Grants for now, not forever

Making the case for non-commercial funding in independent media’s capital stack.

News media funding discussions typically take place in one of two separate worlds, with very little traffic between them. The first conversation focuses on grants, subsidies and philanthropic support for nonprofit or donor-funded outlets that may depend indefinitely on external funding. The other dialogue is held in the language of commercial or impact investment, principally in the form of debt and equity finance for news media outlets assumed to be capable of becoming viable businesses. Despite these separate domains, people in both would generally say they share similar goals and aspirations for the important role of independent media in healthy societies, but the frameworks for evaluating potential beneficiaries, the terminology used and even the conferences people attend are often strikingly different.

The evidence from the European media outlets reviewed for this project points to a more nuanced reality. Grants, philanthropic funding and public subsidies often play a catalytic and enabling role in the development of media organizations that later become financially independent and attract external investment.

The relevant question therefore for entities looking for finance is not whether independent media should focus on securing grants or investment funding, but how each form of funding can perform a different function at a different stage of organizational development. Across the sampled outlets, grants and state-subsidized instruments rarely acted as the core engine of long-term viability; commercial revenue and investment sources did that. But these instruments often bridged the journey to independence, seeding launches, underwriting technology, de-risking ambitious reporting and supporting product and audience infrastructure. Thinking expansively about how grants and subsidies can play an enabling, pro-commercial role is a novel and potentially fruitful way for grant-making media development agencies to evolve their activity, in the right circumstances.

A spectrum of instruments, not a single category

Our analysis revealed that the term ‘grant funding’ covers a wide range of instruments. We identified six broad types of grant/subsidy, or indirect financial support, which shaped the development of companies in the sample:

Although the wide range of instruments and funding entities is interesting, two dimensions help structure thinking about how they operated and the role they played: time-boundaries, meaning whether support was one-off or recurring; and purpose-specification, meaning whether it was unrestricted or tied to a particular initiative. These dimensions matter because the strongest evidence for a catalytic role appears where support either covered a risky early stage of company development, or funded capabilities that later helped an outlet build commercial revenue. For funders considering non-investment support with a view to longer-term investability, targeted thinking about when and for what to offer support is important. There is no universally right answer here: sometimes a news outlet requires help with a very specific aspect of its development; on other occasions, unrestricted working capital is exactly what a growing enterprise needs.

Grants at different stages of development

For several outlets in our study, non-commercial finance acted as founding capital. CORRECTIV began with a €25,000 investment plus, as founder David Schraven recounts, a €3 million start-up grant from the Brost-Stiftung, disbursed over three years against need, after roughly six months of negotiation. OKO.press launched as a foundation on private grants from two existing media outlets and one private donation. Contexte put nine people on payroll against just €100,000 of equity, carried to a large extent by a €1 million non-repayable grant over its first two years from the Google-funded French press innovation fund (FINP, the national forerunner of GNI), alongside roughly €200,000 of French public press aid in year one.

The Kyiv Independent combined its massively successful crowdfunding with grants from the NED, EED, and smaller contributions from the International Renaissance Foundation (part of the Soros/Open Society network) and IMS; founders reported the grant total was enough to cover salaries for the first year. Follow the Money received a €90,000 grant and a matching €90,000 loan from the Dutch Journalism Fund (SVDJ), and De Correspondent, after its crowdfunded launch, drew investment, loan and grant elements totaling roughly €950,000 from Stichting Democratie en Media.

In most of these cases, grant and concessional capital did not purport to be the long-term funding model. Rather, it created the time and organizational base from which a self-sufficient financial model could be developed. This is a common pattern in the sample: grants can absorb early-stage risk and give promising but fragile ventures enough room to build audiences, products and revenue systems.

Purpose-specific grants and the infrastructure of independence

The clearest example of purpose-specific funding is Google’s DNI/GNI support, which was principally aimed at subscription and audience infrastructure development rather than newsrooms.

