When federal immigration agents flooded the Twin Cities earlier this year as part of “Operation Metro Surge,” local newsrooms scrambled to cover what was unfolding.
It was a moment when local news mattered — when it could report what was happening, show how it was affecting communities across the region and have the resources to do it.
Press Forward Minnesota moved quickly, too.
Within a week, the philanthropic coalition was mobilizing to support local news organizations. In the end, it raised $700,000 from both national and regional funders and started to deploy it just as quickly.
One critical early step: The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation recognized what was happening and reached out to Press Forward Minnesota to help kickstart the effort, seeding the fund with $200,000 within 24 hours, and helping bring other funders on board. The goal was to get money into the field as quickly as possible.
That kind of speed is rare in philanthropy.
If you’ve read or listened to anything about local news funding in recent years, you’ve probably heard one goal enthusiastically proclaimed: getting funding to move at the speed of news. It’s a line that usually elicits applause at gatherings, and is the signature ethos of Knight President and CEO Maribel Pérez Wadsworth’s tenure. After all, philanthropy can be notoriously slow-moving at a time when the challenges facing local news simply can’t wait.
But what does it actually take to make that happen?
Press Forward Minnesota offers one answer.
I spoke with Tim Murphy, co-lead of Press Forward Minnesota and a program officer at the McKnight Foundation, and May Yang, director of Press Forward Minnesota and director of democracy programs at the Minnesota Council on Foundations, about what it took to move that quickly — and what funders can do now to prepare for the next crisis.
Here’s how they did it.
1. Set up a rapid response fund for newsrooms and journalists
To respond quickly, the team needed to put some basic infrastructure in place.
One initial, critical step was creating the ability to absorb a large influx of money from local and national funders. Doing this took staffing and decision-making: What organization will take the funds? Who takes the lead?
In Minnesota, the decision was to manage it through Press Forward Minnesota and house it at the Minnesota Council on Foundations, a statewide association of grantmakers that had experience with rapid-response pooled funding including during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This allowed them to simultaneously fundraise and move those dollars to newsrooms within a week, “which in the world of philanthropy, as you know, never happens,” Murphy said. Otherwise, “these dollars would have essentially been useless.”
Yang said that the legal team was critical in getting the fund off the ground, helping the team be clear and precise in their grant language and what they could legally offer in order to defend and support the community.
Funders should think about what they need, internally, in place, “even without having the dollars in hand. Just to be ready,” Murphy said. “Talk with your boards and your staff to make sure that’s just some sort of latent capacity that you have ready to deploy if need be.”
2. Build and listen to your network
Any rapid response strategy requires understanding what the moment means and what it needs. To answer these questions, the team leaned on its existing network of relationships with newsrooms and other community grantees.
In Minnesota, those relationships spanned a range of organizations, including the Immigrant Defense Network, faith-based organizations, food pantries and constitutional observers. It was invaluable for them to anticipate and understand the scale and impact of what was happening, and have the confidence to know how and when to act.
“We had early reports (about) what was actually happening,” Murphy said. “Before media was picking it up, we were hearing directly from impacted residents. So it was kind of this continuum to where, by the time it really ramped up in January, there was no question in our mind what was happening. It was just becoming visible to the broader public.”
Relationships from two years of local news grantmaking also proved invaluable.
Funders can start building those relationships now, Murphy said, by talking to newsrooms about what they would need when certain scenarios unfold, and then keep those communications pathways open.
Those conversations can surface needs that can be funded now that will help when a major news story hits. One example: digital safety and security, which has become a critical need for newsrooms as more reporters are targeted and doxxed, and can hit a crisis point when a major news story attracts national attention.
“You can be funding that right now, and you should be funding that right now,” Murphy said.
3. Plan for rapid communications response
The team brought news organizations together to respond as an ecosystem.
In Minnesota, that meant coordinating with the Minnesota Journalism Center and The Minnesota Star Tribune on a collective statement defending press freedom after the arrests of independent journalists Georgia Fort and Don Lemon. In the end, more than 60 organizations — including newsrooms of all sizes, media professional associations, news organizations and nonprofits — signed onto the statement.
“Just getting a bunch of independent newsrooms and different boards and different (groups) to sign on to a statement together … it seems so simple, but it felt like one of the biggest wins I’ve had in my time at McKnight over the last 10 years,” Murphy said. “It was like, wow, this work we have been doing on relational building, it happened in a weekend.”
Murphy says that the importance is more than symbolic. “It actually was like, ‘No, actually, this is an existential threat to our industry, so what do we have to do going forward?’ So it kind of catalyzed those sets of conversations that are ongoing now.”
If funders and news organizations plan in advance how they’ll communicate and work together, they can respond much faster during a crisis.
4. Create a legal fund
Funders can also help make sure news organizations have the support they need after the news cycle moves on. In Minnesota, that thought led to the establishment of a legal fund for newsrooms and reporters.
“This one’s tricky,” Murphy said. “Philanthropy is not good at preparing, because they just want to be like, ‘OK, how much money do you need for this thing?’ And setting up a legal fund is not that.”
This wasn’t about choosing a case and funding it. “We need to basically seed a fund, have somebody on retainer so they can see what sort of cases are evolving. It’s a much more sort of strategic funding in a way that philanthropy’s not used to. So we kind of had to build the muscles of our funders.”
Figuring out how to do this took a lot of research — learning from colleagues at Press Forward Chicago, partners at the ACLU and lawyers in their own network (to make sure, for example, that the requirements around charitable purpose and the use of these funds are met). “It took essentially a month to even get to a point where it’s like, does this make sense?”
Among the many questions to answer: Where is the fund going to live? Who will administer it? What would it cover? Who decides?
In Minnesota, this work is ongoing. “It’s a longer-term, mid- to long-term strategy. It’s probably a year- to two-year strategy if we’re really gonna get serious in that space,” Murphy said.
5. Make sure someone is tracking the data
While journalists are in the field doing the work, funders have a role in tracking the 10,000-foot view.
In Minnesota, Meg Martin at the University of Minnesota Journalism Center was already tracking incidents of harm to journalists, and the team was able to offer some additional support.
Tracking the data can speak to the impact of the work and inform future strategies, both locally and elsewhere.
“I think it’s just important to say tracking and having data is important for broader patterns, broader trends, potential litigation. We need to have an understanding of what’s actually happening, so I think that’s another compelling reason for funders to be involved,” Murphy said.
6. Connect people who need to collaborate
Funders have a lot of convening power. Leaning on that was critical in Minnesota’s response. Murphy said the coalition there included newsrooms, the university, other grantees and nonprofits, the legal community and funders.
Keeping those groups connected in a crisis was, Murphy admitted, “chaotic, if I’m being honest.”
Murphy said communities should establish communication protocols ahead of time — Slack channels or similar tools — so partners can coordinate more easily during a crisis.
“In real time, I think we were still, in some ways, operating in silos, just because of how quickly we were moving, and didn’t really have time to facilitate across those groups,” Murphy said.
Murphy said future planning should focus on strengthening connections across organizations so groups can work together more effectively.
7. Move the damn money
Minnesota raised about $700,000 to respond to Operation Metro Surge.
“Some national funders moved money in ways that they haven’t before, which means really, really quick expedited timelines with a high degree of trust,” Murphy said. “That allowed us to just move the dollars out the door within a week.”
And Murphy’s team extended that same trust to grantees.
“If you were reporting on this thing, and we knew you had journalists on the ground, here’s money. Do with it what you need,” Murphy said.
Yang says the process was pared down to make it accessible to newsrooms and help get the money out quickly. This meant meeting some simple due diligence criteria and providing examples of their coverage.
“Everyone’s like, why can’t philanthropy just move money? It’s like accounting, grant agreements, legal — there’s all this stuff that we have to do. But there are ways that you can set up your internal systems to make it a lot easier if you have a little foresight and planning,” Murphy said.
It was a lot of money, but Murphy doesn’t think other funders should get hung up on it.
“I almost hesitate in saying (the number) because some smaller chapters will see that and be like, ‘Well, we can’t ever do that, so why would we do that?’” said Murphy.
“But I just want folks to understand that whatever you do in this space really, really matters, and there are resources that, if you set up the infrastructure and have the relationships in place, there will be dollars to be found,” Murphy said.
“I know that for a fact.”
Editor’s Note: This story was updated to reflect Knight Foundation’s role, to correct the amount raised to $700,000 and the status of its distribution, and to add clarity about the process for distributing the funds.
Megan Griffith-Greene is a Poynter faculty member who educates funders and potential funders about local journalism. This work is funded through a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which is also a funder of the Press Forward movement.
