“I kept telling them, you have to raise money like crazy this year for next,” Mr. Buzenberg said. “I’m not sure that happened.”

The center is expected to raise $9.3 million this year, down from around $11 million last year, Mr. Bale said, noting that grants to the center are often paid out over multiple years.

He has had to consider cuts anywhere he can find them, not just at the consortium. The Center for Public Integrity laid off two prizewinning senior investigative reporters of its own in May and is delaying hiring for open positions.

The financial woes have strained the relationship between two organizations that David E. Kaplan, who ran the consortium from 2008 to 2011, says have always been awkward partners. The consortium was founded in 1997 as a branch of the center to focus on international investigations, but it quickly developed its own ethos.

“These are two different organizations in culture, structure and methodology,” said Mr. Kaplan, who resigned in protest in 2011 during a period of particular tension between the groups.

The differences have only intensified as the consortium has grown under Mr. Ryle, an Irish-born investigative journalist who worked in Australia before taking the position. Its budget has roughly tripled, to almost $2 million this year, and its staff has grown threefold, to about a dozen, including contractors, after the cuts.

It has also deliberately moved away from the journalistic model of its parent organization, in search of a more effective way to investigate and distribute stories across borders at a relatively low cost.