Limelight Foundation is the leading European fund that funds the journalists, news rooms, and digital rights organisations that keep power accountable. The foundation was founded in 2021 by John Caspers, a former innovation director at Adyen, and Merel Borger, who shaped the fund's earliest strategy, on the conviction that access to independent information is not a privilege but a right.
To grow the fund and defend the access to quality reporting on a bigger scale, Limelight needed to attract a new type of funders. That is what Momkai was brought in to build. With co-founder Merel Borger and managing director Alinda Vermeer in the room for every check-in, brand decisions became business direction.
Since the rebrand, Limelight has grown to eleven funders. Advanced conversations with major European partners are underway, including foundations working on climate and health.
Democracy crumbles when facts disappear
Around the world, people are tuning out of the news. Algorithms decide more and more what we see. Self-censorship grows, and powerful interests shape public discourse. History shows that fascism starts with language, not tanks.
Limelight had spent years funding journalists and organisations courageous enough to tell difficult truths. The foundation itself struggled to do the same. The brand felt technical and distant. The narrative framed the work as saving journalism, a defensive position that undersells both the stakes and the strategy.
Reframing the story from ecosystem to infrastructure
Working with the Limelight team, Momkai uncovered the bigger picture: that independent information is the infrastructure every other mission depends on. Climate funders, health funders, democracy funders, none of their work succeeds in an environment where public information has broken down and access to information is dominated by algorithms. That reframe became the foundation we build everything on.
Calculating the stakes to build a €150m annual fund
Independent journalism cannot stand on courage alone. Across Europe, self-censorship grows because the people in power are getting more and more powerful and algorithms define more and more what people see. Without structural funding, without a trusted place to hold power to account, newsrooms collapse and access to information is withheld. Limelight's role is to make sure it does not.
Momkai asked the Limelight team to calculate what it would actually cost to keep the lights on for at least one independent newsroom in every European country. They came back with €150 million a year. We made sure they said it out loud and claimed their European position, so that funders know what’s at stake, meet their ambition and help secure the people’s right to know.
Be Bold. Back the Brave.
Momkai helped Limelight Foundation step into the light, with a brand identity and digital brand experience. In the design, we balanced optimism with urgency. We built brand assets, messaging frameworks, funder guides, landing pages, and communication materials the team could use immediately.
We designed it all to hand-over as a working toolkit. Limelight published their first annual report independently, building on the foundation Momkai built. The result was a magazine that started conversations around board rooms, built around stories from grantees and something to keep on the table.
When the renewed brand launched, the reaction was immediate, and divided. Established players in Dutch journalism were unsettled by a fund announcing ambitions at a scale the sector had never seen. The brand was not built for the existing funding community, but built to appeal to a new one.
Since the rebrand, Limelight has grown to eleven funders. Advanced conversations with major European partners are underway, including foundations working on climate and health.
Limelight Foundation & Momkai
Limelight Foundation is Europe's leading fund for independent journalism, backing the newsrooms, investigators, and digital rights organisations that keep power accountable across the continent.
Momkai helped Limelight build a brand and narrative strategy that matches the courage of the founders, the team, the organizations and the journalists they back, increasing the leads and importance of access to information to a bigger audience.
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