Public Media Co’s bridge fund for nonprofit radio stations turns from rescue to reinvention

Public Media Co. celebrated its 25th anniversary Tuesday night with a $10 million donation from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to support its transformation into a major grantmaker — a role that would have been unthinkable two years ago.

As recently as 2024, the nonprofit consultant that works to strengthen public radio stations reported $3.42 million in revenue, according to tax filings. Public Media CEO Tim Isgitt said he was proud of his “small, but mighty team” and the impact that they had on the sector.

Then came the federal funding cuts.

One day in June 2025, Isgitt told a roomful of funders that federal cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting could create a “doom loop” with catastrophic effects on the entire public radio sector, requiring them all to act immediately.

The next day, the House of Representatives voted to rescind all of CPB’s funding, about $1.1 billion that stations were already promised. Within weeks, the Senate followed suit.

“It felt just like a wave that washed over us all of a sudden,” Isgitt told The Associated Press.

Isgitt and Public Media were quickly pressed into service. His idea to help was suddenly in demand.

“PMC had never been a grantmaking organization before, but everybody was saying, ‘You’ve got to do this,’” he said. “So we sort of turned ourselves inside out, hired some staff and became a grantmaking organization.”

The Public Media Bridge Fund is born to keep radio stations alive

By August 2025, Public Media had organized a fundraising bonanza. It created the Public Media Bridge Fund to raise and quickly donate $100 million to stabilize public radio stations that depended on CPB funding for more than 30% of their annual budgets and were in danger of closing after the federal cuts.

The fund launched with $27 million, including an initial $10 million donation from the Knight Foundation and support from Pivotal and the Ford, MacArthur, Robert Wood Johnson and Schmidt Family foundations. By December, it had distributed all $27 million to stabilize endangered stations. Stations with support from other sources, including the Bureau of Indian Affairs for tribal stations and the state of New Mexico for stations there, did not receive funding.

“That was a good thing,” Isgitt said, “because we committed every dime that we had.”

The Public Media Bridge Fund has raised about $87 million and stabilized 186 public radio stations that serve about 30 million people in the United States. The Knight Foundation’s additional $10 million donation, announced Tuesday, is part of PMC’s new $38 million fundraising effort to help stations become more financially sustainable without federal funding.

Knight Foundation President and CEO Maribel Perez Wadsworth said she was impressed with how quickly and effectively Public Media deployed funds last year.

“Now, it is really turning all of its attention to sustainability and the things that are critical to sustainability,” said Perez Wadsworth, adding that PMC’s focus on fostering collaboration between local news organizations can “drive the kind of business model change that will hopefully support sustainability in the long run.”

Helping public radio stations become economically sustainable – without federal funding

The bridge fund will still support stations with unstable budgets; the fund is now also looking at projects with broader impact, Isgitt said.

“Our attention now is more on the nationwide system and how it can sort of re-engineer itself to work more efficiently,” he said.

Judy Diaz, general manager of Delmarva Public Radio, said its stations relied on CPB for about 33% of their funding. The public radio network is a collaboration of three Maryland nonprofit stations owned by Salisbury University and the University of Maryland Eastern Shore.

Cost-cutting and increased donations allowed Delmarva Public Radio to use part of its Public Media Bridge Fund grant to modernize equipment and purchase new marketing database software. It also established a content-sharing agreement with Baltimore Public Media.

The changes tripled the number of donors and listeners in the station’s marketing database and increased membership revenue by 20% over last year’s already unusually strong donations as supporters responded to the federal cuts, Diaz said.

“I can now see a clear path for the foreseeable future,” she added. “We didn’t have that before.”

Ashley Alvarado, president and CEO of Texas Public Radio, said Public Media and its bridge fund are helping her organization navigate a combination with the nonprofit newsroom San Antonio Report. The two nonprofits decided in July to join forces, believing they would be stronger financially together.

“What we found is that the strengths and weaknesses of each organization would really benefit from that combination,” Alvarado said.

It’s the kind of transformation Public Media hopes to bring to all its stations: improving financial stability while better serving communities. “Media and technologies are evolving quickly,” Isgitt said. “If these community organizations want to remain relevant, they have to evolve too.”

Knight’s Perez Wadsworth said the Public Media Bridge Fund was intended as a stopgap to keep public stations operating while they developed financial plans without federal support. However, she also knows philanthropy cannot replace large federal grants for long.

She hopes Congress will see the importance of public radio stations — for emergency broadcasts, for providing news and community information, and for fostering connection and civic participation.

“It is my belief, maybe because I’m a hard-wired optimist, that after stepping back from the brink and seeing the absolute need and critical nature of these stations, we will see some level of funding again, even at the federal level,” Perez Wadsworth said. “I think we will see a path to a thoughtful recalibration of what funding these stations looks like.”

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