Communities – Page 41 – Knight Foundation

Program Area: Communities

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Nov. 2, 2018 — TechCongress, a nonpartisan initiative incubated at New America, will expand a program that places technology fellows in Congress to increase government knowledge of emerging technology issues and inform policymaking with a new $1 million investment from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. 

Technology increasingly plays a critical role in national issues. There have been congressional hearings this year regarding the impact of technology companies on privacy, public discussion and competition. This most recently played out in Senate hearings, following the news that Cambridge Analytica improperly used Facebook data to influence the 2016 election. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before the Senate Judiciary and Commerce Committees in April. And last month, senior leadership at Google, Twitter, Apple, as well as AT&T and Charter were called to testify about their approaches to consumer privacy. Several Senate Intelligence Committee hearings have also focused on election security and misinformation in anticipation of the 2018 midterm elections.

TechCongress seeks to close the technology knowledge gap in government through a bipartisan initiative that gives talented technologists the opportunity to gain first-­hand experience in federal policymaking and shape the future of tech policy through a one-year Congressional Innovation Fellowship with a member of Congress or Congressional committee.  

“The role that technology plays in our daily lives is raising big concerns around privacy, information dissemination and the rise of tech companies. But it’s clear that more expertise of how tech works is needed at our highest levels of government,” said Lilian Coral, Knight Foundation director for national strategy and technology innovation. “TechCongress is helping to answer that call, working side-by-side with both major political parties to ensure Congress gets better, faster and smarter when it comes to grappling with new digital age demands.” 

With new Knight funding, TechCongress will expand its program from six to 16 fellows by 2020, supporting them with training, professional development and networking opportunities. Through the initiative, fellows will educate congressional staff on technology issues, help shape legislation in this area, and update old practices with respect to organizational processes, technology, and security. Overall, the effort aims to grow the ecosystem of technologists in Congress and connect individuals working in government, civil society, academia and technology.

“The focus on big tech in the Senate has put on full display what I experienced for six years as a Congressional staffer: Congress isn’t equipped to legislate in the digital era without technical expertise,” said Travis Moore, the founder and director of TechCongress. “Technology is reshaping society. We hope to equip Congress to confront these challenges — from misinformation and digital privacy to AI and automation.”

Over the last three years TechCongress has placed 13 technologists on Capitol Hill. Their work includes a focus on issues such as election security, data privacy, AI ethics, the future of work, encryption, defense technology procurement, gene editing policy and autonomous vehicle and drone regulations. In 2017, two TechCongress alumni were the first two technologists hired in the U.S. Senate.

Knight previously supported TechCongress through the NetGain initiative, a partnership of five foundations committed to leveraging the internet more effectively to achieve philanthropic goals.

Support for TechCongress forms part of Knight Foundation’s efforts to harness the growth in digital technology to enable more informed and engaged communities. The foundation seeks to invest in strategies that increase responsiveness, connectedness and engagement to people through the use of technology. 

About New America

New America is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy institute dedicated to renewing America in the digital age through big ideas, technological innovation and creative engagement with broad audiences. To learn more, please visit us online at www.newamerica.org or follow us on Twitter @NewAmerica.

About the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation

Knight Foundation is a national foundation with strong local roots. We invest in journalism, in the arts, and in the success of cities where brothers John S. and James L. Knight once published newspapers. Our goal is to foster informed and engaged communities, which we believe are essential for a healthy democracy. For more, visit kf.org.

CONTACT:

Anusha Alikhan, Director of Communications, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, 305-908-2646, [email protected]

Joanne Johnson, Communications Associate, Open Technology Institute at New America, 202-735-2837, [email protected]

Travis Moore is the founder and director of TechCongress, a nonpartisan initiative incubated at New America that places technology fellows in Congress to increase government knowledge of emerging technology issues and inform policymaking. Knight Foundation announced $1 million in support to TechCongress today, adding to its previous support of the initiative.

In April of this year, when the Senate Commerce and Judiciary committees questioned Mark Zuckerberg, the world woke up to a reality I’d lived for six years as a Congressional staffer: Congress isn’t equipped to legislate in the digital age.

