MDIF Ventures: Investing in Young Digital Media with Impact

It focuses on projects located or serving audiences in countries where access to free and independent news and information is under threat.

Key Features

• Invests in countries where free and independent news and information is under threat, and exceptionally in global projects benefitting audiences in those countries.
• Invests in projects addressing accountability, strengthening debate or reducing information poverty.
• Targets companies along the early-stage spectrum, from pre-seed (“friends and family”/angel) to growth/Series A rounds.
• May choose to make follow-on investments in existing investees.

Eligibility Criteria

• Commitment to the provision of unique, credible, independent news, reducing information poverty, addressing accountability, or strengthening debate in the public interest.
• Commitment to fostering democratic practices and institutions, political pluralism, transparency, human rights, and dignity and equal rights for all, regardless of race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, religion and other subjects of discrimination.
• Ownership must be independent from the government or any other political or economic interests. (May be waived if the level and nature of such ownership do not put the applicant’s editorial independence in question.)
• MDIF Ventures will consider applications from across the world, serving primarily audiences in countries where access to independent news and information is under threat. However, there are some jurisdictions where they are not able to operate, such as Russia.
• While MDIF Ventures invests in projects serving audiences of non-English speakers, the application itself should be in English.

For more information, visit MDIF.