ProPublica won a Pulitzer Prize in 2011, its second, for coverage of questionable practices on Wall Street. It was the first time the prize was awarded for stories published only online, not in print. ProPublica’s first Pulitzer Prize in 2010 was shared with The New York Times for a New York Times Magazine piece on a New Orleans hospital where 45 patients died in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

In 2009, journalists from ProPublica and The New York Times founded DocumentCloud, a nonprofit open-source document publishing site, funded through a Knight News Challenge grant. ProPublica also runs ChangeTracker, a site that monitors government websites for changes.

ProPublica has used its resources to help other news organizations undertake similar investigative efforts, showing journalists how to uncover medical misconduct and connecting struggling homeowners with local journalists.

ProPublica has emphasized crowdsourcing and participatory journalism, incorporating online communities in its reporting efforts. It hired Amanda Michel, who ran The Huffington Post’s Off The Bus citizen journalism project, to coordinate its network of 7,000 volunteers. Michel launched the volunteer ProPublica Reporting Network in May 2009, putting it to work documenting local projects using federal stimulus money. In June 2011, ProPublica launched #MuckReads, a socially edited collection of investigative journalism pieces. In 2012, the site used a Facebook group to report on patient safety issues, and in 2013, it launched a Reddit channel for suggesting stories.

The Sandlers have long been involved in liberal political causes, which initially raised some concern about whether their politics would influence ProPublica. The organization has also drawn criticism about its top editors’ and executives’ salaries, three of which topped $300,000 in 2009.