Many members of Congress didn’t understand how Facebook works. Some misconstrued its business model and ad targeting practices, and others confused it for an internet service provider or email platform. Rather than proffering solutions to prevent a future Cambridge Analytica-like scandal, a few asked Zuckerberg how he himself thought Facebook should be regulated.  

Software has already eaten the world. As a consequence, technology — unlike education or finance or transportation — isn’t just a slice of the policymaking pie that can be confined to a subcommittee jurisdiction. Rather, tech is the crust of public policy, and baked into every piece.  Decent, functional, and independent government requires tech expertise in-house.  

At TechCongress, we’re solving this problem through our Congressional Innovation Fellowship. We place computer scientists, engineers, and other technologists to serve in Congress for a one-year tour of duty. Knight Foundation, along with other partners, has been a supporter of TechCongress since it started, and in our first three years we’ve sent thirteen fellows to Congress. Those fellows have worked on issues including drone and autonomous vehicle regulations, election security, health IT, AI ethics, open government data, and data and biometric privacy.  

An independent evaluation of TechCongress commissioned this year showed fellows are having an impact on the Hill, and that they are especially effective serving as fact-checkers on interest groups. Fellows are making themselves indispensable to Congress and are staying on as full-time staff. Last year, two TechCongress alumni were the first technologists hired in the U.S. Senate. 

There’s clearly a supply of excellent tech talent who want to do meaningful work in the public sector. The U.S. Digital Service brought several hundred technologists into the government in its first four years. Coding it Forward, in just two years, has been overwhelmed by undergraduates in computer science, data science and design wanting to spend their summers interning in the executive branch. And in seven weeks of recruitment, 409 technologists applied for the 2019 Congressional Innovation Fellowship — nearly triple the number of applicants from a year prior. 

Recruiting computer scientists, engineers, and other technologists to serve in Congress or other parts of government in Washington or elsewhere isn’t the challenge. The challenge is getting them to the right roles in the offices in government. 

In confidence, elected officials will admit how little they know about technology and profess a desire to learn. But collectively, government doesn’t know how to find and hire tech talent. People hire people like themselves. Lawyers are biased toward hiring lawyers. They rely on existing networks, and pattern match to source their staff. Government staff has no idea where to find an entrepreneurial computer scientist with an interest in policy that possesses the emotional intelligence required to succeed in political and sometimes bureaucratic contexts.  

To put it simply: the demand side — government — hasn’t used the product enough to know where to find it and what attributes are important.  

The mission of TechCongress is to match the supply of tech talent who want to find their way to government to the parts of government who want their expertise but don’t know where or how to source it. This is what we do best.

We’ve worked in government, and we know the skills that it demands. We also know where to place fellows so they are successful. That means finding the elected representatives who are the innovators and the early adopters; the members of Congress who understand that a technologist isn’t an IT staffer, but a resource who can help them understand how technology is changing our economy and how we live our lives. 

In addition to the Congressional Innovation Fellowship, this year we piloted the Congressional Innovation Scholars program to place computer science, informatics, engineering and other technical degree seeking graduate students in Congress. When asked, most faculty in technical degree programs estimate that five to 10 percent of their students are interested in working in government or politics, but there’s not a pathway for them. We’re building that pipeline. Our first Innovation Scholar is in Congress right now, and we will be growing the program in 2019.  

Technology isn’t getting any less relevant to our daily lives. All policy is increasingly “tech” policy, and government requires new expertise to understand how technology is reshaping society. 

Contacts:                                

Dee Grano, VP, Kelso Communications (Charlotte), 704-604-7640, [email protected]            

Anusha Alikhan, Director of Communications, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, 305-908-2646, [email protected]

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Oct. 30, 2018 – The Project L.I.F.T./Center City 1 Learning Community, a public-private partnership that works to improve the performance of public schools in Charlotte, today announced the launch of its Civic Tech Experience, a suite of programs focused on providing the city’s West Charlotte community with digital skill-building, as well as connections to economic resources and community engagement opportunities. The initiative is powered by a $1 million investment from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. 

