Tiny News Collective is proud to announce a new round of Immediate Needs Fund grants to support member newsrooms navigating urgent operational and community challenges. Each of the newly selected outlets will receive $5,000, for a total of $100,000, continuing the fund’s mission to provide rapid, targeted support that helps small and emerging news organizations stay resilient amid shifting economic, political and audience pressures. The fund is supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
As with the last round of grants, a team of media professionals served as grant reviewers, scoring applications based on a rubric we identified at the outset. The criteria included the urgency of the request and the connection of the request to meeting a community or organizational need. Many thanks to Richard Brown of Wisconsin Watch, Tom Davidson of Penn State University, Nation Hahn, Ashton Lattimore, Shawn Mooring of the Lenfest Institute for Journalism, Anna Nirmala and Ashley Woods Branch for their help.
This new round of grantees includes:
“Our members are building newsrooms in some of the most challenging environments, often with limited resources and an urgent mandate from their communities,” said Amy L. Kovac-Ashley, executive director of Tiny News Collective. “The Immediate Needs Fund allows us to step in when a small investment can prevent a setback, accelerate momentum or open the door to new possibilities. This kind of timely support can be the difference between a newsroom pausing its work and one that continues to inform, uplift and connect the people it serves.”
Across this cohort, grantees will use the funding to stabilize day-to-day operations, strengthen their infrastructure and meet immediate community information needs. For some, that means securing essential back-office support. One outlet, for example, will use the funding to hire a contract grant writer, a critical step toward maintaining operations in 2026. Another will direct its grant toward building basic systems, launching a website and bringing on temporary administrative help — freeing founders to deepen community relationships and focus on programming. Still another will use the funding to fill a salary gap, ensuring that important local coverage continues uninterrupted. For others, the funding offers the chance to build capacity for deeper reporting and engagement on emergent community information needs, such as multilingual workshops that empower communities to access information.
“Local newsrooms are often the first to feel the impact of economic uncertainty, yet they remain essential to the health and cohesion of their communities,” said Silvia Rivera, director of local news at MacArthur Foundation. “What we see through this program is how far even a modest, well-timed investment can go, giving founders the breathing room to innovate, meet urgent needs and keep their audiences informed.”
Collectively, these investments reflect the diverse and evolving needs of local news founders working at small scale but with enormous impact. By providing rapid support for essential operations, audience engagement and community-driven programming, the Immediate Needs Fund helps ensure that these newsrooms can continue informing, connecting and empowering their communities during critical moments.
Along with our earlier Spark Fund and Immediate Needs Fund grants, Tiny News Collective regranted $200,000 to members in 2025. Congratulations to all our grantees. 💗
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