Templates & Tips: Securing match funds from your community
NewsMatch offers an effective pathway for participating newsrooms to secure large contributions from major donors, foundations, and small businesses in the form of "community" or “local” match funds.
Community or local matches are donations or pledges that newsrooms secure on their own to increase the total amount of dollars matched by individuals during your NewsMatch campaign.
Check out curated templates and materials to help you make your case below.
Guide: Community (or "local") match donor cycle
This guide walks through a simplified fundraising model to help you secure larger gifts. It all begins with identifying your donor the learning more about them in the cultivating stage. Afterward, you make an ask and be sure to stay engaged through stewardship.
Email language to cultivate prospects
When an email is appropriate, use it. Here is sample language for you or your board members to use when cultivating with potential community match partners.
NewsMatch One-Pagers
As you're meeting with funders, it can be helpful to attach a brief document to tell them about your organization and NewsMatch. We've got two one-pager templates for you to build off of:
- Topic area case making (i.e. education, criminal justice, etc.)
- Geographic case making (i.e. your city, state, or region).
Feel free to plug-in-play or build off of the copy in these templates to create your own version in your newsroom's style and voice.
Pledge Form Template
A pledge form is used to document a donor's intent to make a contribution to your organization. While not required, they are particularly helpful when asking supporters to commit matching gifts.
A pledge (or letter of intent) to match donations is typically signed before the campaign ends, while funds are generally disbursed after the campaign, when the intended goal has been successfully achieved.
Articles to cite
- Nonprofit Quarterly: NewsMatch Helps Local Nonprofit Newsrooms Raise Millions (May 14, 2024)
- Local News Matters: It’s going to take a multifaceted approach to save informed communities with INN’s Karen Rundlet (September 19, 2024)
- Institute for Nonprofit News: 10 years of NewsMatch: Smarter fundraising, more funders, record support for nonprofit news (March 28, 2025)
- Inside Philanthropy: Journalism Fundraising Program NewsMatch Had Its Most Successful Year Yet. Here’s Why (April 14, 2025)
- Nieman Lab: Nonprofit news remains “heavily dependent on philanthropic funding,” study finds (April 29, 2025)
Ways to message community matches to your audience
- Scripts: Looking for ways to message an additional match to your audience? Here are a few scripts based on the type of additional match you have secured.
- Newsroom examples: View these examples of how newsrooms have messaged local matches and partner funds during past campaigns.
Lessons learned from the field
- Sahan Journal: Check out this case study on how Sahan Journal, a news startup for and about immigrants and people of color, leveraged NewsMatch to increase donations year-round. Skip to page 11 to read what lessons they learned.
- The Honolulu Civil Beat, The GroundTruth Project, and Montana Free Press: During our summer webinar series in 2020, we heard tips from The Honolulu Civil Beat, The GroundTruth Project, and Montana Free Press about how to triple support for your NewsMatch campaign by securing local matches (or an additional match funder). Check out the recording from this webinar to get some ideas on how you could approach potential funders.