“Progress in the Historic West End and other West Charlotte neighborhoods hinges on ensuring residents have the skills and resources they need to contribute to their growth. By creating inclusive pathways to technology training, as well as civic and economic resources, the Civic Tech Experience will help build a more engaged and prosperous community,” said Charles Thomas, Knight Foundation program director in Charlotte. 

A Civic Tech Experience launch event for media and neighbors is planned for this Tuesday, Oct. 30 at Bruns Academy, located in the Historic West End, a neighborhood of focus for Knight Foundation. The Historic West End, anchored by Johnson C. Smith University, has made important contributions to Charlotte’s history, culture and growth. The area is on the cusp of positive transformation through a concentration of public investment and resident-led initiatives such as Pedal to Porch and Open Streets 704. 

The Civic Tech Experience will build on this progress working to expand opportunity in the neighborhood through three key programs:

  • The Digital Inclusion Institute: A digital literacy program for parents of students in West Charlotte. Through ongoing six-week training courses, participants learn the basics of operating a computer and how to use the internet, email and Microsoft Office Suite programs. The Institute increases economic opportunity for participants by teaching new technology skills and strengthens the community by further engaging parents in the public education system.  
  • Pop-Up Villages: Fun, festival-style site activations that encourage engagement between educators, local service providers and families in public spaces. Parents can network and learn about educational opportunities and local resources for tax preparation, financial counseling, benefits eligibility screenings and more. Children can enjoy interactive STEM activities and workshops. 
  • Charlotte Trajectory: A central hub for resources and free services that introduce West Charlotte families to new economic opportunities. The Trajectory is offered in partnership with Johnson C. Smith University and is powered by Single Stop Technologies and Aunt Bertha, which connects people to resources they need to attain higher education, obtain employment and achieve financial stability.

The initiative will further revitalize parts of West Charlotte, which have experienced economic setbacks in the last few decades, leading to blight in commercial corridors and lower income levels. The area’s progress has also been inhibited by a lack of access to technology. Parts of West Charlotte have been called “broadband deserts,” meaning affordable high speed internet is scarce.

“From the start of Project L.I.F.T., we have always made it a priority to listen to our families,” said Denise Watts, learning community superintendent. “The Civic Tech Experience was created because our parents identified these critical barriers to their scholars’ success. We are optimistic that our programs will bridge the gap for these families and get them connected and enabled to be more upwardly mobile.”

Project L.I.F.T. was created in 2010 as a public-private partnership with Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools to provide extra resources and support for the district’s nine lowest performing schools. L.I.F.T. stands for Leadership and Investment for Transformation. The learning community was expanded and is now part of the consolidated Project L.I.F.T./Central 1 Learning Community. 

Knight Foundation supported the creation of Project L.I.F.T. in 2012 with a $4 million investment to engage residents in the new initiative and provide laptops for students. Knight’s support of the Civic Tech Experience is part of its efforts in the Historic West End to leverage new public and private investments and foster a more engaged community. 

About the Project L.I.F.T./Central 1 Learning Community

The Project L.I.F.T./Central 1 Learning Community seeks to transform the way students who traditionally perform poorly in school are educated by ensuring they are equipped and well-prepared. We are a community of mission-aligned educators with the goal of closing the achievement gap. Learn more about the Project L.I.F.T./Central 1 Learning Community and what makes us bold, unconventional and innovative at projectliftcharlotte.org. 

About the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation

Knight Foundation is a national foundation with strong local roots. We invest in journalism, in the arts, and in the success of cities where brothers John S. and James L. Knight once published newspapers. Our goal is to foster informed and engaged communities, which we believe are essential for a healthy democracy. For more, visit kf.org.

Image (top): Parents participating in the Digital Inclusion Institute. Courtesy of Project L.I.F.T. Color manipulations by Knight Foundation. 

To create a series of curated and intimate social gatherings that bring together new and established stakeholders of Miami’s startup community.

Ana Paula González, who leads 500 Startups’ Miami operation, writes about Miami’s entrepreneurial evolution and why the best is yet to come. This year, Knight Foundation invested in 500 Startups’ expansion to Miami. This piece was originally published on the 500 Startups blog on Oct. 18, 2018. 

