Form 990 for tax year 2024

Totals

Total revenue

$11,783,651

Total expenses

$7,029,062

Contributions and grants received

$5,015,142

Grants paid

$3,939,500

Program service revenue

$6,723,890

Investment income

$44,619

Other revenue

$0

Total assets, end of year

$8,882,633

Total liabilities, end of year

$1,084,437

Net assets or fund balances, end of year

$7,798,196

Program services expenses (Part IX)

$5,991,822

Management and general expenses

$677,656

Fundraising expenses

$359,584

Program service expenses (Part III)

$5,991,822

Program services were 85.2% of total expenses calculated — Part IX's program-services column over total expenses, both as filed.

Line items

Every line the filer filed in Parts VIII, IX and X, as filed and in filed order. Blank columns are left out, and the lines are not forced to add up to the totals above.

Mission and programs · 2024

• Sustainability Audits: A comprehensive process for LION members to identify and respond constructively to roadblocks to sustainability within their organizations, including $20K in direct funding for participants who complete deliverables. We completed 175 Sustainability Audits and distributed $20K to each participant to act on their recommendations. 98% of our Audit participants feel more confident in their organizations ability to reach sustainability.

  Expenses $4,415,966 · Grants $3,880,000 · Revenue $3,460,000

• Membership Services & LION Awards: The operations of having a membership, including processing applications/renewals, securing member benefits (e.g. discounts), organizing the national Independent News Sustainability Summit (INSS), and running our Community Ambassadors program. We clarified our membership criteria and accepted 103 new members. 29% of our memberships leadership identifies as BIPOC and/or LGBTQIA+. We sold out the 500-person INSS event and supported nearly 100 attendees with a $600 travel stipend. We recognized 40 finalists of at Sustainability Awards ceremony and awarded nearly $60K in cash prizes to the 21 winners; all finalists received valuable feedback from judges. INSS hosted seven affinity groups and ten table talks, all led by LION members. 100 members participated in peer learning groups led by six Community Ambassadors. Our News Entrepreneur Community Slack group grew to nearly 1K total contributors.

  Expenses $980,696 · Grants $59,500 · Revenue $1,847,691

• Membership Education: We provided supplementary coaching hours to members who had gone through a Sustainability Audit, with 93% reporting that the sessions were valuable. We launched the Expert Network, a new product that allows all members to book discounted coaching and consulting hours on an as-needed basis. We launched our Sustainability 360 pilot program with six participants. This program is dedicated to helping 100 LION members reach the Growing stage of our independent news maturity model within the next five years, a significant cornerstone of our strategic plan.

  Expenses $424,508 · Revenue $206,600

• Data & Evaluation:Armed with our definition of sustainability and newly minted maturity model, we published six data insights in 2024 based on information from our membership and Sustainability Audit program. We also partnered with Impact Architects to analyze all the data collected through the Sustainability Audit program from 2022 to 2024. More in-depth insights, including benchmarks by maturity stage and areas of catalytic intervention, will follow in 2025. We continued to support Project Oasis, a public database that tracks every known local, independent news publication in the U.S. and Canada. As of December 2024, approximately 1,600 publications are represented in this database.

  Expenses $170,652

As filed on the 2024 return.

Listed in Part VII

Compensation is as filed in Part VII: reportable pay from this organization and from related organizations, other compensation, and hours per week. The total, marked calculated, is our sum of the three dollar columns, with a blank column counted as $0; the form itself has no total. On a Form 990-EZ the columns are Part IV's instead, and on a Form 990-PF Part VIII's — compensation, contributions to benefit plans, and expense account — and the total sums those. A Schedule J breakdown is as filed: base pay, bonus, other, deferred compensation and nontaxable benefits from this organization, with any from related organizations beside each, and the filer's own total. It is shown with the Part VII listing of the same name on the same return. The form gives no key between the two, so that pairing is ours, and is marked matched by us.

Schedule J

Part I's answers as filed. A line not listed was left unanswered; on lines 1a and 3 that means the box was not checked.

Grants on this return

• Institute for Nonprofit News

  $80,000

• Tiny News Collective

  $80,000

• Coachella Valley Independent LLC

  $40,600

• Alternative Newsweekly Foundation

  $40,000

• MuckRock Foundation

  $27,600

• Block Club Chicago Nfp

  $23,500

• Canopy Atlanta Inc

  $23,100

• Spotlight PA

  $23,100

• Borderless Magazine NFP

  $22,500

• Technically Media Inc

  $22,500

The 10 largest by cash amount. The API serves every itemized grant.

Provenance

Return type

form_990

Tax year

2024

Filed

15 July 2025

IRS schema version

2024v5.1

Source object

202511979349300116

Check it against the return as filed: the GivingTuesday Data Lake hosts a public copy of the original XML.

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