NPR receives $113 million in charitable gifts [View all]

Source: NPR

Updated April 16, 2026 12:54 PM ET


NPR has received two of the largest gifts in the public media network's existence, totaling $113 million. They will go toward fueling innovation in NPR's use of digital technology, increasing its connection with audiences, and ensuring the viability of public radio stations after Congress eliminated all federal funding for public media.

NPR President and CEO Katherine Maher said the gifts would help to set up the network and its stations for the next 50 years, beyond the radio network infrastructure that sprang up in 1970 from a coalition of community and university-owned public radio stations across the country.

Maher said that requires NPR and its stations to use tech to collaborate more effectively in providing programs and news coverage, to analyze how people are consuming their offerings and to discern how to raise money more effectively to pay for it. She said the gifts would be "catalytic investments" in NPR's future. "Audiences don't just listen in their cars or in their kitchens," Maher said. "They're reading, they're viewing, they're listening on the go."

The donations would help answer a key question, Maher said: "How do we make sure that we have the infrastructure necessary to be able to deliver the high quality reporting to people in all those places when they want?". The philanthropist Connie Ballmer contributed $80 million specifically toward ensuring NPR transforms its technology to meet the needs and serve the interests of public media audiences on whatever platforms or devices they may seek it.

Read more: https://www.npr.org/2026/04/16/nx-s1-5787634/npr-113-million-charitable-gifts-connie-ballmer