Thanks to 179 generous donors The Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism – Iowa Watch was able to raise $21,214 during its end-of-year News Match fund drive.
Of that total, $19,021 was matched by the Fund for Nonprofit News at The Miami Foundation. The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Democracy Fund, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation provided funds for the News Match drive for Institute for Nonprofit News members. IowaWatch is a member of the Institute for Nonprofit News, a consortium of nonprofit news organizations in the United States that, for this drive, provided fund-raising training and support. [Ed note: This paragraph was updated March 13, 2018, to reflect IowaWatch’s receipt of the News Match funds.]
The grant will be used to fund news reporting.
The News Match guidelines called for matching up to $1,000 for each individual donation to IowaWatch. A few businesses donated and a handful of individual donations exceeded $1,000 during the fund drive that ran from Oct. 1 through Dec. 31, 2017.
“I cannot express my humble and sincere thanks enough,” Lyle Muller, the center’s executive director, said. “I speak on behalf of the board, whose members donated generously to this fund drive as well, and all of us at IowaWatch when I say we couldn’t produce high-caliber journalism and train our next generation of journalists without this kind of support.”
The News Match fund drive response compares with 56 individuals and six businesses donating during a similar fund drive at the end of 2016 and start of 2017. That fund drive raised $15,030, of which $9,530 was eligible for a match from the Knight Foundation.
The increased support was especially critical as funding or The Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism – IowaWatch shifted in 2017 to new supporters. The center produces investigative and community affairs journalism in collaboration with other news organizations and works with college student journalists to produce in-depth news stories at a high, ethical level.
In addition to IowaWatch.org, 120 news outlets republished or aired an IowaWatch story 1,475 times in 2017. One of those outlets was HuffPost, which selected IowaWatch as its Iowa news partner for a “Listen to America” tour that was in Des Moines, Iowa, in early October. Recently, the nonprofit Hechinger Report selected IowaWatch as its Iowa media partner.
Also, the top five IowaWatch stories written in 2017 drew 160 percent more unique visitors to IowaWatch.org than the top five IowaWatch stories written in 2016. All of IowaWatch.org’s posts originated in 2017 drew 325 percent more unique visitors than posts originating in 2016.
To learn more about The Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism-IowaWatch’s supporters go to this link. The center is an independent, 501(c)(3) non-profit and non-partisan journalistic program dedicated to producing high quality investigative journalism while training journalism students on this work at a high, ethical level.
