The Pulitzer Center’s global reporting grants support in-depth, high-impact reporting on critical issues that are often overlooked in the media. This is our "catch-all" grant, so there are no restrictions on topic or reporting location. Staff and freelance journalists are eligible worldwide.

Conflict Reporting Advisory: We are eager to support in-depth, underreported stories related to conflicts around the world. Freelancers, please know that if you will be reporting in war zones and other high-risk regions, we will need a firm assignment from outlets agreeing to take full responsibility for your safety and well-being. Please review the ACOS principles. We encourage you to include Hostile Environment Training in the budget that you submit with your proposal. Please be advised that ultimately we are seeking the appropriate balance of experience, recent HEFAT safety training, language skills, and reporting project plans and details. Thank you and stay safe!

There is no deadline for applications; grants are awarded on a rolling basis. Awards cover reporting costs and are based on reasonable, detailed budgets. Most awards for international travel are between $5,000 and $10,000, but may be more or less depending on circumstances. We expect news organizations to pay journalists for their work, though in exceptional cases, we may consider stipends to cover a reporter's time. If you are applying on behalf of a newsroom, university, or similar, please note that we do not allow overhead or indirect expenses in our budgets.

We support projects across all media platforms and encourage ambitious proposals that combine print, photography, audio, and/or video for one or more news outlets. The most successful projects are those in which news outlets match our commitment by adding interactive, data, or multimedia elements to enhance and showcase their original reporting.

Grants are open to reporters, photographers, radio/audio journalists, television/video journalists, and documentary filmmakers. We are committed to supporting journalists from diverse backgrounds and of all nationalities.

This is our "catch-all" grant, so there are no restrictions on topic or reporting location for these grants. You can also explore our thematic grants, which focus on issues such as gender equality, climate change, tropical rainforests, AI accountability, data journalism, and more.  If you are unsure about what grant opportunity best fits your project, submit your proposal through the global reporting grants form.

You can find more tips for a successful grant application here.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION FOR PROSPECTIVE APPLICANTS

Payment: On approved projects, half of the grant amount is paid after completion of the initial grant paperwork and the remainder on submission of the principal material for publication or broadcast. Specific grant terms are negotiated during the application process.

Safety: If your project proposal involves reporting in a hostile or dangerous environment, we require that you and your potential outlets adhere strictly to the ACOS Alliance principles outlined here. If you plan to report from conflict zones or hostile environments, you must have a firm assignment from a news organization that agrees to assume full responsibility for your well-being. You may also include Hostile Environment Training in your proposal budget for our consideration (freelancers will be given priority).

Audience Engagement: Proposals should include detailed distribution plans and letters of interest or commitment from outlets where the stories will be published. The Pulitzer Center also encourages creative forms of content distribution and audience engagement beyond story publication. Our past grantees have routinely surprised us with very novel ways of reaching audiences with their work. They’ve shared their reporting via shortwave radio with Indigenous tribes, bus stop poster campaigns, and even with comic books and poetry performances.

WHAT WE DON'T FUND

To save our grantees and staff time, we thought it would be helpful to outline editorial products and project expenses we don’t fund:

  • Books (we can support a story that might become part of a book, as long as the story is published independently in a media outlet) 
  • Feature-length films (we do support short documentaries with ambitious distribution plans) 
  • Staff salaries (with the exception of some of our yearlong fellowships)
  • Equipment purchases (equipment rentals are considered on a case-by-case basis) 
  • An outlet’s general expenses (for example rent, utilities, insurance) 
  • Seed money for start-ups
  • Routine breaking news and coverage 
  • Advocacy/marketing campaigns 
  • Data projects aimed solely at academic research. Data should be developed to enhance/support journalism. 

Still have questions? Please email [email protected].