Donating is a powerful act of trust, a gesture supporting journalism that the donor considers useful and wants to see exist or develop. You don't give to receive something in return, but to support a mission. As donations become more established and grow in the media sector, some publishers have made it the foundation of their economic model, with The Guardian among the most notable cases, counting over a million regular supporters worldwide to fund its model. Across Europe, part of the independent press has also found in it the basis for its independence in order to offer journalism with free access: Novara Media, Recorder, Reporterre, Netzpolitik… But donations can also be relevant to support and strengthen media whose models are based on subscription, whether to finance a specific project, weather a cash flow crisis, or simply to launch or relaunch. At each stage of a media outlet's life, this method can be used to mobilize its readers, provided you know how to convince them.
Because a model based entirely or partly on giving cannot be imposed—it must be built.
Even your most loyal readers will need to be convinced. Without a financially equivalent return, the donor expects something else: transparency, consistency, the feeling that their support truly matters. We've listed several examples, practical cases, and tips to help you create the conditions necessary to achieve this.
Am I affected?
Contrary to common misconceptions, donations are not marginal, restricted to radically independent media or free-access outlets, nor limited to an older audience. Recently, even more "traditional" media outlets have developed this new funding source, such as Monde in France, in addition to subscriptions. Donations also attract younger audiences: at StreetPress, a media member of our Sphera network and supported by our studio, nearly three-quarters of the audience is under 35, yet donations still represented 36% of its revenue in 2023, growing by 77% in 2024.
Donations can be mobilized at several points in a media outlet's lifecycle:
- At launch, to fund the first few months of operation without relying on advertising or institutional revenue.
- On an ongoing basis, as a structural source of funding.
- Running a campaign to fund a specific project, an expensive investigation, a technology tool, a documentary, an editorial transition.
- In an emergency, faced with unexpected cost increases or a threat to independence.
Donations are flexible: they adapt to very different models, sizes, and editorial lines. At the French daily La Croix, donations and subscriptions coexist without competing: 90% of donors are also subscribers. Donations don't necessarily cannibalize subscriptions… unless that's a deliberate choice. The Salt Lake Tribune, one of the first major American newspapers to shift to a nonprofit model, is a recent example: after making access free for a sample of subscribers while leaving them the option to continue paying as donations, 87% maintained their contribution despite the free access. A result that confirmed its decision to completely remove its paywall in 2026.
Conversely, some media outlets may be led to introduce a paywall after building their model on donations for years. This is the case with Polish media OKO.press, which explains transparently the reasoning behind this decision: budget cuts to subsidies and too few donors (0.5%, or one reader in 200). A reminder that donations don't make money rain from the sky. Donations aren't automatic, not for every newsroom, and not in every country. In France, for example, individuals can deduct 66% of their donations to certain media that meet the required conditions. In Romania, some media, such as Recorder, invite their readers to allocate 3.5% of their income tax to them. Comparable mechanisms exist elsewhere in Europe, but in very different forms, and donation culture also varies from country to country. Before you get started, take time to research the legislation in force in your country, which may have a greater or lesser impact on your strategy.
Set the conditions
Clarify your values and tell your story
Giving is support rooted in a cause or values. For your readers to commit to it, they need to know what they're defending. Independence can be its foundation, but it's necessary to bring other arguments unique to your media. What really sets you apart? An original editorial stance? Strong local roots? Complete independence from advertisers and wealthy interests? A cooperative or participatory organizational model? You may already have written a mission statement or manifesto: rather than tucking it away on an "About" page, highlight it and make it a real conversion and mobilization tool. These identity markers are your arguments: it's up to you to deploy them across different channels.
The good idea: Rather than relegating its manifesto to a page on its website, Belgian media outlet Médor chose to print it. Its "Call for Robust Journalism" takes the form of a simple folded white sheet, understated, free and easy to distribute at events. An editorial object that extends the manifesto beyond the web and makes it a true point of connection with readers.
Also remember to evolve your commitments over time. Your principles can be updated in light of current events or topics that concern your readership. This is what French online media Reporterre did by publishing a commitment on the use of generative AI within its newsroom. This transparency initiative is all the more significant because the media relies almost entirely on donations from its audience: in 2025, 95.4% of its €4,254,987 budget came from contributions by 54,038 donors.
How? Want to write your own manifesto? Check out our guide.
The Médianes Team
Show what your work accomplished.
Declaring your values and intentions is not enough: you must also document their concrete impact. The impact report is the reference format for achieving this, allowing you to tell the real effects of your investigations, the decisions your articles have influenced, the people your reporting has helped.
The good idea: In its 2025 impact report, The Conversation documents 781 examples of media impact. But rather than limiting itself to a summary document, the outlet transforms it into a genuine editorial object. The report notably gives voice to authors of several articles, who themselves recount the concrete effects of their investigations and analyses, as well as the impact they observed after publication.
How? Want to work on your own impact report? Online media Disclose and Rembobine have designed a guide to help newsrooms do it. Otherwise, discover the method applied and the tools used by American media The Markup or The Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
But the question "why give?" isn't enough either: your supporters also want to know "what for, concretely?". Several media outlets have chosen to publish their accounts and figures in very different formats.
News organizations like Reporterre, Follow the Money and Mediacités publish activity reports or annual financial reports. Some choose to go beyond conventional financial concerns and push transparency into other areas, like the German media outlet Republik, which provides figures on the imbalance between articles signed by women and men as well as team health: 32 of the 49 employees experienced work incapacity at some point, and absences fell from 1,306 to 582 days according to its 2024/2025 report. French investigative media Mediapart also shares data regarding its environmental impact and CO2 emissions.
The good idea: While lengthy paragraphs and complete tables have the merit of being thorough, they can be hard for your audience to digest. As part of one of its fundraising campaigns, French media outlet Arrêt sur images offered its community an interactive quiz about its operating costs—a more engaging way to explain the expenses involved in running a media organization (staff salaries, website maintenance, office rent), and to directly involve readers rather than submitting them to a long, technical financial document.
Fumaça, a Portuguese investigative media outlet, offers real-time budget transparency: the donations page directly displays the current month's budget and live fundraising progress, a way to create urgency (without alarming) and make the contribution immediately tangible.
Convert
Once trust is established, action follows. Turning your community of readers into a community of donors doesn't happen in a single campaign: it's long-term work that relies on two complementary approaches.
- One-time campaigns: a clear objective, a limited duration, a strong message. They create urgency and visibility, and can attract new donors.
- Recurring donations: quieter, but more stable. They build a sustainable support base and smooth out cash flow.
The two can coexist and reinforce each other: a successful campaign can convert one-time donors into regular supporters.
Think about your annual calendar as a whole, anchoring it to your key moments (media anniversary, major investigation, year-end) rather than handling it on an ad-hoc basis.
Target a specific project or issue
Fundraising is easier when there's a specific cause to support. Before crafting your appeal, start with the needs and concerns of your audience: a project or issue only mobilizes support if it addresses something that genuinely matters to them. Médor, committed to using free and open source software to break free from American tech dominance, launched a fundraising campaign (purchasing shares in the media cooperative rather than a strict donation) to finance the maintenance and development of its software in-house. Result: €38,680 raised. A specific, concrete topic makes a public support appeal more tangible than a generic call to "support independent journalism." The same logic applies to Mediapart with crowdfunding for its documentary on the Sarkozy-Kadhafi affair, or to the local investigative outlet Mediacités with its fundraiser directed toward producing a photo essay on a highway project construction site.
Think about how you phrase the amount
The question "how much should you ask for?" deserves careful consideration, and it starts with another question: who is your audience? Understanding your audiences, their means, and their relationship with money is the starting point for calibrating your requests.
The good idea: Novara Media, a British media outlet that derived 89% of its annual revenue from supporter donations in 2022, opted for an original approach:
Don't overlook the
The good idea: Stupid Economics, an economic education video channel, built its entire model on micro-donations: an average of €2.70/month from 1,300 people, based on a strategy explicitly embraced by founder Valentin Levetti in 2023:
Marine Slavitch
On rewards: trust your supporters.
To encourage your audience to give, it may be tempting to offer benefits to donors (early access, exclusive newsletter, reserved events, included subscription, etc.), but exercise restraint. First, check the legal framework in your country: depending on your territory, counterparts to donations that qualify for tax relief are often regulated. And above all: people don't make 10-euro donations to receive mugs, pens and calendars. Your supporters may wonder whether their money was actually used well, or even think their donation went into producing low-quality merchandise with negative environmental impact.
Build loyalty
Converting a reader into a donor is one thing. Turning that one-off support into a lasting commitment is another. The first reflex, often overlooked, is the simplest: say thank you. A quick and genuine thank-you message after each donation is the foundation of any loyalty-building relationship; its absence is noticeable, its presence builds trust. But loyalty doesn't stop there: your donors shouldn't feel like they've paid and disappeared. They want to feel like they're part of something.
