In 2022, CPB got $465M from the Federal government. Of that, $72M goes to "Direct grants to local public radio stations", $24M to "Radio National Program Production and Acquisition grants" and $7.3M to "Radio Program Fund".

https://cpb.org/aboutcpb/financials/budget

According to NPR's 2020 budget, total revenue was $275M, of which $92.7M was "Station dues, programming and digital fees".

https://media.npr.org/documents/about/statements/fy2020/Nati...

So ~ 1/3 of NPR's revenue is from member stations, and some percentage of that revenue is part of the $72M that the stations were granted from CPB.

Looking at WBUR's budget as a randomly picked example, its 2022 revenue was $39.7M of which $1.8M was grants. Let's call that 4.5%.

https://media.wbur.org/wp/2023/01/WBUR-Special-Purpose-Finan...

Let me pick another random station, WUNC. In 2018 its total revenue was $13.8M. of that CPB grants were $617.8K. Again, about 4.5%.

http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/wunc/files/wunc_2018_...

Using 4.5% as the percentage of of the $72M from CPB that ends up as part of the 1/3rd of NPRs revenue. 4.5% x 33% = ~1.5%.

I gather then that even though it's a small part of NPR's revenue, it's very high leverage in helping to keep all of the member stations afloat. I guess that's how they can simultaneously downplay the dollar amount while also speaking of how critical it is.

https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finance...

I may have gotten my math wrong here somewhere, corrections appreciated.

I ignored the $24M and $7.3M of the CPB budget because I wasn't sure what to do with them, but you can read more about those here:

https://www.cpb.org/funding/

It's probably fair count some part of those dollars as part of NPR's funding, I just don't know how much.