ProPublica

ProPublica is a nonprofit investigative newsroom incorporated as Pro Publica Inc. and based in New York. Its IRS ruling dates to February 2008, which is the earliest first-party date available for the organization and the basis for the founding year recorded here.

Funding

ProPublica is funded almost entirely by philanthropy rather than by readers or advertisers. Its Form 990 for tax year 2023 reports total revenue of $57.97 million, of which$55.86 million was contributions and grants and only $0.35 million was program service revenue. Total functional expenses were$44.08 million and end-of-year assets $85.51 million. The organization's revenue grew from$44.53 million in 2022.

Sourcing Note

Removed as unsourceable: the reach line “150 million annual readers across partner publications”; the attribution of the founding to Herbert and Marion Sandler and the Sandler Foundation; the description of its reporting as having “moral force”; the claim that its investigations “have contributed to new legislation, policy reversals, and leadership accountability” and “often trigger congressional hearings and regulatory investigations”; the statement that its methodology “has influenced how other news organizations approach investigative journalism”; and the assertion that it won the “first online Pulitzer Prize” in 2010 for reporting on hospital decision-making after Hurricane Katrina.

That last claim is the kind this project should be most careful with: it is a specific, checkable award attribution, and it was published with no citation. The Pulitzer Prize board maintains a public record of winners; the sentence should be restored only against it.

The covers connection to the FCC, described as ProPublica “investigat[ing] telecommunications policy and regulatory enforcement,” is removed — nothing sourced here establishes that beat.

A note on this page’s sources: the citation above points at ProPublica’s own Nonprofit Explorer, which is a database of IRS filings rather than editorial content. It is used here as a route to the primary document — Pro Publica Inc.’s Form 990 — not as ProPublica reporting about itself.