I am a Mexican who grew up in the “small” town of Guadalajara, Mexico (6M people, but feels small compared to Mexico City’s 20M+ population). I’ve had the privilege of studying and working in the LATAM, European and US markets, and calling world-class metropolises like Mexico City, Paris and New York my home. In 2016, following my heart, I reluctantly moved to Miami. Today, against all my expectations, I have fallen in love with this region and am ready to bet on its growth. And so is 500 Startups.

Curious? Skeptical? Stay with me.

As I wrote on the 500 Startups blog last March announcing the launch of 500 Startups Miami, this city and the larger Florida region is heating up and it’s not necessarily related to the beach or basketball. 500 Startups firmly believes that South Florida’s tech, innovation & entrepreneurial ecosystem is at an inflection point, with the real potential of becoming a global hub – and the best is yet to come.

Why? First, let’s take a look at where we are now and how we got here.

The evolution of an unassuming ecosystem

Entrepreneurial ecosystems typically develop in waves of systems/networks that continuously engage, cross-pollinate, create feedback loops, and strengthen themselves. The Kauffman Foundation and Endeavor have great research on this topic.

In the entrepreneurial world, these “waves” are made up of go-getters and hustlers who find a way to work together to build a bigger pie for all. These waves thrive with success stories that have the power to:

  1. Attract more attention, talent and capital to such ecosystems
  2. Inspire the new generation of successful startups and provide mentorship, funding, and access to networks.

And thus the virtuous cycle is reinforced on and on.

How has this played out for South Florida?

The Genesis in the 50s

The origins of the South Florida tech ecosystem today can be traced back to the 1950s, when the “first wave” of entrepreneurs were building life-changing technology for the world. Some examples you may not know about:

  • In 1957, the maker of the first cardiac pacemaker and the first bare-metal heart stent in the US, Cordis, was founded in Miami.
  • In 1961, the Coulter Corporation, that developed the method used to date to count blood cells, was established in Hialeah.
  • In 1980, Manny Medina founded Terremark in Miami, which created of one of the largest data centers in the world, the NAP of the Americas.
  • In 1981, IBM designed and assembled its first Personal Computer (IBM PC) in Boca Raton. Along the way, the beloved Ctrl + Alt + Del command was also developed.

The Renaissance in the 2000s

Miami has greatly evolved in the last 20 years. From a retirement community, to a market booming with real estate investing, to a city put on the global arts map thanks to Art Basel, the city is now positioning itself as the host of one of the most important entrepreneurial movements in the country.

I believe that the overall development of the city, along with the foundations laid in the Genesis period, led the City to start in the early 2000s what I would like to call the Renaissance (See Figure 1 below.) In this period, a new generation of local players realized that they wanted to create more opportunities in the region they called their home and that South Florida had huge potential to become a fertile ground for innovation and entrepreneurship.

These homegrown efforts spearheaded by brave and visionary souls became the building blocks of the ecosystem that we know today. Early players include the tech community Refresh Miami, co-working space The Lab Miami, and accelerator Venture Hive. But a big part of these efforts were spurred and funded by organizations such as The Knight Foundation and Miami Downtown Development Authority, who realized early on the impact they could have on the city if they supported the growth of this ecosystem, and became key enablers of its success.

As you know, talent is a crucial piece of the puzzle. University of Miami, Florida International University and Miami Dade College all launched programs to promote startups and innovation. Wyncode and Iron Hack quickly realized that training highly qualified and technical talent would be indispensable to the sustained development of this ecosystem, and so they set out to establish their coding schools, together having graduated already +2,600 developers.

And so our startup household names were born. In 2004, Rony Abovitz and Maurice Ferre co-founded our first known unicorn, Mako Surgical, which was sold at $1.65B to Stryker in 2013. Remember the waves we were talking about? Abovitz went on to found Augmented Reality unicorn Magic Leap; and Ferre founded DermaSensor to facilitate detection of skin cancer.

Speaking of unicorns, Florida is home to at least five: Mako Surgical, Magic Leap, Jetsmarter, chewey.com, and Fanatics.

Other beloved and established success cases in the region include CareCloud, Modernizing Medicine, E-Builder, Nearpod, Finova Financial, and Open English.

