Drop Site calls itself reader-supported. Open Society funded a Middle East desk with $250,000.
The 2024 grant went to Drop Site's fiscal sponsor, Social Security Works Education Fund. The award is listed by year, not by day. Fundraising copy that calls the site reader-supported and completely independent did not mention it.
Open Society Foundations gave $250,000 in 2024 to establish a Middle East and North Africa desk at Drop Site News. Chuck Ross reported the grant in the Washington Free Beacon on November 13, 2025. The spending database, as he quotes it, describes the award as support "to support establishing a Drop Site News MENA desk to to [sic] bridge a critical information gap in independent journalism." The doubled "to" is in that text. The listing gives the year and a one-year term. It does not give a month.
The money went to Social Security Works Education Fund, the nonprofit that fiscally sponsors Drop Site. Drop Site, started in July 2024 by Ryan Grim and Jeremy Scahill, does not have its own tax-exempt status. Readers who want a deduction give through the fund. The fund's stated work is Social Security. Drop Site's giving page says the sponsor has no editorial relationship with the outlet.
Jeremy Scahill's interviews with Hamas leaders ran on July 9, 2024, the month the site launched. The piece is about the decision to launch the October 7 attacks, and it opens by calling the war in Gaza genocidal. Sharif Abdel Kouddous leads the Middle East desk. The grant record consulted here is marked 2024 and nothing finer. That July story cannot be booked to the grant.
What the record does fix is the money next to the pitch. Drop Site's fundraising calls the journalism reader-supported and completely independent. Ross reported that the Open Society grant was not in those pitches. The fund, Drop Site, and Open Society did not answer him. Readers were asked to pay for independent reporting. A $250,000 institutional grant for a Middle East desk had been entered on Open Society's books, and the appeal did not say so.