In addition to Contexte, Denník N also received roughly €1 million across four years in several tranches, effectively its only major grant funding, to build the open-source REMP subscription and CRM platform now used by other publishers, including Magyar Jeti and Telegram in this cohort (see more in the last chapter). CORRECTIV used a €500,000 DNI grant to fund some of the cost of its CrowdNewsroom tool. Magyar Jeti / 444.hu received north of €100,000 to build a crowdfunding platform for content that later became the backbone of its membership infrastructure. Brief Media took about €183,000 in large part from Google’s French fund, FINP, plus further Alphabet grants of €20,000 and €30,000 to integrate Subscribe with Google. Follow the Money took DNI money to extend its reader-engagement work, and Krautreporter, Zetland and OKO.press were Google grantees as well.

This evidence is important because it shows grants operating as investment-like support for the capabilities required for financial independence: subscription systems, audience analytics, product development, technology infrastructure and reader-engagement tools. Where such funding is tied to infrastructure rather than recurring operating needs, it can help outlets build the commercial base that later reduces dependence on external subsidies.

Recurring support, concessional debt and the limits of the model

A second cluster relied on standing state schemes as ongoing revenue. Brief.me is the clearest case, as a recipient of France’s pluralism support and the Strategic Fund for Press Development (FSDP), plus an emergence grant and apprenticeship aid. Contexte has also benefited. Zetland has drawn Danish mediestøtte media support since 2016, benefited from the 2019 digital-subscription VAT exemption, and took a state-backed Vækstfonden growth loan in 2018, repaid by 2020. Follow the Money receives structural/core funding from SVDJ, while De Correspondent reports only a small, roughly 1 percent, national media-fund contribution. CORRECTIV in Germany also took state money repeatedly over the year, but it was always restricted to media literacy, tech development and ecosystem support.

In some instances, concessional and mission-aligned debt also sits alongside grants in the sample. Brief Media’s loans from the state-linked IFCIC, SVDJ’s loan to Follow the Money, Contexte’s €250,000 state-guaranteed loan and SDM’s subordinated loans to De Correspondent show that the boundary between subsidy and investment is not always precisely defined. These examples are especially relevant to a broader capital-stack perspective: support for independent media can include a mix of grants, loans, public schemes, mission-driven investment and commercial debt, each with different expectations and risks.

The data also contains important exceptions. Some outlets consciously avoided certain kinds of support, especially state funding, typically on the grounds of concerns about independence. Mediapart took essentially no grants, apart from a single national media-fund research grant. OKO.press refuses Polish state and municipal grants but has accepted EU and foreign private funding, including Norway EEA grants. Denník N also steers clear of state funding. (Read more on what institutional money publishers found acceptable, and what they refused, in the chapter on threat perception.)

These exceptions do not weaken the case for catalytic grant funding; they clarify it. Grants and subsidies can be useful on the road to independence, but the terms, source and governance of that support matter. Editorial and operational independence are centrally important to all the businesses in our sample. Sometimes protecting this independence means turning down offers of support; at other times it means disciplined choices about what funding is accepted, for what purpose and under what conditions.

Grants recede as audiences and revenues scale

For most companies in the sample the financial significance of grant funding declined as paying audiences began to scale. CORRECTIV identifies around 2024 as the first year in which audience donations exceeded grant funding. At Recorder, readers now supply more than three-quarters of revenue, and grants only a small fraction. For The Kyiv Independent, Contexte, Magyar Jeti and De Correspondent, grant or grant-like institutional funding decreased significantly as audience revenue grew. In fact, there are only two ventures in the entire cohort where the share of non-commercial funding has grown since launch, but even in those cases it hovers between 30 percent and 40 percent.

The media outlets that scaled most convincingly used non-commercial vehicles early, or for specific development purposes, and then reduced their share of revenue while carefully guarding operational and editorial independence.

