• INN Membership Application

  • Thank you for your interest in joining the Institute for Nonprofit News!

    Please review INN's membership standards below before beginning the application. If you have questions, email membership coordinator Mara Jezior at info@inn.org.

    • Full membership is open to organizations actively publishing news that are based in North America.
    • Affiliate membership is for organizations that support nonprofit news and align with INN’s mission in working to advance this type of journalism, but may not be publishers or fit regular membership qualifications. Affiliate membership also can be appropriate for news publishers for which publishing is only part of the organization’s broader mission, such as training student journalists, research, running a journalism trade or collaboration group, or raising public awareness of an issue or topic. INN does not accept cause communications or trade publications even if content is produced using journalism techniques.
    • Provisional membership is available to some qualifying startups that want to join before they begin publishing and for full members who pause active publishing for up to one year.
      Editorial Independence & Transparency
      Public trust in journalism is essential. To build and maintain trust, journalists and their organizations must be truthful, transparent and independent in their reporting in order to best serve the public.

    All INN members share a commitment to transparency and by becoming members, agree to publish policies regarding fundraising, donations and conflict-of-interest on their websites, in an effort to maintain reader trust. These policies must specify what kind of funding the publication will and won’t accept.

    As an INN member, a publication agrees to:

    • Confirm its 501(c)(3) certified by the Internal Revenue Service or have a 501(c)(3) nonprofit fiscal sponsor. Canadian publications and those based at universities with a different IRS status are invited to consult with INN before applying. INN can provide fiscal sponsorship for qualifying journalism nonprofits that are starting up or converting to nonprofit from for-profits.
    • Publish financial information publicly to a publication’s website and/or print product.
      • Identify all donors to the organization that give more than $5,000 in a year by publicly listing them on the publication’s site and/or posting a link to 990 tax filings that identify donors of $5,000 or more.
      • Post either full 990 filings, links to their 990, or equivalent budget, salary and donor information on its web site where consumers can access it. In the case of fiscally sponsored organizations, the member will post a link to its sponsor’s 990, and is encouraged to publish a breakout of its own information.
      • Ensure that no more than 5 percent of its total annual budget derives from anonymous donations.
      • Post an editorial independence policy.
      • If the publication has a fiscal sponsor or parent 501(c)3 organization, publicly disclose and explain how the news project maintains editorial independence from its fiscal sponsor or parent, and if or how donor funds are separated between the organizations.

    Please write to info@inn.org with any questions regarding membership standards or applications.

    Applicaton Fee: $75.00. 

  • General Information

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  • If you are seeking fiscal sponsorship from INN, please fill out our separate fiscal sponsorship application.

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  • Contact information

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  • About Your Organization

  • Your Organization's Content

    Full or regular INN membership is open to organizations that demonstrate the capacity to regularly publish original reporting of high quality that is investigative or public service by nature, such as expert explanatory or community public affairs coverage. INN generally does not accept as regular members publications that primarily publish opinion, analysis or curated collections unless they also include substantial original reporting of their own.


  • Donor Transparency & Editorial Independence

    INN members share a commitment to transparency and by becoming members, agree to publish policies regarding fundraising, donations and conflict-of-interest on their websites. These must specify what kind of funding the publication will and won’t accept.

    As an INN member, a publication agrees to:

    • Identify online all donors to the organization that give more than $5,000 in a year by publicly listing them directly on the publication’s site and/or posting a link to 990 tax filings that identify donors of $5,000 or more.
    • Post either full 990 filings or equivalent budget, salary and donor information on its web site where consumers can access it. In the case of fiscally sponsored organizations, the member will post its sponsor’s 990.
    • Attest that no more than 5 percent of its total annual revenue comes from anonymous donors.
    • Post an editorial independence policy. Examples here.

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  • Application Fee

    A $75 application is required to process your application. Please click submit to continue to the payment page.
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