The MacArthur Foundation is making a big bet on local news, catalyzing hundreds of millions of dollars to support the sector through its own giving, as well as through its role spearheading the larger funder movement known as Press Forward. But with an ambitious goal like this, one question looms large: where do you start?

For the foundation’s local news team, making hard choices about where to invest required moving beyond their intuition. They needed a way to ground their funding priorities in existing data, proving why some geographic regions needed investment more than others.

MacArthur’s director of local news, Silvia Rivera turned to the Civic Information Index to understand what parts of the country could benefit from catalytic investments and to ground their decision-making. “Usually, when there is a news desert, there’s all sorts of other deserts as well. And so the Index helped us to make that case… that this is why we’re making these choices, and they’re the hard choices,” said Rivera.

Guided by this information, the local news team outlined their geographic priorities in their strategic framework, focusing on regions that had high quantities of news deserts, low civic health scores, and high populations of individuals from historically underserved communities. These included the Southern United States, Appalachia, and Borderland communities. Recently, this strategy has translated into a commitment of over $6 million to support local news in the Borderlands.

MacArthur’s use of the Index doesn’t stop with its own internal strategy. The foundation actively passes on the tool to its partners, creating a powerful ripple effect. Rivera says she asks potential grantees to use the Index in their own funding pitches: “We want to see that as they are talking to us about potential pitches, or as they’re talking to others about their work, they are using this as a reference.”

This move is strategic: it equips organizations on the ground with a robust, national-level data tool, allowing them to make a more powerful case for support when they speak to MacArthur and, just as importantly, to other funders.

In the next phase of their strategy, Rivera’s team is conducting a “listening tour” in the Southeast.  The plan, according to Rivera, is to continue to”fortifythat listening with data.” By using the Index as a guiding post and key validation tool, the foundation is not only ensuring their support is directed where it’s needed most, it’s also equipping the entire field to make a stronger, evidence-based case for the future of local news.