Summary

1. Funding access is uneven and often dependent on personal contacts, with some non-traditional funders and development banks lacking both the experience and the processes needed to engage in funding journalists and media working on anti-corruption issues. Existing and emerging anti-corruption funds offer opportunities, but organisations working on free expression and journalism need to adapt their language to the discourse and requirements of development banks.

2. Effective fundraising requires aligning language with donor priorities, emphasising how journalism contributes to governance reforms, access to information, and development outcomes. Many donors respond to evidence such as underlying data, policy ‘triggers’, and the role of journalism in safeguarding public money.

There is still a need to build broader understanding among funding institutions of the link between journalism and information integrity.

1. Impact needs to be framed in terms of tangible benefits and real-world change, showing how investigations support communities, enable accountability, influence policy or financial recovery, and affect everyday life—especially in areas such as infrastructure, health, and economic development. Participants stressed the need to go beyond the publication of investigative stories by facilitating discussions, equipping audiences with tools, and ensuring that findings are actionable.

2. Communicating impact to donors remains a major challenge, as newsroom measures—such as how useful reporting is to audiences—rarely speak the language of donors. Strong indicators for funders include money recovered, policy shifts, legal references, or qualitative narratives for rights-focused donors. Vanity metrics such as clicks should be avoided, and the cost of proper impact tracking should be included in funding proposals. Reconciling newsroom-oriented impact metrics with donor-oriented ones is important.

3. Strengthening impact strategies requires collaboration and shared learning, including creating spaces for impact editors, mapping organisations with effective impact approaches, working with researchers, and developing collective narratives. Journalism’s contribution to areas such as infrastructure, health, and economic development should be highlighted, along with ensuring that communities and civil society have the conditions they need to benefit from investigative work.

GFMD could facilitate a conversation with impact editors to help align approaches, share information, devise new impact ideas, create a collective story, and adapt language for donors.

Additional resources:

Opportunities for Collaboration and Engagement

UNCTAD Briefing Session on Illicit Financial Flows - December 11,12 Geneva - The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) is organising a Briefing Session on Illicit Financial Flows. If you are able to attend, please share the conclusions with us.

Examples of corruption cases detected by media

The Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FFD4) Policy and Advocacy resources