Knight gives Public Media Co. another $10 million as its bridge fund shifts to long-term fixes

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has given Public Media Co. (PMC) an additional $10 million, announced on October 13 as the nonprofit marked its 25th anniversary, the Associated Press reported. The gift is part of a new $38 million fundraising effort to help public stations become more financially sustainable without federal funding, according to the AP.

From rescue to reinvention

PMC created the Public Media Bridge Fund in August 2025, after Congress rescinded about $1.1 billion in Corporation for Public Broadcasting funding that stations had already been promised, the AP reported. The fund set out to raise $100 million for stations that got more than 30% of their budgets from the corporation and faced closure. It launched with $27 million, including an initial $10 million from Knight and support from Pivotal and the Ford, MacArthur, Robert Wood Johnson and Schmidt Family foundations, and had distributed all of it by December.

The fund has since raised about $87 million and stabilized 186 stations serving about 30 million people, the AP reported. It will still support stations with unstable budgets, but is now also looking at projects with broader impact, PMC's CEO, Tim Isgitt, told the AP. Its newest program, which opens to small stations on October 20, pairs coaching with sustainability grants.

What the grants bought

The AP described Delmarva Public Radio, which received about 33% of its funding from the corporation. It used part of its grant to modernize equipment and buy marketing database software, and began a content-sharing agreement with Baltimore Public Media. Those changes tripled the donors and listeners in its marketing database and raised membership revenue by 20%, the AP reported. We have not seen the station's own figures.

Texas Public Radio and the nonprofit newsroom San Antonio Report decided in July to combine. "What we found is that the strengths and weaknesses of each organization would really benefit from that combination," Ashley Alvarado, president and CEO of Texas Public Radio, told the AP.

A small organization moving large sums

In June 2025, Isgitt warned funders that the cuts could set off a "doom loop" for public radio, the AP reported. "PMC had never been a grantmaking organization before, but everybody was saying, 'You've got to do this,'" he told the AP. PMC reported $3.42 million in revenue for 2024, according to tax filings cited by the AP.

What other funders and boards can take from it

In our view, two points stand out. A funder that gave first in a crisis, here Knight, is now paying for the second phase, which is usually harder to raise money for. And a small intermediary moving large sums raises questions donors can fairly ask: who reviews its grants, and how its own finances are reported. For the federal backdrop, see pocket rescissions and nonprofit federal awards. We did not find a release from Knight or PMC on the gift; the details here come from the AP.