The Institute for Nonprofit News released its ninth annual INN Index on Tuesday, analyzing data reported from hundreds of its members to understand the state of nonprofit news in 2025. The Index remains one of the most detailed snapshots of the revenue and audience picture across nonprofit newsrooms; this year’s data set primarily draws on survey responses from 412 INN members, or 93% of its membership, and includes a section examining AI use and impacts from the 2025 political climate.
“The 2026 Index points to an increasingly local field that is, as a whole, continuing to grow (albeit at a slower pace),” authors Jesse Holcomb, Michele McLellan, and Ha Ta write in the executive summary. “But headwinds on funding and audience fronts persist at the individual newsroom level.”
A few key takeaways from the report:
AI use is way up. Use of AI-based tools is now widespread among nonprofit newsrooms; 81% of INN members reported using AI in 2025, up from 63% in 2024 and 34% in 2023. Most aren’t using AI for editorial work like writing or editing stories — more common uses include summarizing or transcribing meetings (60%) and data analysis (36%). Some outlets are also using AI as a fundraising tool; 22% reported using AI to personalize emails to funders, 18% reported using it to draft grant applications, and 11% reported using it to identify potential funders. Meanwhile, 26% reported using AI for outreach, including drafting social media copy or personalizing emails to audience members.
Thirteen percent of INN members reported using AI to scrape data from websites, while 19% block scraping of their own websites.
The nonprofit news field’s revenue is growing, but individual growth is plateauing. INN estimates its members (excluding startups that began publishing in 2025 and public media members) took in more than $750 million in combined revenue in 2025. That’s a 14% increase from 2024 and the highest number since the Index started collecting this data. On the other hand, median revenue per outlet was $525,000, down from $532,000 in 2024, while median expenses rose to $449,000 from $434,000. “INN members had to stretch their dollars a little further last year,” Holcomb writes in the Index revenue section.
- Just nine new INN member outlets began publishing in 2025, compared to 20 launches per year in 2019 and 2020. “Growth in the number of new nonprofit news organizations within INN membership has slowed considerably amid funding cuts and growing uncertainty in a polarized political environment,” McLellan writes in the network composition section.
Local newsrooms continue to make up the majority of INN’s membership. Local outlets account for 54% of INN members (up from 51% in 2024), and all nine outlets that became members and began publishing in 2025 cover local beats.
The smallest and largest outlets grew web traffic, but the middle is getting squeezed. INN members with revenues between $2 million and $5 million (which describes 13% of INN members) averaged a loss of over 41,000 unique monthly visitors. Meanwhile, outlets with revenue under $2 million (78% of INN membership) gained an average of 9,500 visitors, and outlets with over $5 million in revenue gained an average of 40,800 new visitors. In the audience & distribution Index section, Ta hypothesizes that mid-sized outlets were “potentially squeezed between the loyalty that sustains smaller outlets and the brand recognition and SEO dominance that drives traffic to the largest ones” as declining social media referrals and AI integration drive search traffic down.
INN found a similar pattern when dividing outlets by geographic scope. National/global outlets averaged a loss of about 37,300 unique monthly visitors, whereas local and state/regional outlets gained averages of 14,600 and 25,500 visitors respectively. Overall, 57% of the 345 news outlets that shared web visitor data for 2024 and 2025 saw traffic increase, 24% saw it decline, and for 18% it stayed flat. (The report defines an increase as growth of 10% or more, a decline as a decrease of 10% or more, and flat as less than 10% change in either direction.)
Newsletter subscribers are “more resilient” than web traffic. When it comes to newsletters, large outlets fared the worst. Outlets with more than $5 million in revenue lost an average of 2,800 subscribers, while medium outlets gained an average of 1,500 subscribers, and smaller outlets gained an average of 730 subscribers. “This suggests that small and mid-sized outlets are growing their subscriber lists while larger national outlets face greater challenges in maintaining theirs,” Ta writes. On the whole, “Newsletter subscribers proved more resilient than web traffic,” she adds; just 16% of the 338 outlets that provided newsletter data for 2024 and 2025 reported a drop in subscribers, with the rest holding steady or growing.
Slow progress toward revenue diversification. “Between 2022 and 2025, the share of INN members drawing on four or more distinct revenue streams increased from 38% to 49%,” Holcomb writes. Outlets with at least four revenue streams are disproportionately local and statewide, cover general news topics, and are less likely to prioritize serving communities of color. Meanwhile, outlets that rely on a single revenue stream tend to have a national or global focus, emphasize explanatory content, and rely heavily on foundation funding. “More than half of outlets reliant on a single revenue stream say that serving communities of color is their primary focus,” Holcomb notes.
More spending on revenue generation, and individual giving is up. In 2019, 10% of operating expenses across INN member organizations went to revenue generation; in 2025, that number was up to 16%. (On the other hand, INN members were asked for the second year how much of their budget is devoted to marketing for audience growth — in 2024 and 2025, that number was a median of 1%, “suggesting room for growth.”) While philanthropy is still the largest source of support for nonprofit newsrooms, individual giving has grown from 29% in 2023 to 33% in 2025. Individual giving includes small, mid-level, and major donors; across INN members, 64% of individual giving comes from major donors. “At an average of $32,000 in 2025, a single major donor gift is roughly 20 times the size of a mid-level donation ($1,600) and nearly 300 times the size of a small donation ($110),” Holcomb writes.
The political climate has hurt nonprofit newsrooms. “Three-quarters (76%) of nonprofit news publishers in our survey said their organizations have experienced negative effects in the current political climate,” McLellan writes. That has most frequently taken the form of reductions in charitable giving and growth in misinformation aimed at their markets. National and global outlets were more likely to report negative effects. (INN’s 22 public media respondents separately all reported negative impacts from the political climate in 2025, including government and state funding reductions, but many saw record results from individual fundraising.)
Volunteers are (still) powering many nonprofit newsrooms, especially local ones. “Volunteers continue to play a significant ongoing role at nearly 4 in 10 nonprofit news organizations, increasing from 36% in 2023 to 40% in 2025,” McLellan writes in the staff & capacity section. More than half of volunteers (52%) help out with editorial tasks. Local outlets are twice as likely as others to rely on volunteers; 53% of local outlets report volunteer support, compared to 25% for other outlets.
Read more in the full Index here.
