Guest Essay

Lenfest News Philanthropy Summit: The biggest challenge in news fundraising isn't fundraising

By Briana Crane

July 22, 2026

This essay is part of a series of reflections from the 2026 Lenfest News Philanthropy Summit sharing insights, lessons learned, and key takeaways from the conference, which was hosted in partnership with Press Forward. Access additional Summit resources here. 

When I recently asked a donor what inspired their support for independent news, they answered:

“I feel like I owe you the same monthly payment I make for my other subscriptions.”

It’s a fair and revealing answer. It’s also practical, transactional, and lacks imagination.

I’ve heard versions of the same reply many times. People value independent news and even rely on it. But many still think about supporting it the way they think about paying for The New York Times or Netflix and not the same the way they think about giving to a school, a food bank, or a hospital.

That may be part of why individual giving makes up only about one-third of revenue for independent news organizations, even as it accounts for nearly 80% of philanthropic revenue across the broader nonprofit sector.

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I joined the AP Fund for Journalism a year ago after two decades in nonprofit development. I expected to apply strategies that worked well in other sectors. Some of my earliest conversations with prospective supporters caught me off guard: People I believed would have a natural affinity for our mission and independent news told me they weren’t sure philanthropy even belonged in the future of news.

That conversation changed how I thought about the work ahead. We aren’t just building fundraising programs. We are establishing a new category of philanthropy in the minds of people who don’t yet see it as one.

Readers who don’t trust a newsroom’s independence, or don’t understand its impact, rarely graduate beyond “subscriber.” The Wyncote Foundation’s recent report makes a clear point: editorial credibility and fundraising strategy are inseparable, and localized philanthropic support will only become more essential to the resilience of independent news.

That raises a bigger question: how do we build legitimacy for a cause that many people don’t yet recognize as a cause at all?

Many of us are building individual giving programs without much precedent in an industry that is evolving rapidly. News organizations often have small development teams, and few fundraisers have colleagues inside their own organizations who have faced the same questions.

How do you help a loyal reader see themselves as a philanthropist to your mission? How do you make a major gift ask when someone thinks of themself primarily as a news consumer? How do you talk about legacy giving in an industry whose own future is still being rewritten?

Those questions are too important, and too new, for any one organization to answer alone. That’s why one of the most valuable investments in our field may be our opportunities to learn from one another.

At the Lenfest News Philanthropy Summit, Marcia Parker of The New York Times and Steve Katz of UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism facilitated a peer group of more than 20 talented development professionals. The conversations were open, practical, and generous. The Lenfest Institute plans to continue to support the group’s meetings to share strategies, resources, challenges, and successes. That ongoing community may ultimately matter as much as any single fundraising tactic shared during the Summit.

Since joining this field, I’ve reached out to dozens of colleagues and have yet to meet anyone unwilling to take a call, share ideas, or help think through a challenge. In a profession where many of us are creating the playbook as we go, that generosity is a great advantage. If we openly share what works and what doesn’t work, we will make the entire field smarter and accelerate the movement to help normalize individual philanthropy as a sustainable source of support for news.

I came into this industry knowing how to raise money. What I’ve learned is that the harder challenge is helping people see that independent news is a public necessity worthy of their philanthropy.

That is a challenge none of us should have to solve alone.

Briana Crane is the Vice President of Individual Giving for AP Fund for Journalism.