Public Media Co’s bridge fund for nonprofit radio stations turns from rescue to reinvention

Public Media Co. celebrated its 25th anniversary Tuesday night with a $10 million donation from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to support its transformation into a major grantmaker — a role that would have been unthinkable two years ago.

As recently as 2024, the nonprofit consultant that works to strengthen public radio stations reported $3.42 million in revenue, according to tax filings. Public Media CEO Tim Isgitt said he was proud of his “small, but mighty team” and the impact that they had on the sector.

Then came the federal funding cuts.

One day in June 2025, Isgitt told a roomful of funders that federal cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting could create a “doom loop” with catastrophic effects on the entire public radio sector, requiring them all to act immediately.

The next day, the House of Representatives voted to rescind all of CPB’s funding, about $1.1 billion that stations were already promised. Within weeks, the Senate followed suit.

“It felt just like a wave that washed over us all of a sudden,” Isgitt told The Associated Press.

Isgitt and Public Media were quickly pressed into service. His idea to help was suddenly in demand.

“PMC had never been a grantmaking organization before, but everybody was saying, ‘You’ve got to do this,’” he said. “So we sort of turned ourselves inside out, hired some staff and became a grantmaking organization.”

By August 2025, Public Media had organized a fundraising bonanza. It created the Public Media Bridge Fund to raise and quickly donate $100 million to stabilize public radio stations that depended on CPB funding for more than 30% of their annual budgets and were in danger of closing after the federal cuts.

The fund launched with $27 million, including an initial $10 million donation from the Knight Foundation and support from Pivotal and the Ford, MacArthur, Robert Wood Johnson and Schmidt Family foundations. By December, it had distributed all $27 million to stabilize endangered stations. Stations with support from other sources, including the Bureau of Indian Affairs for tribal stations and the state of New Mexico for stations there, did not receive funding.

“That was a good thing,” Isgitt said, “because we committed every dime that we had.”

The Public Media Bridge Fund has raised about $87 million and stabilized 186 public radio stations that serve about 30 million people in the United States. The Knight Foundation’s additional $10 million donation, announced Tuesday, is part of PMC’s new $38 million fundraising effort to help stations become more financially sustainable without federal funding.

Knight Foundation President and CEO Maribel Perez Wadsworth said she was impressed with how quickly and effectively Public Media deployed funds last year.

“Now, it is really turning all of its attention to sustainability and the things that are critical to sustainability,” said Perez Wadsworth, adding that PMC’s focus on fostering collaboration between local news organizations can “drive the kind of business model change that will hopefully support sustainability in the long run.”

The bridge fund will still support stations with unstable budgets; the fund is now also looking at projects with broader impact, Isgitt said.

“Our attention now is more on the nationwide system and how it can sort of re-engineer itself to work more efficiently,” he said.

Judy Diaz, general manager of Delmarva Public Radio, said its stations relied on CPB for about 33% of their funding. The public radio network is a collaboration of three Maryland nonprofit stations owned by Salisbury University and the University of Maryland Eastern Shore.

Cost-cutting and increased donations allowed Delmarva Public Radio to use part of its Public Media Bridge Fund grant to modernize equipment and purchase new marketing database software. It also established a content-sharing agreement with Baltimore Public Media.

The changes tripled the number of donors and listeners in the station’s marketing database and increased membership revenue by 20% over last year's already unusually strong donations as supporters responded to the federal cuts, Diaz said.

“I can now see a clear path for the foreseeable future,” she added. “We didn’t have that before.”

Ashley Alvarado, president and CEO of Texas Public Radio, said Public Media and its bridge fund are helping her organization navigate a combination with the nonprofit newsroom San Antonio Report. The two nonprofits decided in July to join forces, believing they would be stronger financially together.

“What we found is that the strengths and weaknesses of each organization would really benefit from that combination,” Alvarado said.

It’s the kind of transformation Public Media hopes to bring to all its stations: improving financial stability while better serving communities. “Media and technologies are evolving quickly,” Isgitt said. “If these community organizations want to remain relevant, they have to evolve too.”

Knight’s Perez Wadsworth said the Public Media Bridge Fund was intended as a stopgap to keep public stations operating while they developed financial plans without federal support. However, she also knows philanthropy cannot replace large federal grants for long.

She hopes Congress will see the importance of public radio stations — for emergency broadcasts, for providing news and community information, and for fostering connection and civic participation.

“It is my belief, maybe because I’m a hard-wired optimist, that after stepping back from the brink and seeing the absolute need and critical nature of these stations, we will see some level of funding again, even at the federal level,” Perez Wadsworth said. "I think we will see a path to a thoughtful recalibration of what funding these stations looks like.”

Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

Public Media Company CEO Tim Isgitt stands for a portrait on Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

Public Media Company CEO Tim Isgitt stands for a portrait on Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

Public Media Company CEO Tim Isgitt sits for a portrait on Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

Public Media Company CEO Tim Isgitt sits for a portrait on Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

Public Media Company CEO Tim Isgitt sits for a portrait on Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

President Donald Trump's new press secretary stepped to the podium, the eyes of a packed room of journalists — and many in their audiences — upon her. She smiled broadly at the sea of faces both probing and friendly. With that, Katie Zacharia went live and became the official voice of the world's most powerful person.

