A new study from the Knight Foundation takes a look at 20 nonprofit news sites and their progress in becoming sustainable enterprises. It found that the news sites revenue grew by 73% on average from 2011 to 2013.

Gaining Ground: How Nonprofit News Ventures Seek Sustainability examines data around revenue generation, organizational capacity and social engagement tracking at nonprofit news organizations.

Highlights include:

- State/regional news sites grew faster than local sites. The revenue of state or regional sites grew by 55% on average in 2013 compared with 2011. Revenue growth for local sites averaged 12% for the same period

- Individual donor support grew. All sites reported an increase in the number of donors (2011 average, 498; 2013 average, 757). This was mainly driven by an increase in donations of less than $1,000, which accounted for 97% of all donations in 2013.

The report builds on two previous reports by Knight in 2011 and 2013. Some trends in those reports continue: the sites are reducing their dependence on foundation funding and growing earned revenue. On the down side, they continue to spend more heavily on editorial than on revenue development or tech and few are experimenting with ways to document impact beyond web traffic analytics.