Report: Donations to NPR, PBS Have ‘Exploded’ in Aftermath of Congressional Defunding
“So they didn’t need my tax dollars. Thanks for clarifying.”
For decades, Republicans have argued that if supporters of NPR and PBS were so fond of keeping the purported “news” organizations operational, then they should have no problem forking over the donations needed to keep them going.
As it turns out, that is exactly what is happening, with the New York Times reporting that in the aftermath of NPR and PBS losing their federal funding thanks to the GOP-controlled Congress, donations from private citizens have “exploded” at “unprecedented” levels:
scoop: donations to NPR and PBS stations have exploded, with donors across the country giving in unprecedented numbers since Congress cut federal funding https://t.co/FbfzTTfBqF
— Ben Mullin (@BenMullin) July 24, 2025
The number of new donors has surged to over 120,000 in a roughly 90-day period, the Times also noted:
Over the last three months, as the prospect of the cuts intensified, roughly 120,000 new donors have contributed an estimated $20 million in annual value, said Michal Heiplik, the president and chief executive of the Contributor Development Partnership, a firm that analyzes public media fund-raising data. Overall, donations committed to public media for the year are about $70 million higher than last year.
Further, many of the new donors are not just one-timers:
There are encouraging signs that the new donors aren’t just making one-time contributions. A greater share of them — up 51 percent from last year — are becoming sustaining members, who contribute on a recurring basis, Mr. Heiplik said.
It would also appear that the defunding becoming official was the catalyst for supporters ponying up some serious cash:
Some stations have reported a particularly sharp uptick in donations in the days since Congress approved the cuts. Amanda Mountain, the president and chief executive of Rocky Mountain Public Media, a PBS and NPR member network in Colorado, said she received 6,620 donations from Friday to Sunday, including 1,000 from new contributors. One donor gave a $500,000 gift.
To help keep the momentum going, Rocky Mountain Public Media has started a $9.7 million campaign to support innovation in technology and local content, Ms. Mountain said. The campaign has already received $1.55 million in contributions, most of it from the network’s board of directors.
Though they’ll need to raise somewhere in the neighborhood of $550 milliona a year to make up for what they’ll no longer get from taxpayer funds, it sorta kinda proves the point that if there’s a strong enough market for something, consumers will make it happen, and that neither PBS nor NPR “need” public funding to survive:
Isn't this exactly how it should be? If you think NPR and PBS have some kind of value, don't ask for a government subsidy, throw some money their way. https://t.co/GjOSssO1Vp
— John Hawkins (@johnhawkinsrwn) July 25, 2025
Mandatory donations to NPR replaced with voluntary donations. Good! https://t.co/FywRHJoY0a
— Jason Willick (@jawillick) July 24, 2025
So they didn’t need my tax dollars.
Thanks for clarifying. https://t.co/vd2tosY70Q
— Amy Curtis (@RantyAmyCurtis) July 24, 2025
Oh no, what a horrible repudiation of the idea that they shouldn’t be given taxpayers’ money. https://t.co/yMFipSqSnH
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) July 24, 2025
Listeners voluntarily donating to NPR because they like the content is actually FAR more preferable than the US government simply taking dollars from Americans who don’t.
How can’t more people see this?
— Jon Miltimore (@miltimore79) July 24, 2025
Last but not least, let’s remember to thank singer/songwriter Sheryl Crow, who seemingly started a trend back in February by making a very public show of selling her Tesla and then donating what she got from it to NPR:
Singer Sheryl Crow waves goodbye to her Tesla after selling it in protest against Elon Musk.
She is donating the money from the sale to support left-wing media outlet, NPR. pic.twitter.com/JjKLNXomVG
— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) February 15, 2025
As we noted at the time, this, of course, was not the own she thought it was, since that is precisely what conservatives have said supporters of public radio and TV stations should do instead of one more dime of taxpayer money going towards funding them.
At long last, that has become a reality. This is what Trump supporters voted for, and it feels really good.
– Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via X. –
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Now they can be as biased as they want. God bless their hearts.
I’m sure they will be and that they will be shockingly blatant about it.
Subotai Bahadur
At least one station tells people to donate to “join the resistance”
They do some really good long form interviews as well.
In other words, nothing will have changed.
Disagree: the change is that we’re no longer giving ammunition to a sworn enemy.
Growing up in the 50s and 60s and into the 70s, PBS provided programming that ABC, CBS and NBC didn’t. (I fondly remember watching Tom Baker as Dr. Who in the 70s). But then satellite tv arrived and then Al Gore invented the Internet. I can watch Dr. WHO, new and old, whenever I want to. And anything else that sparks my interest. Same case with NPR: listened to All Things Considered while working in the lab as well as the classical programming. But then technology offered countless alternatives that could be customized to suit my interests. The days when PBS and NPR provided programming not available elsewhere were decades ago and their reason for existence and the rationale for taxpayer funding ended then too.
If others find their programming to be desirable, let them pay for it because I don’t.
The British TV on PBS was fun but strange. Why is the ‘public’ American media broadcasting private foreign content?
BBC is government run in the UK.
More than they already are – and have been for many years?
It is apparently beyond the cognitive abilities to progressives to understand that we don’t care if they watch and listen to leftist content, conservatives just don’ t want to be forced PAY for your choices.
Good on ya for donating; only a few hundred million dollars to go.
I’d miss “All Things Considered” but I’d also get over it. They won’t get a dollar from me as long as I have no say where they spend my dollar.
I may actually donate
I like their classical music
station.
Great. So they take your donation to classical music and spend it on the salaries to those 2 clowns from The New York Times and Washington Post for their News Hour.
I’ll continue to donate to The Salvation Army.
More Bang for the buck.
As long as you’re aware of this and this (earlier articles in LI).
Yeah Henry, they’re not perfect but I’ve seen them in action more than once and they ‘accomplish’ when other charitable outfits aren’t there at the finish line.
Same with Habitat for Humanity.
You don’t have to love their philosophy to see the good they do.
I donate to the local Catholic Children’s Hospital (and I am not even Catholic) as then I have some confidence that it might be going to a worthy cause. I realize that some of the donations is going to be spun off elsewhere but I hope that most actually helps ill children.
Same here. Our local public radio station has a studio on our university campus, and their classical music programs are excellent. They sometime have professors from the University’s School of Music on their shows to provide interesting background information.
Consider checking out the offerings on the Sirius platform before handing over $ to wokiesta leftists.
That’s fine. I have no desire to see NPR/PBS go off the air, I just strenuously objected to their getting any funding from Uncle Sam under the hysterically ridiculous claim that they were in any way neutral or objective. They never were and today exist to the left of Chairman Mao, as in:
🎶 But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao
You ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow 🎶
$500,000,000 / yr / 120,000 donors = $4167 / donor / yr
I gave them ten bucks once.
“donations from private citizens have ‘exploded’ at ‘unprecedented’ levels:”
Okay, I believe that. Bit I’m gonna that the rage of the moment. “How dare these Republicans do such a thing,” they raged, reaching for the smelling salts, the bong pipe, or the rum.
“I’ll show them,” as they write out a check to PBS.
Most of these PBS/NPR grifter stations will get by for this year. But next year?
Having that dependable line item in the federal budget, year after year, gave a sense of steadiness, of dependability. That does NOT happen when you have to rely on the fickleness of donors.
The rage will cool, the reluctance to write the check or do the clicks at the donor page will take hold. Inertia will assert itself.
When they demand more contributions to pay for their increased expenditures…. then they will have to pony up why the increases and/or lose money. Correct… the reflex contributions will go and soon NPR/PBS will have to EARN their keep.
Yup. This will all be a flash in the pan.
Meanwhile, Democrats, give to NPR and PBS until it hurts. Then give even more. Rape your children’s trust funds and deed your house over to them if you have to, just to show America how much you hate Donald Trump, and that you won’t be silenced! Your hive demands it!
Now they will have their begathons every week.
That’s the first thing I thought. It’s unsustainable. It may be OK for immediate relief in some areas, but it won’t make up for what the taxpayer ponies up on a consistent basis.
The next thing I thought was even these donations won’t replace the entire “donation” the taxpayer involuntarily paid.
Unless they can get $8+ million every year, they won’t even get enough for salaries, let alone operating expenses. PBS got $500 million+ annually.
The 15 most highly compensated employees were:
$1,168,661: Paula A Kerger, President and CEO
$ 779,625: Jonathan Barzilay, COO
$ 631,581: Ira Rubenstein, Chief Digital Officer
$ 578,736: Katherine S Lauderdale, Chief Legal Officer, Corporate Secretary
$ 525,580: Thomas E Tardivo, CFO, Treasurer
$ 511,891: Rhonda D Holt, Chief Technology Officer
$ 488,535: Syliva Bugg, Chief Prog Exec and GM
$ 466,711: Jeremy Gaines, SVP, Corp Communications
$ 456,121: Scott Nourse, SVP, Product and Innovation
$ 434,825: Sara E Dewitt, SVP and GM, PBS Kids
$ 425,815: James Dunford, SVP, Station Services (to 6/23)
$ 419,855: Michael D Jacobson, SVP, HR
$ 396,240: Cecilia B Loving, SVP, DE
$ 364,132: Amy Wigler, VP, Marketing
$ 282,595: Mary Plantamura, Assistant Corp Secretary, Associate General Counsel
The 15 most highly compensated employees received $8 million in compensation.
