Factchequeado wins $30K IFCN SUSTAIN 2026 grant to build donor community
What's the deal? FactchequeadoDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a nonprofit Spanish-language fact-checking organisation serving Latino communities in the US, has been selected by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) for a $30,000 grant through the SUSTAIN 2026 programme. It is one of 25 organisations worldwide to receive funding.
The money will go toward building a community of individual subscribers and donors to help sustain the organisation's work long term. Factchequeado plans to hire fundraising experts, implement new newsletter and donor management tools, and develop segmentation and automation processes.
"We believe this support will allow us to take the next step: developing the infrastructure needed to turn that trust into an engaged community of subscribers and donors," said Laura Zommer, co-founder and chief executive officer of Factchequeado.
Why now? Funding for journalism and fact-checking is shrinking globally. The SUSTAIN 2026 programme, an initiative of the Global Fact Check Fund, was designed specifically to address this squeeze by helping organisations find sustainable revenue models beyond short-term grants.
IFCN director Angie Drobnic Holan said the selected organisations "are finding ways to serve their audiences at a time when high-quality information is becoming increasingly difficult to find."
What could go wrong? Converting anonymous readers into paying donors is notoriously difficult, especially for niche media outlets. Factchequeado serves more than 68 million Latinos in the US — a large potential audience, but one that may have limited familiarity with donor-supported journalism models.
A $30,000 grant can only go so far. Building the technical infrastructure and expertise for sustained individual fundraising typically requires significant ongoing investment beyond what a single programme can provide.
The signal: Factchequeado, classified as an "early growth" organisation on Dealroom, is attempting to solve a problem facing fact-checkers globally: how to convert audience trust into durable revenue when institutional funding is contracting. If its donor-funnel experiment succeeds, the playbook could scale across its network of more than 145 partners — potentially reshaping how Spanish-language media serving underserved communities in the US fund themselves.
Read more: factchequeado.com
