Community News Foundation

What Community News Foundation does

Community News Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in 2020 and headquartered in Marble Falls, Texas (with a mailing address in Austin). It operates a digital platform called CommunityNewsmaker.com that enables any citizen to obtain a free Community Newsmaker license and pitch local news stories about community events, causes, and individuals deserving recognition. Pitched stories are then researched and written by a network of freelance journalists who adhere to strict non-partisan standards, with no unnamed sources and no political bias, and are distributed across a network of more than 1,300 community news sites and print newspapers in all 50 U.S. states.

The foundation's underlying technology is a relatively simple self-serve web portal (built on Squarespace for the public-facing site) that captures story pitches from citizens and routes them to professional journalists; the platform itself is not described as having proprietary algorithmic or AI-driven features, and the foundation uses commodity third-party services such as Stripe and PayPal for donation processing and Google Analytics for traffic measurement. There is no mobile application, public API, or disclosed integration ecosystem.

The foundation's business model is donation- and grant-driven rather than commercial: the Community Newsmaker license is provided free of charge, no subscription or advertising revenue is generated, and operations are funded entirely by contributions from donors and grant providers. Its go-to-market is community-led, relying on its website, email newsletter, and word-of-mouth to recruit citizen contributors, while a network of vendor agreements with freelance reporters and content producers (constrained by IRS non-partisan requirements) supplies the editorial capacity. Governance is provided by a four-member Board of Directors plus an Executive Director, with no institutional investors, parent company, or venture backing involved.

Name

Community News Foundation

Legal name

Community News Foundation

Website

https://communitynewsfoundation.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

2020

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

Community News Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that funds a free portal where citizens pitch local news stories written by professional journalists and published across 1,300+ community news sites in all 50 U.S. states, operating entirely on donations and grants.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Community News Services

NAICS

Newspaper Publishers (513110), Grantmaking and Giving Services (81321)

SIC

Newspapers: Publishing Or Publishing & Printing (2711)

akta.pro primary industry

Investigative & Nonprofit News Organizations (MPAJADAF)

akta.pro secondary industries

Local & Regional Newspapers (Print & Digital) (MPAJADAB), Community, Ethnic & Multilingual News Publishers (MPAJADAG)

Keywords

• Community news services
• Local journalism platform
• Citizen journalism portal
• Nonprofit news organization
• Community newspapers

Headquarters

HQ city

Marble Falls

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2C

Offering type

Services

Cost components

Personnel, Operations, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales, Others

Revenue model

1. Donations and Grants: Funded entirely by donations and grants from contributors who support restoring local news in communities. The foundation operates as a non-profit organization with no revenue from operations.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels1 record

Marketing channels3 records

Core offering

Community News Foundation operates CommunityNewsmaker.com, a free web portal where any citizen can obtain a Community Newsmaker® License and pitch local news stories about their community. Professional freelance journalists then write the stories and publish them on a network of more than 1,300 community news sites and print newspapers across all 50 U.S. states. The foundation is funded entirely by donations and grants from contributors who support restoring local news.

Product overview

Community News Foundation operates a single unified platform called CommunityNewsmaker.com that connects citizen newsmakers with professional journalists. The platform enables citizens to obtain a free Community Newsmaker® License, which grants them access to pitch news stories about their local communities. These pitches are then written by professional journalists and published across a network of over 1,300 community news sites and print newspapers spanning all 50 states.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• CommunityNewsmaker.com Portal A free web portal where any citizen can pitch news stories about their community. Professional journalists write and publish articles on a network of more than 1,300 local news sites based on citizen pitches.
• Community Newsmaker® License A free license that enables citizens to become newsmakers by pitching stories into the CommunityNewsmaker.com system, defining their communities through local news coverage.

Quantifiable outcome

• 1,300+ community news sites and print newspapers funded across all 50 states

Segments2 records

Ideal customer profiles3 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Partnerships

Three partnerships are on record, tiered minor.

• Various Vendors (unspecified)minorOthersThe Community News Foundation maintains agreements with numerous vendors to produce stories and help operate the Community Newsmaker platform. Vendors must adhere to the foundation's obligation under IRS rules to avoid partisan political purposes.
• Stripe (Payment Processing)minorOthersThird-party payment processor used for handling donations. Mentioned in the privacy policy as a trusted service provider.
• PayPal (Payment Processing)minorOthersThird-party payment processor used for handling donations. Mentioned in the privacy policy as a trusted service provider.

Scale indicators2 records

Recent moves5 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Others

• Nextdoor: Neighborhood-level community information platform. Thematically adjacent — both serve as community-level news and information channels — but Nextdoor is a for-profit social platform rather than a journalism publisher.

Direct peers

• Block Club Chicago: Nonprofit, donation-funded local newsroom covering Chicago neighborhoods. Comparable as a community-focused, nonprofit, donation-driven local news outlet applying professional journalism to citizen-sourced stories.
• LION Publishers: Nonprofit trade association supporting local independent online news publishers in the U.S. Highly comparable as a peer in the local-news ecosystem, though LION is an industry support network rather than a direct publisher.
• National Trust for Local News: Nonprofit that acquires, operates, and funds local news organizations across the U.S. Most directly comparable peer: both organizations pursue a nonprofit, mission-driven model to restore community journalism at scale.

Emerging players

• The Conversation U.S. Nonprofit news organization that publishes explanatory journalism written by academics. Comparable as a nonprofit, donation-and-grant-funded news publisher, but with a national explanatory-journalism focus rather than local news.
• The Marshall Project: Nonprofit newsroom covering criminal justice, funded by donations and grants. Comparable as a donor-funded nonprofit news publisher with rigorous editorial standards, though it focuses on a single national beat instead of local news.
• CalMatters: Nonprofit statewide news outlet covering California policy and civic affairs. Comparable as a mission-driven, grant-and-donor-funded news nonprofit, though focused on state-level rather than hyperlocal coverage.

Broad incumbents

• Substack: Platform enabling independent writers to publish and monetize newsletters. Comparable as a publishing infrastructure for individual creators producing community- and interest-driven journalism, though for-profit and creator-direct rather than nonprofit.
• ProPublica: Largest U.S. nonprofit investigative newsroom, funded by donations and grants. Comparable as a donation-funded 501(c)(3) news organization, but operates at national scale with a staff-journalist model focused on investigative work rather than local community news.
• Patch: Largest U.S. hyperlocal digital news network. Comparable as a large-scale local/community news platform, but operates as a for-profit company rather than a donation-funded nonprofit.

Market position

Strengths4 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/community-news-foundation

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles5 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Community News Foundation