NPR’s Ron Schiller: “A concrete and hopeful message” can raise funds
Ron Schiller, the new senior vice president for development at National Public Radio, doesn’t subscribe to the notion that the nation’s news media are in a state of crisis. Is the landscape changing? Absolutely. But this is no time to wallow in doom and gloom, according to Schiller. It’s an opportunity to take the case for nonprofit journalism to a broader audience of foundations and grant-making organizations with a “concrete and hopeful message” about what their philanthropy can achieve.
NPR has a long track record of success with big donors — witness Joan Kroc’s $200 million gift in 2003 — but many of its major institutional donors give because public affairs journalism already is a particular area of interest, Schiller said in an interview Thursday. But with the rapid decline of traditional, for-profit media, more nonprofits, including foundations and advocacy organizations, are having trouble getting their messages out. As a result, he said, they may be more open to the idea of NPR as a “partner in philanthropy” that can address a growing and demonstrated social need.
“There is a great opportunity to go to many, many organizations with that kind of case,” said Schiller, a former vice president at the University of Chicago who was named to his post in September. “We certainly have an opportunity to educate.”
Schiller hopes the approach will yield more gifts in the five- to nine-figure range. He concedes the approach isn’t novel; universities have been using it for decades as they take on issues such as urban education. But NPR’s new direction also would align with a broader trend in the nonprofit sector in response to the decline of traditional media. Keep reading »

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Stanionis thinks donors to political and other “citizen-powered” campaigns have been conditioned to believe that the candidate or institution that receives their donations will respond directly to their demands. But journalism does not — and should not — operate that way, she said. “I just think trying to force a journalistic endeavor into a hole created by these campaigns is not correct,” she said.