Commercial networks pay is similarly inflated, and they get no public money at all. The secret seems to lie in these things called “commercials,” which PBS claims (as a virtue signal) never to run, yet they run incessantly anyway. Support for this comment was provided by the Gun Owners Foundation, with additional support from plinkers like you.
PBS is nervous about giving up its amateur status.
Is Paula Kerger the ditzy blonde showing signs of severe memory impairment. She seems to have forgotten the first rule of being a good liar: remember all of the ones you have told in the past. 2018 wasn’t that long ago, tootsie.
Now, do Planned Parenthood
The more money they donate to PP and their media is less money for the leftwing NGO’s, since they no longer have tax dollars
Now do USAID.
That’s the only way liberals got money for “authentic” activism – or should I say astroturf activism?
It wasn’t the only way, but it definitely played a large role. One by one the pipelines to taxpayer dollars are being shut off.
Bullish for tote bags.
I donated once to my local PBS station, KERA, during a donation drive. They had produced a documentary how they were the first station in the U.S. to air “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”—in Dallas, Texas no less.
I was supposed to receive a VHS/DVD of the show; a BritCom t-shirt; a tote bag; a coffee mug with cartoon people dressed in Union Jack garb who pulled down their pants to show their backsides when a hot liquid was added.
I got the t-shirt.
A $120 dollar t-shirt I still have.
I wanted the mug.
I never donated again.
You should have sued.
It’s just as well.
Liberals’ tears are too cold to have activated the moon shot anyway.
Let one of the leftist oligarchs buy them. At least it will be out in the open.
Soros anyone? A lot of Sorrows.
That will last about as long as it takes for sh*tlibs to move on to something else to score virtue signaling points with.
How does a replenishment of 3.64 percent (and much of it onetime) of the annual shortfall kinda, sort of prove the point you are claiming? It kinda, sort of proves the opposite.
Actually, as the Trump administration slashes more and more DEI funding and assorted other grifts, forcing layoffs among NGOs, these donations will also dry up. The full ripple effect will take a few years but it will happen.
Yes I am curious if any of these ‘private donors’ are actually foundations in the . Gov pipeline.
and notice how the lefty loves to give towards the Pravda msm crowd
but wont commit their own money to their mentally ill homeless drug addled minions,,,, and this time I dont mean dems in congress
There is a fun fight brewing in Portland right now. They enacted (I won’t give them credit that it was actually voted in) a 1.5% tax on high wage earners to pay for a Universal pre-school program. Lots of money collected so far, but no schools have been set up yet. Governor is now trying to put a stop to it because the State which collects 9% income tax on these people noticed that they are moving away. Gee, really? Not only did Portland tax away businesses, but also residents. So the City Marxists are in conflict with the State Marxists. The net result is that they are each revealing their respective grifts.
yeah,, thanks
lefty knows no criminal act they wont embrace
This is the story of the 1930’s in reverse.
At the turn of the century there were literally thousands of charitable organizations and associations providing support to the “less fortunate”.
Then the government started handing out welfare checks and food stamps and housing assistance…and most of those organizations died out.
People stopped voluntarily donating their time and their money because…hey, the government’s taking my money for these causes and paying bureaucrats to distribute it already, why should I give more?
It is no surprise that the same effect works in reverse. If the government got out of the charity business, actual charities would most likely step in and fill the gap, with the added benefits of less fraud and way less six figure salaries going to bureaucrats to run the programs.
The ironic thing is that the left sees this proof of concept experiment as some sort of vindication or victory, when all it does is prove the government doesn’t need to be in the charity business after all.
It’s going to be difficult to reverse the government takeover of support for the needy. One of the big problems is the fracturing of families and church memberships as people and their children are geographically scattered. It’s a different kind of homelessness.
No or at least not in the way you are formulating it. There is still majority support of taxpayer funding for the ‘needy’. There’s also majority support for ending any taxpayer funding for the ‘not needy’.
There is a distinction between the ‘deserving poor’ and ‘lazy grifting welfare queens’. The key IMO is to reinforce the difference and to demand personal responsibility. No more bailing people out of the consequences of their bad decisions. Able bodied adults should be working. Period. No working= no benefits. Don’t care if you had 5 kids with five different men. No the role of taxpayers to help you. Your family, Parents, Siblings, Grand Parents either step up or they don’t. If you can’t financially support your children you are an unfit Parent and CPS should remove them.
