News Release
IndiJ Public Media
IndiJ Public Media, the nonprofit company that owns Indian Country Today, has received a $1 million grant from The Bay and Paul Foundations, one of the startup organization’s strongest supporters.
The grant, which was approved by the foundation’s board of directors on February 23, is given as support for IndiJ Public Media’s capacity building in the areas of staffing, systems, and fund development.
“This grant, one of the largest ever made by The Bay and Paul Foundations, recognizes the critical leadership role of IndiJ Public Media as a global media company dedicated to serving Indigenous communities and providing a platform for amplifying Indigenous voices around the world,” said Rebecca Adamson, member of The Bay and Paul Foundations Board of Directors and founder of First Nations Development Institute and First Peoples Worldwide.
Mark Trahant, who led the effort to transform ICT into a nonprofit news startup when he was the editor, said, “We are so grateful for the award from Bay and Paul Foundations.” He said Bay and Paul has been influential since ICT “first came back to life just four years ago.”
In 2018, Bay and Paul gave a $40,000 grant to NCAI Fund, which then owned ICT, to support the development of the Indigenous Peoples Journalism Network. In 2021, it awarded a $300,000 grant to IndiJ Public Media to launch the Indigenous economics project, which is led by Trahant, who is now ICT’s editor-at-large.
“This million-dollar grant is so important because it opens the door to even more resources from other foundations because of its scope and its flexibility,” Trahant said. “Finally, the innovative grant for Indigenous economics represents a whole new level of engagement, helping a news organization like ours report much more deeply than we would have been able to do in the past.”
ICT has experienced tremendous growth as a nonprofit news organization, starting with three employees in 2018 to 22 staff members on the payroll in 2022. In that time, it has diversified its revenue streams and added a broadcast department that produces a half-hour, weekday broadcast, “ICT Newscast with Aliyah Chavez.” The newscast is distributed to public television stations in the United States and Australia. It is seen in 20 percent of total U.S. markets with 337 total broadcasts, according to the station relations consulting company De Shields and Associates.
“This grant is an enormous investment in our company and will help immensely as we prepare for more strategic growth,” said Karen Michel, president/CEO of IndiJ Public Media and president of ICT.
“We admire and respect the work of Bay and Paul Foundations and its mission to foster and accelerate initiatives to develop ‘authentic solutions to the challenges’ we face,” Michel said. “We are focused on delivering news to those who are consistently left out of mainstream media news coverage. Among our authentic solutions is to serve Indigenous communities with accurate information that impacts them, written and produced by Indigenous journalists.”
About ICT
ICT is an independent nonprofit, multimedia news enterprise headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, and bureaus in Alaska and Washington, D.C. The award-winning digital news source covers the Indigenous world, including American Indians and Alaska Natives. ICT produces a public media broadcast carried via public television stations, including FNX: First Nations Experience and Arizona PBS World channel. ICT is owned by IndiJ Public Media, a 501 (c)(3) public charity that sustains itself with funding from members, donors, foundations, and supporters worldwide.
