Above: Violist Lynne Ramsey. Photo credit: Roger Mastroianni. Watching four children and their parents shuffle onto the main floor of the Knight Concert Hall to hear Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, Holly Hudak had a moment. Hudak is the managing director of Cleveland Orchestra Miami, and it’s easy to understand why every orchestral performance moves her. […]
Article · December 10, 2013 by Elizabeth R. Miller
The midnight staff crew celebrates the end of Georgia Gives Day, which took place on Nov. 13. Photo credit: Tom Zimmerman/Georgia Center for Nonprofits. Building upon a successful Giving Day pilot program in 2012, Knight Foundation continued its partnership with community foundations this year. Many witnessed even more success during the 2013 “Giving Season.” Give […]
Article · December 10, 2013 by Elizabeth R. Miller
Above: The Miami Foundation staff celebrate during Give Miami Day. Photo credit: The Miami Foundation Donors from South Florida and around the world raised more than $3.26 million for more than 400 nonprofits during the second annual Give Miami Day. Wednesday’s daylong event nearly tripled the $1.2 million raised during last year’s inaugural giving day. […]
Article · November 21, 2013 by Elizabeth R. Miller
Above: College Possible, the winner of GiveMN.org’s 2013 Most Creative Give to the Max Fundraising Campaign Award. Minnesotans continued a strong tradition of supporting their nonprofit community during the fifth annual “Give to the Max Day.” In fact, Thursday proved to be the most successful 24-hour giving day to date. Collectively, the community raised more than […]
Article · November 15, 2013 by Elizabeth R. Miller
Above: Chris Barr. Photo credit: Julian Montague. Funds for making early-stage prototypes are scarce, and pursuing the few grants that exist can be intimidating. According to Media Innovation Associate Chris Barr, that’s an issue Knight’s Prototype Fund addresses, by moving nontraditional grant-seekers into the foundation’s pipeline. Barr has run the fund for a year. Below, he shares some of […]
Article · October 23, 2013 by Elizabeth R. Miller
Seventeen people are gathering in Miami today to help us review the 40 semifinalists for Knight News Challenge: Health. You can check out the semifinalists’ ideas to harness data and information for the health of communities on the News Challenge site. By the end of the day, with the help of these health innovators, media experts and technologists, […]
Article · October 11, 2013 by Elizabeth R. Miller
Measuring social impact can be an expensive and time-intensive proposition says Jon Sotsky, Knight Foundation’s director of strategy and assessment. Foundations and nonprofits should carefully consider what Sotsky calls the “return on assessment” rather than treating evaluation as a blunt tool to achieve what he considers the ultimate goal of philanthropy: delivering outsized impact with limited […]
Article · September 11, 2013 by Elizabeth R. Miller
A fascination with American culture drove Marie Gilot to leave her home in France at age 19 and study at the City College of New York. Intensely curious about the world around her, it was difficult for Gilot, now the journalism and media innovation associate at Knight Foundation, to decide on a career path. But when […]
Article · August 28, 2013 by Elizabeth R. Miller
Four Women, Four Stories from News21 on Vimeo. Post-9/11 veterans commit suicide at nearly twice the rate of civilians. That revelation tops the list of issues revealed in an in-depth report published this week by News21, a national, student-led investigative reporting effort. It also revealed long waits for benefits, high rates of unemployment and other […]
Article · August 27, 2013 by Elizabeth R. Miller
Above: Bahia Ramos Bahia Ramos learned the importance of empathy from her grandmother at an early age. It’s a notion the Brooklyn native worked hard to weave into her role as the director of Knight’s Community Foundations’ program. “Always knowing what it’s like to be in someone else’s shoes and having consideration for that is an important […]
Article · August 22, 2013 by Elizabeth R. Miller
Above: News Challenge: Open Gov winners. This week’s MIT-Knight Civic Media Conference focused on strategies that individuals inside and outside government can use to expand civic engagement. But by the end of three days, many of the media innovators gathered in Cambridge, Mass., concluded that the insider/outsider dichotomy might itself be a barrier to engagement. […]
Article · June 26, 2013 by Elizabeth R. Miller