Fourteen minutes and just three questioners later, she was done. In the aftermath, it was clear that the former Newsmax commentator accomplished at least one thing: She put the “brief” back in briefing.

In her debut Tuesday, Zacharia looked downward and often read directly from a script. She paused and grinned when she uttered the words “Department of War.” She stumbled on a question about her background and mixed up the words “husband” and “president.” The few questions she took were nonconfrontational and from media outlets that have been sympathetic to Trump. In short: She made no memorable impression — or at least, to hear some tell it, not the one she likely wanted.

This would not be an easy job under any circumstances. Trump most frequently serves as his own spokesman. And his antagonism toward the media has created a new layer of tension. Zacharia is finding out on day one that she, too, will be under constant watch. Some — including a few of those who have stood in her shoes — didn’t think it went all that well.

In fractured times, in a national media scrum unimaginable just a few decades ago, what is the proper way to approach a job like this? How do you speak effectively when your boss speaks for himself so often that he commandeers the news cycle multiple times a day — and sometimes late into the night — with remarks provocative, unexpected and sometimes incendiary?

For one, you realize for whom you work: not your audience of millions but your audience of one, and the absolute need for his approval.

“I get to do what I was doing on the outside already, which was hoping to amplify, multiply and expand upon President Trump’s incredible agenda for the American people,” Zacharia said. Nowhere did she mention the task of disseminating accurate information to Americans.

Over the nearly 10 decades since former journalist George E. Akerson made his and the office's debut as Herbert Hoover's press secretary in 1929, the job has served many purposes: deliverer of information, amplifier of policy, jouster with journalists, protector of the presidential reputation and, sometimes, overlord of obfuscation.

Under Trump and his second-term press secretary so far — Karoline Leavitt, who resigned in August — the job has been primarily one of acting as the immovable object against an irresistible, and in Trump's eyes sometimes treasonous, force.

Leavitt got to know this terrain well in her 17-month tenure. She took a smiling but combative stance against a press that was increasingly coming under Trump's criticism for coverage — and was named in at least one lawsuit about White House media access. She was not shy about interdicting what she considered media bias. "What a stupid question," she said to one reporter at a briefing last year.

Trump, outside the White House shortly after the briefing, praised Zacharia's debut as “excellent.” She was standing behind him at the time.

Other early reviews were more critical. MS NOW quoted one unnamed White House official as saying of the performance: “She needs to get much better fast, otherwise she’ll break Scaramucci’s record.” Anthony Scaramucci, an early White House communications director for first-term Trump, lasted 11 days in 2017. Said Scaramucci on X Tuesday afternoon: “I hope she makes it.”

Joe Biden's former press secretary, Jen Psaki, now the host of a show on MS NOW, put it more succinctly, posting on X: “Well that briefing was basically an SNL skit….except it wasnt.”

While Zacharia's performance — and of course, that's what every briefing is — may have been bumpy to some, it was also mostly content-free except for news she broke about the White House asking U.S. Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle to quit, which she immediately did.

Predictably, also like Leavitt before her, Zacharia spent a great part of her opening monologue praising Trump and giving an “up 'til now”-style update on his second term's priorities and accomplishments so far. Talking points included a “booming economy,” “his historic boom in energy production” and “a great relationship with Venezuela.”

She was also fond of superlatives, a trait that likely will resonate with a president whose remarks are often equally if not more expansive: “President Trump is working to secure the Western Hemisphere for centuries to come.”

When it came to questions, though, she was downright parsimonious. She allowed three questioners, then answered an additional one as she prepared to depart. The three called on during the briefing were Breitbart, Fox News and the Daily Mail, all of which have been friendly to Trump in varying degrees during periods of his two terms. And she said she would continue Leavitt's policy of bringing “new media” in — which has often meant outlets more sympathetic to Trump.

“We love new media and we want to be able to embrace it,” she said. Currently, three major outlets — CNN, MS NOW and Politico — are fighting to regain White House access after Trump banished them last month, saying he didn't like their coverage and calling it “fake news.”

How will Zacharia fare in coming days and weeks and, if it lasts, months? That, like so much else, depends on one thing: Donald Trump.

The late U.S. Sen. Howard Baker once famously said that, when being asked difficult things, handle it something like this: If you don't like the question being asked, just answer a different question. On Tuesday, a half-century later, Katie Zacharia found a different way in — pick three nonconfrontational questioners, then defer to your boss and say: The End.

White House staff members from left, White House aide Natalie Harp, Walt Nauta, personal aide to President Trump, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and White House press secretary Katie Zacharia, right, walk to board Air Force One, Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2026, at Joint Base Andrews, Md. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

White House press secretary Katie Zacharia speaks with reporters in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House, Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

President Donald Trump walks out along with White House press secretary Katie Zacharia to talk to reporters before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House, Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

White House press secretary Katie Zacharia speaks with reporters in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House, Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)