"In a region plagued by poverty, inequality, and attacks on press freedom, Latin American journalists have ventured into non-profit journalism to uphold democracy. Outlets producing award-winning and highly impactful journalism in the region include El Salvador’s El Faro, founded in 1998, Chile’s Ciper (2007), IDL-Reporteros in Peru and La Silla Vacía in Colombia (2009), Animal Político in Mexico (2010), Agência Pública in Brazil and Plaza Pública in Guatemala (2011) – to name a few. But finding a sustainable financing model has eluded most outlets. There is limited advertising revenue for such controversial topics, and lower income audiences are hard-pressed to pay for news. This has led to an over-reliance on foreign funding to finance their work. Research by SembraMedia found that grants are the primary source of non-profit income, accounting for 63% of their revenue on average. To assess for myself how acutely reliant independent media in Latin America are on foreign donors, I set about analysing 40 independent outlets based in 16 countries. I focused on outlets that produce public interest journalism, play a significant role in their countries, and receive institutional foreign funding. [...] Between 2016 and 2022 those 40 outlets received more than $27 million from OSF and Ford Foundation. While Ford Foundation granted roughly half the number of grants as the Soros organisation, their grants were significantly larger, meaning the total amount donated was almost on par. OSF has been key in giving establishing grants to new outlets and then fostering their growth, while Ford tends to back outlets with a track record. Ana Joaquina Ruiz, Program Associate for Mexico, and Central America at Ford Foundation, told me: “OSF has the capacity to fund more innovative projects. Ford is a bit more conservative and works with projects that can be a contribution in the long term.” A third important player to consider in this ecosystem is Luminate, created by the founder of eBay, Pierre Omidyar. Publicly available data shows it has only distributed 11 grants between 2016 and 2022 among the 40 outlets I analysed. The average size of each grant was $360,000 – far more than the average Ford Foundation grants ($240,000) or OSF grants ($135,000). It is worth noting, however, that no consistent data could be found about the length of time each grant was intended to cover. An analysis of average amount granted per year might paint a different picture." (https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk)