The Fund for Investigative Journalism offers grants for individual story research and reporting.
FIJ is the oldest fund of its type, founded in 1969. Over four decades, the Fund has awarded more than $1.5 million in grants to freelance reporters, authors and small publications, enabling publication of over 700 stories and broadcasts and 50 books.
The Board of Directors looks for: stories that break new ground and expose wrongdoing – such as corruption, malfeasance, or misuse of power – in the public and private sectors.
The Fund encourages proposals written for ethnic media and submitted by journalists of color. Grants average $5,000 and cover out-of-pocket expenses such as travel, document collection, and equipment rental. The Fund also considers requests for small stipends.
It is Fund policy to pay the first half of approved grants to successful applicants, with the second half of the grant paid on evidence of publication of a finished project in accordance with the original proposal. Second half grants are not guaranteed if projects are not completed in a timely fashion.
The Fund accepts applications for projects on domestic and international issues. All application documents must be written in English and budgets expressed in U.S. dollars.
International reporting
The Fund gives a very strong preference to US based reporters or to stories with a strong US angle, either involving US citizens, government, or businesses. All stories must be published in English – either by an English language publication or outlet, or by an outlet that has an affiliation with an English language site.
Application Process
The Fund for Investigative Journalism (FIJ) accepts online applications, using the form to the right. Before uploading name each attachment: Proposal, Budget, Resume, Writing Sample-1, Writing Sample-2, Letter-of-Commitment.
Budget
Provide an itemized budget of expenses, other revenue sources, and the amount being requested. Refer to this sample budget when formatting the request.
The Online Form
If you do not fill in a required field, you will be taken to an error page and may need to start over. Press the back button on your browser to go back to the form with your field values remembered; note however some browsers do not support this function. Pressing the “go back to form” link will take you to an empty form.
Confirmation
Once you have submitted the application, send an email to fundfij@gmail.com requesting confirmation. Do not rely on the popup message. If you have trouble using the online form, email fundfij@gmail.com.
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http://fij.org/