Case Study

Funding non-traditional news sources and creators for impact

September 24, 2025

Screenshots from the content creators who partnered with Every Voice, Every Vote to post civic information about Philadelphia — Every Voice, Every Vote used social media ambassadors to drive engagement and poll people about key issues in Philadelphia.

This post is part of “Building a Thriving News Ecosystem,” a series from Knight Communities Network, a Lenfest Institute community of practice for local funders creating thriving news ecosystems.

Place-based funders who want to boost their local news ecosystems increasingly are supporting more than just traditional newsrooms. Now, they are turning to civic organizations, nonprofits, content creators, and other non-traditional storytellers to provide the information that communities need.

One example is the social media ambassadors program that has been part of the Every Voice, Every Vote project managed by The Lenfest Institute and focused on civic information and engagement. In the first iteration of the ambassadors program, which took place in the run-up to Philadelphia’s municipal elections in 2023, there were 59 social media ambassadors who made 371 social posts to reach 883,000 Philadelphia residents – an audience that was 70% ages 18 to 34 and 72% BIPOC.

In the second iteration of the program, Every Voice, Every Vote worked with more than 20 content creators, most of whom do not typically post about civic information, but say they are garnering traction as they weave it in with their regular posts. In many cases, non-traditional storytellers may be more connected to audiences that traditional media often misses.

Why this matters

More research is pointing to the importance of these storytellers. A recent study from Commoner for Press Forward found that there are three types of information stewards in communities, including local news providers, civic promoters (government agencies, libraries, faith-based organizations) and community catalysts (motivated residents, activists and content creators).

Projects like the Colorado News Mapping Project have expanded their definitions of news sources to include government agencies, community organizations, Instagram accounts, and Facebook pages. The Public Source “creator map” identifies trusted messengers in the Pittsburgh region working across a variety of mediums that can potentially serve as partners.

“Our intent is not to weigh the reliability or quality of the information disseminated, but to pinpoint for the first time what Coloradans themselves have told us are their local sources of community information,” said Corey Hutchins, Journalism Institute Manager at Colorado College, in a post about the Colorado map he helped create.

So if you’re a funder looking to support these non-traditional information sources, where do you start? And how do you avoid pitfalls? Below are tips based on conversations with funders who have experience making these kinds of investments.

1. Do your research, or find a knowledgeable consultant.

Building on the findings from the Colorado News Mapping Project, Hutchins helped advise Gary Community Ventures as they launched an innovative grant program to fund journalists and creative storytellers covering child care issues in Colorado. As this was a new program for the funder, they knew they would need to do research and bring on experts to help them get started. They also had polling data that helped them identify eight priority audiences to reach and educate on the subject.

“It really started with a highly intentional design,” said Will Holden, director of communications and storytelling at Gary Community Ventures. “We had a big design session, with one third of the room being journalists, creatives, storytellers, marketers, and communicators. Another third were early childhood experts who deeply understand the problem, and another third were folks who understand the audiences we were trying to reach.”

A flow chart showing how Gary Community Ventures organized its grant program for narrative change around child care issues

The group, consisting of more than 50 folks, were able to identify three important narrative content categories: “everyone relies on someone who relies on child care,” “made possible by child care” and “child care champions.” The program received 57 applicants and will use a cohort model to support grantees as the project progresses this fall.

2. Get out in the community and leverage your networks.

Another important aspect of research is actually getting out into communities to better understand the players in the non-traditional news ecosystem. The New Jersey Civic Information Consortium has been supporting newsrooms and other kinds of storytellers since its inception by the state legislature in 2018. But it had a problem: how to ensure statewide participation, even in the most rural and economically disadvantaged areas of the state. The solution was to partner with knowledgeable people in those areas and get out into the community.

Ayinde Merrill, program partner at the Consortium, said that they decided to focus on Salem, a small rural town, to demonstrate the approach. With assistance from the Community Foundation of South Jersey, local connections were made to talk to residents, activists, government officials, and faith leaders at a local diner.

