The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting has announced a $12 million challenge gift from board chair Emily Rauh Pulitzer.

The dollar-for-dollar matching gift will enable the center to raise up to $24 million in support of  journalists covering international crises and conflicts. Launched in 2006 by Jon Sawyer, a former Washington bureau chief for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, with $1 million from Rauh Pulitzer, the center awards more than a hundred grants annually and is set to disburse a total of $1.6 million in 2016, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy. Board member Katherine Moore has pledged the first $1 million toward the challenge.

The widow of Post-Dispatch publisher Joseph Pulitzer III told the Chronicle she decided to pledge the money during the center's tenth anniversary celebrations to shore up its future and highlight the work it plans to do in the decades ahead. "The institution has to go beyond the present donors and leadership," said Rauh Pulitzer. "We've seen how matching grants have brought in new donors, and significant ones. If the institution is to survive, that's crucial."

In addition to its reporting grants program, the center runs educational and news literacy programs such as the Campus Consortium and Global Gateway that bring journalists to college campuses and middle and high school classrooms and provide online resources and tools for students and teachers.

Financial support for international reporting is more important than ever, as foreign reporting has become increasingly expensive and dangerous, said board member and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Rohde. Increased hostility from foreign governments and abductions by insurgents create "an unprecedented level of danger when it comes to covering conflict and other stories overseas, so having the Pulitzer Center provide freelancers with reporting grants that let them report safely and professionally is more of a public service than ever."