Religion News Service (RNS) is a tax-exempt, nonprofit professional journalism organization and a subsidiary of the Religion News Foundation. RNS is affiliated with the University of Missouri School of Journalism.
Through the Religion News Foundation, RNS receives grants and donations from organizations and individuals, among other sources of revenue, in order to support RNS’ reporting, publishing and operations, similar to most other non-profit news organizations.
RNS has a strict conflict of interest policy for its Board of Managers and strict guidelines to assure editorial independence from funders. Go to the About section for more on editorial independence.
Donor Transparency
We are committed to transparency in every aspect of funding our organization.
Accepting financial support does not mean we endorse donors or their products, services or opinions.
We accept gifts, grants and sponsorships from individuals, organizations and foundations to help with our general operations, coverage of specific topics, and special projects. Our news judgments are made independently – not based on or influenced by donors. We do not give supporters the rights to assign, review or edit content.
We will make public all donors who give $5000 or more per year. As a nonprofit, we will avoid accepting donations from anonymous sources, and we will not accept donations from government entities, political parties, elected officials or candidates actively seeking public office. We will not accept donations from sources who, deemed by the Religion News Foundation Board of Directors, present a conflict of interest with our work or compromise our independence.
Our primary grant support comes from the Lilly Endowment Inc. In addition, we currently receive additional grants from the following organizations:
