Knight Foundation

This is the second in a series of excerpts from our new booklet "Journalism and Media Grant Making." Based on the experiences of foundations that are making media grants, it's a primer for foundations that want to get started. Five Things You Need to Know: 2. You can build on what you’re already doing News and information efforts can bolster initiatives that foundations are already investing in, rather than becoming a new program area. The California Endowment, for example, is focused on health, particularly how neighborhood environments affect health in underserved communities. The endowment funds news and information projects that deal with health issues, including grants that allowed: A local newspaper to hire a reporter to exclusively cover community health ($50,000 to $100,000 per year). An emerging nonprofit news organization to increase its focus on community health ($75,000). A community access cable outlet to work with youth to cover community health issues ($50,000). Public radio to report on health issues and make its health coverage more prominent ($300,000). The result? The issue in which the endowment is heavily invested gets a higher profile as well as greater reach and potential impact. “Our foundation has a place-based strategy focused on community health, with a strong emphasis on youth engagement. Our media grant making supports this strategy by funding local projects in our targeted communities aimed at increasing the quantity and quality of news coverage about community health issues. For example, in Sacramento, we support a Neighborhood News Bureau project created by Access Sacramento, the local community access cable foundation. Through this project, news bureaus have been set up at two nonprofit organizations, where youth report on community health news and train community members in how to create their own media. Access Sacramento’s partnerships with local mainstream media organizations, including the daily newspaper, provide a channel through which these new stories and voices can reach a wider audience.” – Mary Lou Fulton, Program Officer, The California Endowment

"The American barn raising tradition arose out of necessity. Neighbors came together to help neighbors build an essential element of family and community life because constructing such a large building required many hands. No one can do it alone. " These are the opening words of the brand, spanking new About page of ACTion Alexandria, a new civic engagement and community-focused web site launched, after more than a year of work and planning, by ACT Alexandria, a vibrant--and active--community foundation in Alexandria, Virginia that has played a strong role in disbursing funds, planning for the future, and growing civic leadership in Alexandria, VA. Launched in phases over the past year (the blog went live in September 2010), ACTion Alexandria was the brainchild of ACT Executive Director John Porter , Program Director Brandi Yee, and a working group of local community members who saw the need for a site that would connect people to causes in an action-oriented way at the same time it supported discussion and debate.