If we want the biological Fathers to be equally financially responsible for their offspring then let’s do a couple things. First, mandatory DNA tests. No more guesswork or doubts. Second no ‘putting a Man on child support’ by claiming govt welfare… if we want the unmarried Father to pay then force a marriage…instead of the Farmer holding the shotgun it is the State. In divorce we fix this with ending ‘no fault divorce’….instead limit divorce to traditional reasons abuse, adultery. The marriage could still be ended without those but only via an annulment so that it is as if the marriage never happened. No alimony from annulment. No ‘split’ of marital assets b/c the marriage didn’t exist. For all child support set the presumption that it is 50/50 joint physical custody and the amount of support should be based on what it takes to provide for a child without reference to incomes (usually a far lower amount). Each Parent pays their 50% into the Court and the funds are disbursed in arrears upon presentation of monthly receipts from each Parent. No more one sided child support plans or the funds intended for the child diverted to other things.
Chief, Apparently you missed my point, which is odd since I doubt you’re a Big Government type.
Government will always be bad at providing for the poor. The lack of a personal accountability connection means it will always miss the mark – enabling the grifters and denying the truly needy. People will also make mistakes, but fewer than the impersonal, disconnected government.
How do we get the government out of the child support business so deadbeat dads can pay their child support themselves.
Better yet, women won’t be as quick to have children out of wedlock, or get a divorce because Uncle Sugar won’t be handing out checks.
But now that Musk is bad-mouthing Trump she has to buy her Tesla back. That’s okay, she can sell her stock of toilet paper and donate those proceeds to NPR, instead.
If she wants to make a big impact she can sell off everything she owns that either has petroleum products in them or used petroleum products in their manufacture/transportation/etc. She could raise a SH*TLOAD of money for NPR that way! And be true to her self-proclaimed views.
Sheryl Crow earned a spot on my no-play list 30 years ago, after her song about “Watch our children as they kill each other with a gun they bought at the Walmart discount store.”
I always liked her music. Shame she’s such a nut. But I have that problem with most of my favorite musicians. My all-time favorite is Brian Eno and it’s hard to get anyone more of an insane, lunatic leftist than him. But he did brilliant work.
As to Crow’s song … I picked up some nice Savage .308 and 6.5 Creedmoor rifles for about $50 each back when they were emptying inventory at the end of the year. It was crazy. I had to ask the guy 3 times about the price – I didn’t believe it. But it was there. … Then the Boy George riots hit and our Walmarts, here, stopped selling guns altogether.
Time to go to the next level and pay for the homeless and the illegals that they all celebrate.
This just proves that taxpayer funding should have been cut long ago as unneccessary.
This post is a good example of the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect:
What reason do we have to trust the NYT’s reporting on this? Lying and deceiving in the holy name of the Glorious Communist Revolution (TM) is what they are designed to do. Did they suddenly and miraculously start telling the truth?
When it comes to the American media, it is a good idea to bring back the time-honored custom of “guilty until proven innocent”.
I like this. Who wrote it? Where can I read the whole article?
IIRC, it was Michael Crichton who wrote that article.
A bunch of over paid S Piled Higher Degreed people with have to get a haircut. Boo Hoo.
best thing of all??
capitalism at work
you wnat to support a cause ..pay for it
NEXT STOP???????
UNPLANNNNG PARENTHOOD
you want the abortion…PAY FOR IT
So the left could have paid for their propaganda without taxpayers theft.
Love it. Be as left as you wish – just don’t do it with (direct) tax dollars.
Finally free to change it to National Pinko Radio.
Actually, only the right reads their logo as NPR. The left reads it as JPU.
Good News, now let the remainder of the left use Go Fund Me.
This is the way it should have been since day one.
I’m guessing that over time the donations will decrease as the “saviors” of NPR and PBS will lose interest and pare back donations…
All in all a win for the American taxpayer – more please…
Not a surprise. Revisit the issue in 6 months and I’ll bet donations are down over 50% from last year.
With so many leftist media outlets like CBS and CNN faltering, I don’t quite understand why PBS is receiving donations to keep it alive. Perhaps this is all a ruse to make them look like they’ll be successful and not give the Republicans a win. I call BS and say that they will be out of business in short order.
It’s probably people virtual signaling their displeasure with this administration. Plus, there’s already a mechanism in place to donate to NPR & PBS. Sure, you can buy a subscription to ABC/CBS/CNN or whatever. But just try to pay extra over the listed price.
The question is, will the donors keep donating this level of cash to these networks for the foreseeable future? Or will the spigot slowly close.
Funny that lefties all of a sudden are opening their checkbooks to donate to NPR when they could have done that all along. Virtue signaling certainly must be some kind of a genetic thing for lefties. Maybe it explains their sour personalities and acute psychotic rages whenever the word “Trump” is spoken…