The good idea: To achieve it, why not take inspiration… from Wikipedia? Facing a drop in traffic due to AI, the encyclopedia, which draws roughly 90% of its revenue from individual donations (average contribution: $11-12), is anticipating a future with fewer visitors and is now focusing on a smaller but more engaged user base. How? By developing its presence on TikTok and Instagram, strengthening its human side with videos about its editors, and communicating more about its behind-the-scenes work, its impact, and its values. You can learn more about their strategy in our dedicated article about their appearance at the International Journalism Festival.
Create a club
More and more media outlets are formalizing reader loyalty by creating clubs: spaces where their most engaged donors enjoy exclusive benefits, but above all a sense of belonging. Vert, a general-interest environmental media outlet supported by Médianes, has built its club around recurring monthly donations starting at €5, which makes up the bulk of its budget (90% with nearly 12,000 members).
The Bristol Cable (United Kingdom) and Chut! have both developed models that transform financial support into active membership, with access to masterclasses, meetings with editorial staff, or exclusive content. The goal is not so much the tangible benefits, but rather to give members a sense of actively participating in the media's life. Among the best ideas:
- Organize exclusive events for your donors (editorial meetings, behind-the-scenes investigation access, advance screenings).
- Send regular updates on the progress of funded projects.
- Ask them about their editorial expectations.
- Name them in your acknowledgments, on your website, in your publications.
Agathe Kupfer
Organize projects
The smart move: A few weeks after revealing a secret meeting between far-right executives and the AfD, German investigative outlet Correctiv launched an interactive map of Germany to map out, together with its readers, the ramifications of its investigation: local political impact, protests, and more. Anyone could add an event to it, which was then verified and confirmed by the editorial team. Killing two birds with one stone: the outlet highlighted its impact and strengthened community engagement around its work. Three months after publishing its investigation, the outlet went from 9,200 donors to 16,000.
Don't exhaust your teams or your readers
A fundraising campaign creates pressure from both sides: on the team running it, and on the audience receiving it. Managing this tension is often what makes the difference between a campaign that strengthens your relationship with your audiences and one that damages it.
On the team side: structure to avoid collapse.
A campaign takes a long time to prepare before launch. The list of tasks is extensive: campaign messaging, timeline, support page, dedicated visual identity, editorial calendar, contact and relay list, press release, media kit… The temporal structure of a campaign must not be underestimated. It typically follows a U-shaped curve: a peak at launch (curiosity, announcement effect), a dip in the middle (natural momentum loss), then a rise as the closing date approaches (urgency, final call). Anticipating this dynamic helps avoid panic mid-campaign and allows you to adjust the editorial calendar accordingly: follow-up messages, new arguments, intermediate event to revive momentum.
How does it work? Need help organizing your fundraising campaign? Read our guide.
The Médianes Team
The good idea: Pooling resources can also lighten the load: when resources are limited, partnering with other media outlets can make a difference in terms of visibility and workload. In 2023, four magazines (La Revue Dessinée, 6 Mois, XXI, Topo) jointly launched the campaign "40 days for 4 magazines" in response to rising paper prices: their cost had increased by more than 50% in a year. By sharing a common message and campaign infrastructure, they transformed an economic constraint into a call for solidarity, reaching far more people than any of them could have achieved alone. Another example from Georgia: in August 2025, twenty-one online media outlets voluntarily went offline for several hours as part of the joint campaign "The Lights Must Stay On". When they returned, their websites displayed an appeal to support a pooled fund for Georgian media.
Plan for a debrief after the campaign, covering both finances and team wellbeing. What went well? What exhausted the team unnecessarily? These lessons are invaluable for the next edition. And don't disappear afterward: your donors made a gesture of trust, show them concretely what it made possible to accomplish.
For readers: measure, vary, respect.
Misleading subject lines, guilt-tripping appeals, fanciful matching promises: all practices that burn through lists and create lasting distrust. Practices that media built on trust cannot afford. The Kyiv Independent, operating in an admittedly difficult context, explains having made the opposite choice to The Audiencers: "When we work on new messages, we look for the balance between showing the unique context of a newsroom at war and not sounding too desperate. We share behind-the-scenes content, but we never guilt-trip our readers into giving, and we never say we'll shut down if they don't support us".
This doesn't mean you should ban alert messages: they're effective, and that's precisely why they're overused. But their power rests entirely on credibility: an urgent message must be honest, grounded in figures and concrete realities (a measured drop in revenue, a specific deadline, a threatened project), and tailored to your audience.
A few common-sense principles: calibrate the frequency of solicitations—too many messages dilute the message. Vary your tone rather than repeating the same urgent appeals. Segment: your regular donors don't need to receive the same messages as those who've never given. Before launching a campaign, explicitly define how many times you'll contact your different segments, on which channels, with which messages.
