisations in four countries in the Balkans. They are all reasonably small organisations. In addition to that, we support two of their networks: Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN).

Are you in touch directly with your grantees or do you work with implementers? What do you think are the advantages of these approaches?

Vukojević: We’re not that big of a funder; our budget for the Balkans is USD 4.15 million a year. Given that, we see the value in direct relationships with the organisations. We mostly support them directly, give them very flexible general support grants over a longer period of time and build direct relationships. We rarely fund projects and we don’t ask for project proposals—we support organisations for all of their work.

This is partly a question of capacity. If we had a lot more money, we would likely also contribute to some of the pooled funds. In addition to direct grants to organisations, we do provide a grant to Slaviko Curuvija Foundation, a national foundation in Serbia that funds super-small local media and individual journalists, which we would not be able to fund directly. I think both approaches have advantages and disadvantages. I think the biggest advantage of working directly is that, as a funder, you get to know the people at the media organisations you fund, you build relationships, you trust each other. Then it’s much easier to give general support grants, which are much more flexible than it would be through the intermediaries. I think the advantage of working through intermediaries would be that you can process much more funding and give more grants. You can reach organisations that would normally be too small for you.

What is the most important lesson you have learned from this program?

Vukojević: I think it’s the importance of long-term support. Not expecting that things will change overnight, not expecting that investigative journalism will yield results in changing the system and making it more accountable immediately. The need for funders to stay for the longer term and be flexible is very important. Journalists need to be able to work on stories, however long it takes. They need to be able to own the stories and be responsive. If we are truly good practice funders, we should fund them that way: flexible, long-term. This brings the best results.

What are the biggest challenges you have had to face so far? How do you respond to these challenges?

Vukojević: One of the challenges is that the funding is generally quite scarce for independent investigative journalism work, so there is always far more need than available funding. This makes choosing who you fund, and why and how, more difficult.

There is also [the issue of] dealing with the consequences of this work for grantees. Investigative and independent journalism often puts journalists in danger. Some of them work in extremely difficult environments. They get exposed to SLAPPs [Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation]. Their reputation is slandered. Some get physically attacked. Sometimes even being connected to us may expose them to challenges because we are an American foundation, and foreign funding is increasingly villainised.

It is very hard to do much about that as a funder. Our grantees are independent organisations. They realise what they’re getting themselves into and take these risks consciously. Sometimes, they need help beyond what we can provide. It is especially difficult when our grantees and their partners are personally attacked. In many of these organisations, the majority of journalists are women, and the attacks they suffer are unconscionable.

On a more positive note, what was the biggest success story? In general, how do you assess the success or impact of your programs?

Vukojević: The Balkans region is full of irresponsible, corrupt politicians. The people working in investigative media have, over the last 10 years, exposed the actions of many of those people. These journalists have worked so hard that now every citizen in the Western Balkans region has easily accessible information about properties their politicians own, buy, and hold; the big corruptive deals they’ve made on public procurement and infrastructure; their connections to organised crime. These politicians would deny it, but it is now well-evidenced and indisputable.

There are many examples of public officials, including ministers, having to resign or being prosecuted after being exposed for doing something that they should not have done.

This is a really big success in terms of the big picture and long-term thinking. The change is slow. It often takes a long time, and there are difficulties with the institutions that don’t always act or prosecute quickly, but it is happening. I’m very proud of our grantees for everything they have achieved so far. And there is still, of course, so much more to do. I am looking forward to seeing where they take it.

Do you have any special advice for organisations that have not yet funded journalism but are considering doing so?

Vukojević: I usually start by saying “you can’t be serious about working for democracy if you are not supporting independent journalism.” That’s number one. Number two, if you do fund journalism, please do not do projects, log frames, six-month funding. These journalists are experts and they need general support to their organisations so that they can make decisions, take action, and pivot as they see necessary. Trust them. You will be amazed to see what they can achieve.