“It took multiple months of discussion with these community members,” Merrill said. “We realized that before we could find out who leads the project, we needed to figure out the what – what does it look like? We worked with the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University to put together an information needs survey, conducted during a church-led community picnic, asking residents how they get their news.” Local folks were hired to be on an engagement outreach team and were able to obtain 160 responses to the survey in a city of 5,000 people.

The survey helped the Consortium and Salem residents and officials to find a trusted local nonprofit, Hopeloft, that had been training students to run a publication called Follow South Jersey. Funding from the Consortium and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation led to a podcast, newsletter and weekly news output.

3. Be sure to track metrics and impact.

Tracking success depends on what kind of content your storytellers put out and your objective. In Philadelphia, the Every Voice, Every Vote social media ambassadors were evaluated through social media engagement metrics and how many folks they helped sign up for polls. In Colorado, the child care initiative not only had grant applications for journalists and storytellers, but also for data collectors and analysts to help gauge the impact of the program.

The North Carolina Local News Lab Fund, the home of both North Carolina Press Forward local chapters, has been funding various non-traditional news sources, including the WNC Health Network for public health communications and You Can Vote for voting education. When it comes to metrics, Lizzy Hazeltine, director of the Lab, says that they use the same ones as with newsrooms.

Thanks to funding from the NC Local News Lab Fund, You Can Vote helps educate voters. Pictured is You Can Vote Civic Fellow Charmaine (left) from UNC-Chapel Hill with a voter at a Juneteenth Black Farmers Market event in Greensboro. Photo courtesy of You Can Vote

“The same definition of success holds across our portfolio: helping people in NC find, trust and use the local news and information they need to thrive,” she said. “Often, community-based organizations use our funding to reinforce their communications staffing that enables them to develop and deliver useful, verified information tailored to their communities.”

4. Open-mindedness is key.

When taking the leap to fund non-traditional information sources, don’t be afraid to experiment and fail. In New Jersey’s underserved areas, Merrill says they had to take some risks, and that not every grant can be a home run.

“We’ve had failed grants before, but that can’t stop you from taking chances on a community,” he said. “Communities deserve it. Too often they have been excluded from this industry, so I believe they deserve that grace and leeway to figure it out.”

Final takeaways & next steps

Be patient and deliberate: It’s not easy to start working with new types of grantees, especially those that might work on platforms that aren’t familiar to you. That’s why baseline research and bringing in experts makes such a big difference. Widen your timeline to consider long-term gains. “The ongoing invitation for funders is to see how many different types of organizations together can reach and serve our communities,” said Hazeltine, “and to fund a wide-ranging group of organizations patiently over time.”

Work with local consultants when possible: For the Every Voice, Every Vote social ambassadors program, switching from a national communications consultant to a local firm ended up providing tailored local expertise at a more reasonable price point, said Shawn Mooring, head of Philadelphia programs at The Lenfest Institute.

Partnering can lead to a bigger impact: In South Jersey, when the Consortium was having community meetings with Hopeloft, they invited a program officer from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Not only did the Foundation end up matching the Consortium’s grant in Salem, but they also gave an additional $900,000 to Hopeloft to replicate the project in other communities in South Jersey. Similarly in Colorado, Gary Community Ventures has brought in two additional funders for the child care project and might even attract a third funder, potentially doubling the funding (and impact) from the initial offering.

Share what you learn so other funders can follow: Funders often feel like they are working in silos within each community. But with networks like the Press Forward local chapters, there are opportunities to share knowledge in working groups and conferences. In Colorado, Gary Community Ventures hired a consultant to help them run the cohorts of grantees, and eventually share lessons learned with other funders. “At the back end of this process, we will create a playbook for other funders to show them what this process looks like, and show them how they can activate something like this in their own communities,” said Holden.