Food and Environment Reporting Network Inc

What it reported doing in 2024

The food & environment reporting network continues to demonstrate an ability to deliver smart, powerful journalism that helps define, and often leads, the media coverage of its areas of focus. During the grant year to date, fern has published fourteen long-form explanatory or investigative stories, six audio projects, eight reported opinion pieces, and one multi-part special series; that work has been done in partnership with 23 outlets, including the New York times, bloomberg businessweek, the Washington post, politico, mother jones, and inverse, among others.during the fiscal year, we have expanded our audio production, thanks in large part to an increased capacity for producing finished audio. These stories are done with the same rigorous, high-impact reporting techniques we bring to our text articles. We have partnered with podcasts, npr flagship programs, and npr affiliates throughout the country for this work. We see this as a compelling means to increase the reach and impact of our journalism.buzzkill, fern's second limited-series podcast distributed by prx, was completed and released in january 2025. Across seven episodes, buzzkill explores the pollinator crisis, why it matters and how we can fix it. Teresa cotsirilos, fern's own award-winning staff reporter, hosts the series. Episode reporters included rowan jacobsen, dan charles, eve abrams, elliott woods, and bridget huber. Executive producer adizah eghan, formerly of vice media and the New York times, oversaw the production with fern editor-in-chief theodore ross, and alyssa jeong perry, formerly of npr's radiolab, was senior producer. To date, the podcast has nearly 40,000 downloads and was featured prominently on both apple podcasts and npr one podcast apps. Its performance puts it in the top 5% of active podcasts, while it peaked at #26 on the apple podcasts documentary category. To commemorate buzzkill's release, fern hosted a panel discussion on urban beekeeping at New York city's civic hall for an audience of nearly 100. The panel included rebecca louie of the bee conservancy, sara hobel of the New York horticultural society, and teresa cotsirilos, buzzkill's host, and was moderated by former columbia journalism review's executive editor sewell chan. The conversation was so compelling that we released it as a bonus seventh episode of the podcast.to support buzzkill, we also revamped our existing podcast feed, which we had created for the hot farm podcast series. We changed the name to "reap/sow: dispatches from the front lines of food, farming, and the environment, and established it as fern's dedicated podcast channel, the home for all our audio work, whether limited series, one-off podcast episodes, radio reports, or other items.fern also introduced a new podcast called forked, an insider's look at the politics and policy turning the american food system on its head. Hosts theodore ross (fern's editor-in-chief) and helena bottemiller evich (food fix) offer an engaging and conversational roundup of current policy developments in food and farming, making important beltway news accessible to a concerned, connected, but mainstream audience. This is a show for anyone who cares about what they eat and where their food comes from.fern further expanded its special series packages, first introduced with a farm bill series in partnership with mother jones that won a james beard award for criticism. This kind of feature allows us to cover a complicated subject from a range of angles and perspectives in shorter pieces with different writers. We followed the farm bill series with a 2024 series on food waste with inverse, a digital culture and science news site from the bustle media group, and in 2025 we produced another series with inverse looking at ultraprocessed foods.a prime example of this approach comes in our "trouble on the line" series about haitian immigrant workers at the jbs meatpacking plant in greeley, Colorado. It was published as an op-ed with the new yo

Financial Efficiency

• Mission deployment rate: 91.1%; rating input score 91
• Program expense ratio: 79%; rating input score 79
• Fundraising efficiency: $16.51 raised per $1 spent on fundraising; rating input score 53; 53rd percentile among comparable filings

Transparency & Controls

• Consistency checks: 100%; rating input score 100; 63rd percentile among comparable filings
• Pay-setting controls: Limited
• Foreign activity oversight: Limited
• Grant itemization coverage: Limited
• Major donor itemization: Yes; rating input score 100
• Related-party transparency: Limited

Accountability

• Independent voting board: 80%; rating input score 80; 18th percentile among comparable filings
• Governance controls: 9 of 9 controls in place; rating input score 100
  • Conflict-of-interest policy: Pass
  • Whistleblower policy: Pass
  • Document-retention policy: Pass
  • CEO compensation review process: Pass
  • Other executive compensation review process: Pass
  • Form 990 shared with the board: Pass
  • Board meeting minutes documented: Pass
  • Audit committee oversight: Pass
  • Independent financial-statement audit: Pass

Sustainability

• Operating margin: -15.3%; rating input score 12; 12th percentile among comparable filings
• Total-asset coverage ratio: 0.15; rating input score 7; 7th percentile among comparable filings
• Liabilities to assets ratio: 0.17; rating input score 34; 34th percentile among comparable filings
• Officer compensation ratio: 24.1%; rating input score 11; 11th percentile among comparable filings

Growth

• Program expense growth: 8.8% per year; rating input score 100; 59th percentile among comparable filings
• Revenue growth: 6.9% per year; rating input score 100; 54th percentile among comparable filings
• Asset growth: 1.3% per year; rating input score 100; 22nd percentile among comparable filings