URL Media’s S. Mitra Kalita, center, talks on a panel about Catalytic Capital.
Case Study: Media Resilience Fund
Increasing access to capital for community media enterprises.
Partners: URL Media, National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC), Rebuild Local News
With special thanks to Andrew Nachison, a foundational advisor and early catalyst for the Media Resilience Fund.
If you are a publisher interested in accessing the Media Resilience Fund please contact Garry Pierre-Pierre, Director of Partnerships at URL Media, at garry@url-media.com
Context / Starting Conditions
The Media Resilience Fund emerged from a partnership between URL Media – a national infrastructure leader driving innovation, scale, and economic inclusion across community media – and the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC), with support from Rebuild Local News and Press Forward. The collaboration was rooted in a shared vision, that community media enterprises are essential civic infrastructure, yet are too often excluded from traditional sources of capital.
While philanthropy has played a critical role in supporting these at-risk outlets, funding can be episodic and unpredictable. At the same time, conventional lenders, including SBA-backed programs, regularly deny loans to media businesses because they lack tangible collateral beyond intellectual property. The result is a persistent capital gap that constrains growth, resilience, and long-term sustainability. NCRC has a long history of mission-driven lending, grounding the partnership in proven approaches to deploying capital in ways that advance equity and community health.
Core Challenge
Local, community-based media organizations serving diverse audiences are often among the most agile and deeply trusted institutions in their communities, demonstrating strong audience engagement, entrepreneurial leadership, and growing revenue potential. Yet they face higher barriers to capital due to historic underinvestment and structural bias in lending systems. Because many do not own real estate or other physical assets, these outlets are frequently deemed “unbankable,” despite other operational strengths. As a result, founders are pushed toward grants or personal debt, limiting their ability to plan ahead, invest in growth, or respond quickly to moments of opportunity or crisis.
Catalytic Intervention
The Media Resilience Fund was designed as a “virtual bank” for community media: a predictable, repeatable source of capital that complements philanthropic support. While grants continue to play a critical role, the fund adds a financing option that allows media leaders to access capital aligned with their growth and operating needs over time.
This approach reframes capital as infrastructure. As organizations demonstrate stability and progress, they gain access to additional lending tools, creating a pathway for outlets to stabilize operations, invest in new products, and manage revenue volatility with greater confidence.
Capital Types
The Media Resilience Fund offers a flexible mix of financing tailored to media realities, including term loans and revolving lines of credit. This blended approach allows outlets to match capital to specific needs rather than a one-size-fits-all solution.
Support Structures
Capital is paired with hands-on support. A dedicated navigator works closely with participating outlets to strengthen business operations, including helping founders separate personal and business finances, formalizing operations, and preparing for underwriting. This role reduces risk for both borrowers and the fund, while building long-term financial capacity within news organizations. .
What This Enabled
As one example, Immigrantly, a podcast originally operated as a single-product, solopreneur venture, used a $75,000 loan from the fund to launch new newsletters and to hire a sales associate. The financing enabled the organization to diversify revenue streams and transition into a multi-product media business, which would have been difficult, if not impossible, through grants alone.
Early Signals & Learnings
One early insight is that revolving lines of credit are an especially useful tool for media organizations. Because revenue can be irregular and seasonal, lines of credit allow outlets to manage cash flow during lean periods without taking on permanent debt. This flexibility better aligns financial tools with the operational realities of small and local media outlets.
Why This Matters for the Field
The Media Resilience Fund challenges a dominant narrative in local news: that media organizations fail because their business models are fundamentally broken. Instead, it demonstrates that the problem is often access to the right types of capital, not lack of impact or discipline. With the right financial structures and support in place, small media outlets can be stable, investable, and resilient.
For the broader field, this model offers a proof point: local news sustainability is not only a philanthropic challenge, but a capital design challenge – and one that can be addressed with intention and creativity.