Analogies from other sectors

The argument that grants can be catalytic rather than permanently sustaining is not unique to media. Much of the modern technology sector emerged from publicly funded or grant-supported innovation ecosystems. Core technologies underpinning the early internet, GPS, artificial intelligence and smartphones were initially developed with government-backed research funding before becoming the basis for globally profitable private industries. Venture capital later scaled innovations that had already been substantially de-risked through public support.

Open-source software provides a related analogy. Many commercially successful technology companies were built on projects that initially relied on grants, university funding or philanthropic support. Organizations within the Linux ecosystem, Mozilla, and numerous cybersecurity and digital infrastructure projects benefited from non-commercial funding during their formative stages because monetization models were uncertain and market adoption needed time to develop. Once trust, scale and utility were established, viable commercial models followed.

Climate technology is also instructive. Governments and philanthropies routinely use grants, subsidies and blended finance to bridge the ‘valley of death’ between innovation and commercial sustainability. Early subsidy was not evidence that the sector lacked commercial potential; it was recognition that socially valuable industries often require temporary catalytic support before markets mature. Independent journalism can be understood in similar terms: as a public-interest sector capable of producing commercially sustainable businesses, but one that often requires patient, risk-tolerant capital during its early stages to take root.

Implications for early-stage media outlets and their funders

For independent media businesses that wish to become financially independent, the evidence suggests that grants are best thought of as part of a broader capital stack, not as a permanent destination, with a role that evolves over time. The strongest cases are those in which grant or subsidized capital is attached to a clear stage of development, a specific capability gap, or a pathway toward greater revenue resilience. That can mean using early support to launch, using platform grants to build audience-revenue infrastructure, or using concessional debt and mission-aligned capital alongside crowdfunding, reader revenue and other commercial sources.

For media development entities, it is important to stress that the argument here is not that all grant-making should become investment-like. In many instances media development funding plays a vital role in allowing independent media to function where there is no credible medium-term prospect of financial self-sufficiency; support for Belarusian media in exile is a good example. Much media development activity is rightly focused on supporting media outlets through grant funding precisely because the political and operating circumstances mean commercial models are all but impossible. But in other countries, and in the right circumstances, well-targeted grants can be a decisive step on the journey to genuine financial independence. That framing implies a conceptual shift from ‘grants forever’ to ‘grants for independence’. It can also necessitate a shift in how media development entities design financial support programs, how beneficiaries are evaluated, and how grants are disbursed.

In practical terms, some funders are beginning to supplement traditional democratic-impact assessments with evaluations of organizational and commercial potential. Alongside mission and public value, they might assess audience growth opportunities, reader revenue potential, product-market fit, leadership capability, operational maturity and the plausibility of achieving break-even within a realistic timeframe. The structure of grants may also need to evolve: rather than funding editorial production alone, grants could support other aspects of organizational growth such as subscription systems, audience analytics, product development, technology infrastructure, commercial leadership, marketing or revenue diversification. Milestone-based funding models common in start-up and impact-investing ecosystems could reward progress toward measurable sustainability goals while maintaining strong public-interest safeguards.

Adopting a more venture-oriented approach does not require abandoning public-interest principles. Funders can continue to prioritize editorial independence, accountability, underserved communities, local reporting, investigative journalism and civic impact. The objective is not to turn journalism into a purely profit-maximizing enterprise. It is to recognize that sustainability and democratic value are often mutually reinforcing. Financial resilience should not be viewed as secondary to editorial mission, but rather a core component of press freedom.

Conclusion

Not every independent news organization will become commercially sustainable, just as not every start-up succeeds. But that is not an argument against catalytic funding. Across technology, climate innovation and other creative industries, investors and public funders accept that early-stage risk is necessary to create long-term value. This is also the evidence from the media sector businesses in our sample. Viewed this way, grants are not evidence that independent media are fundamentally uninvestable. On the contrary, grants and subsidies may be among the most effective tools available for helping public-interest journalism move from fragility to genuine independence.