When the American Journalism Project launched in 2019, the Knight Foundation was among its earliest supporters. Right off the bat, the longtime journalism funder invested $20 million in the new organization created to provide venture philanthropy for local news.

Six years later, the Knight Foundation is doubling down on that early support. On Tuesday, the American Journalism Project announced a $25 million investment from Knight to “accelerate the growth of nonprofit local news organizations nationwide.”

This hefty chunk of change will flow toward three goals. Per the announcement, AJP will use it to “provide growth capital and long-term operational support to up to 60 nonprofit news organizations, expand its partnerships with local philanthropy across the country to address news and information gaps, and launch the Knight Resiliency Lab…a unit designed to strengthen the financial and operational resilience of nonprofit newsrooms.”

The American Journalism Project’s portfolio currently lists about 45 grantees across 36 states; Axios reports that this new investment will grow AJP’s reach from “supporting 50 local newsrooms today to 60 over the next three years.”

“Part of this investment will allow us to re-invest in news organizations in our portfolio that have plans for significant growth, especially into new communities,” Roshni Neslage, AJP’s head of communications, told me in an email.

The Knight Resiliency Lab would join AJP’s Philanthropy Partnerships Program, its Startup Studio, its Product and AI Studio, and its Local News Incubator. Per the announcement, it will complement these other programs by providing “news organizations with expertise, resources, and training for long-term sustainability, focusing on key areas such as audience development, major donor fundraising, membership models, and revenue diversification.”

“Our whole portfolio of grantees, including new initiatives launched by our Startup Studio, already receives hands-on strategic support from AJP,” Neslage said. “Support from the Knight Resiliency Lab will be highly specialized support around a few key areas, which will also be available to all of the organizations in our portfolio.” AJP expects the lab to consist of “a small unit of specialists” focused on those key areas, and plans to build out this team “over the next few years,” she added.

“With this investment, we’re ensuring that nonprofit local news organizations don’t just launch — they thrive,” said Maribel Pérez Wadsworth, president and CEO of Knight Foundation, in the statement announcing the funding.

A report about support organizations I wrote about yesterday observed that “we have no way to measure whether the money being funneled into support organizations is making a difference because we have no way to measure what that difference is.” So it was notable to me that this announcement made a case for the American Journalism Project’s success over time by highlighting its growth, and the growth of some of its grantees (though that track record of grantee growth is not perfect). The announcement notes AJP has raised more than $200 million since 2019, and highlights the growth of its earliest grantees to argue that “its investment model has proven effective.” Per the announcement, “the first 22 organizations to partner with the American Journalism Project have doubled in size by diversifying revenue and added over 200 journalists to their staffs.” (Emphasis AJP’s). Among its earliest grantees: City Bureau; MLK50: Justice Through Journalism; and VTDigger.

“We make grants that are, on average, about $1 million, with the expectation that these grantees will grow their organizations by about $1 million by the completion of their grants,” Neslage said.

Read the full announcement here.