Seed Grants for Early Reporting: Summer 2025

Thank you for your interest in applying for a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism. This application is for seed funding to cover the expenses of preliminary reporting, such as open-records requests and initial reporting trips. If you want to apply for a regular grant, with a full investigative story proposal, please use the form for regular grants. 

 Overview of grants for seed funding

• Grants are for preliminary reporting for specific projects. The grants cover early reporting that can lead to full investigative projects. This includes, for example, open-records requests, initial reporting trips to identify and interview sources and the reporter’s time.
• Grants are $1,000 to $2,500. The entire grant is paid up-front.
• Journalists who receive seed funding can apply for full grants (up to $10,000) once they conduct the preliminary reporting and secure a commitment from a media outlet to publish or broadcast the story.
• All information contained in an application is held strictly confidential by the Fund's board and staff, is shared with no one outside of the organization, and is used solely for the purpose of making a grant decision.  

Criteria for seed funding

• Freelance journalists and those who are not in full-time staff roles at a media outlet are eligible to apply for seed funding.
• Seed funding must be used to obtain documents or information that could lead to a full investigative story. The journalist’s time can be one cost covered by the grant, but it should not be the only cost.
• Other criteria for seed funding mirrors the Fund’s criteria for full grants: stories must be investigative in nature (meaning they uncover wrongdoing that was previously hidden or unknown), and journalists must be U.S.-based or working on a story with a very strong U.S. angle.

What to include in the application

• Resume and two work samples
• You can include a letter of recommendation from an editor, mentor or professor if you choose, but this is optional.
• A one-paragraph summary of your project. This should be able to stand alone as a very brief description of the preliminary reporting you plan to do and the investigation you think it could shape.
• A longer narrative of what the potential story is, why you think there’s a bigger story and what preliminary reporting you plan to conduct. 
• Estimates of the preliminary reporting expenses that you need funding to carry out, with a rationale for how the estimates were calculated. This should be a detailed breakdown of costs (for example, specific locations of trips and costs of airfare, mileage, lodging etc., and/or a breakdown of your expected time to report the project and your hourly rate).
• A brief explanation of other reporting that has been done on this subject and how your project would advance the story.

We do not accept resubmissions of proposals that we’ve declined previously, unless we specifically invite you to resubmit.

We do not accept multiple proposals from the same applicant in one grant cycle, except in rare cases. To seek an exception to this guideline, please email us at grants@fij.org. 

Please follow the prompts below to apply. If you have questions or need help completing an application, please email us at grants@fij.org.