Who backs factually?

1. Who funds FactCheck.org: institutional endowment plus selective platform grants

FactCheck.org operates as a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center and is funded primarily through the Annenberg Foundation’s endowment and APPC resources, a relationship established by the original Annenberg grant and ongoing institutional support ^{[1] [5]}. FactCheck.org publicly states it avoids funding from partisan groups, unions or lobbying organizations and historically relied on Annenberg resources until opening to public donations in 2010 ^{[5] [6]}. At the same time, FactCheck.org accepted limited platform funding: Meta provided multi‑year support for social‑media misinformation projects and Google/YouTube have funded specific COVID‑related and IFCN‑administered grants, which the site discloses ^{[4] [6]}.

2. PolitiFact and the hybrid model of newsroom + philanthropy

PolitiFact’s funding is a hybrid model: it receives operational backing from its parent newspaper and ad revenue, and supplements that with foundation grants and targeted gifts — examples include the Democracy Fund, Knight Foundation, Craig Newmark Philanthropies and project grants from Google and the IFCN for coronavirus work ^{[2] [7]}. PolitiFact also reports sizable individual donations to membership drives and project‑specific grants, illustrating a mixed newsroom‑plus‑philanthropy structure common among U.S. fact‑checkers ^[7].

3. Platform funding: Google/YouTube and Meta play a visible but bounded role

Big tech platforms have funded fact‑checking initiatives, often via intermediaries: Google and YouTube partnered with the Poynter Institute’s International Fact‑Checking Network to create a Global Fact Check Fund and have made grants for COVID‑19 work and other projects, while Meta funded fact‑checking projects including payments to FactCheck.org to debunk social media deceptions ^{[8] [4]}. These platform dollars tend to be grant‑based, project‑specific, and administered through third parties like the IFCN or individual fact‑check organizations, rather than ongoing unrestricted operating endowments ^{[4] [8]}.

4. Foundations, philanthropy and research bodies: the steady undercurrent

Foundations and philanthropic actors — e.g., Knight Foundation, Democracy Fund, Craig Newmark, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Joyce Foundation and regional trusts — appear repeatedly in grant lists supporting capacity building, topic‑specific reporting and technology development for fact‑checkers ^{[7] [9]}. International and UK organizations likewise rely on government research councils, academic partners and philanthropic prizes (e.g., Full Fact’s ESRC and Office for National Statistics grants and Google.org fellowship) to fund projects and tool development ^{[3] [9]}.

5. Transparency claims, safeguards and the competing narratives

Fact‑checking organizations emphasize transparency and donor rules: FactCheck.org publishes detailed funding breakdowns and asserts restrictions on corporate and partisan funding ^{[4] [5]}, PolitiFact and Full Fact list granular grant disclosures and conflict‑of‑interest policies ^{[7] [3]}, and critics point out that even modest platform or foundation funding can create real or perceived conflicts; coverage in Inside Philanthropy and RAND notes both the modest scale of many grants and the unusual transparency of some outfits compared with the broader nonprofit sector ^{[9] [6]}. The presence of platform grants administered through the IFCN is an explicit locus of debate about independence and influence ^{[8] [4]}.

6. Bottom line — who backs factually?

Fact‑checking is funded by a diversified mix: institutional endowments and parent‑organization revenues (e.g., Annenberg, newspapers), philanthropic foundations and trusts, project grants from technology platforms often routed via the IFCN or Poynter, and public/individual donations; the relative weight differs by organization and is generally disclosed in donor pages or grant listings ^{[1] [2] [4] [7]}. Where sources are silent or inconsistent about amounts or restrictions, reporting limitations prevent definitive claims about influence beyond what organizations publicly disclose, so assessments of "who backs" must rely on each outlet’s transparency statements and grant lists ^{[4] [9]}.