Finally, there are plenty of rising stars with the potential to make it huge. These include Plum, Boatsetter, BabySparks, VoyHoy, Blanket,, Home61, Clutch Prep, Whereby.us, Xendoo, Fanatiz, Option Alpha, Mediconecta, Daycation, Shoot My Travel, Caribu, Smart Barrel, among many, many others.

And although we lost Court Buddy to San Francisco and FIGS to Los Angeles, we imported Moocho from Los Angeles and Genius Plaza from New York.

Going back to the evolution of the ecosystem, do you want to hear about more amazing spillover effects? In 2014, Terremark’s founder Manny Medina launched eMerge Americas, the first tech-focused conference uniting Miami with LATAM. In 2015, a group of AGP (now Miami Angels) Angel Investors spun off to raise the Las Olas Venture Capitalfund, and Florida Angel Nexus Angel Investors gathered to start the FAN Fund.

Once these early homegrown players started demonstrating early traction and impact, the world started looking more closely at South Florida. Suddenly, we had world-class organizations such as Endeavor, Startupbootcamp Digital Health, and the Cambridge Innovation Center launching  local operations. World-class organizations, like The Venture City, are starting to be founded locally. After flirting with the region since 2012, 500 Startups officially launched a Miami operation in April of this year.

And it has been exciting to see that City of Miami’s new mayor Francis Suarez has made it a priority in his agenda to foster technology as “an economic driver for the city to remain competitive in the global marketplace.”

Finally, let’s talk about capital, the fuel on which startups grow. When I dive into the data, it looks very encouraging. Florida boasts one of the largest growth rates in the US both for VC dollars received and for size of rounds in the last 5 years. See more details in Figure 2 below.

So what’s next for South Florida?

I hope that by now you are building up the excitement for this region. In my opinion, what is next is, as my friend Elvis would say, “A little less conversation, a little more action.”

Recognize and lean into our natural assets

We will never become Silicon Valley, nor should we aim to. South Florida has its own DNA and will thrive only when it fully embodies and capitalizes on it.

  • Connecting to LATAM and Europe: According to the Miami International Airport (MIA), MIA offers more flights to LATAM and the Caribbean than any other U.S. airport, and is America’s third-busiest airport for international passengers. To me, this translates as increased talent and goods mobility, and ease of doing business.
  • Truly diverse pool of talent: According to the Miami Herald, 39% of professional workers in business, sciences, tech, education, healthcare, media and the arts in Miami Metro and Palm Beach are foreign-born. This is surpassed in the US only by San Jose, CA at 47%. What this means is that talent in South Florida is truly bicultural, not only in terms of languages, but in terms of doing business.
  • Industry differentiation: Strong verticals can be built around Florida’s industries where there is a great concentration of capital, knowledge and networks. These include real estate and construction, healthcare, logistics and transportation, travel and hospitality, and aviation and aeronautics. And hopefully we’ll see South Florida emerging as a pioneer for climate change-focused startups.
  • Taxes! Among other tax benefits, the State of Florida doesn’t collect individual income tax.
  • Good quality of life: Last but not least, Miami has been recognized for the great quality of life it can offer. According to Livability.com, Miami ranks #4 in Healthiest US cities to live in. Although this is not everything, it is definitely something that talent considers when deciding where to invest time and resources to build a company and potentially a family.

Invest in talent

There are two sources of talent for South Florida (and in general): local and imported. Universities and coding schools are currently producing high-qualified local talent at junior levels. However, the region continues to lose brain power to other cities in the US. Further, the local market still is in dire need of more technical and product management talent, as well as mid-managerial talent in general. So we need to focus on both retaining and importing talent while the local capacity grows.

How is this done? No easy answer here. But investing in local startups and incentivizing foreign startups to set up shop locally will help. As our ecosystem density increases, talent (and their families) will find it easier to move to or stay in Miami because if one high-risk startup job opportunity doesn’t work out, there are alternatives to move to locally.

Just as a market needs capital liquidity, it also needs talent liquidity. And this requires supply – talent – and demand – job opportunities.

Foster a risk-taking mindset to unlock capital and markets

I truly believe every startup is always in need of 3 things: access to talent, access to capital, and access to markets. We already spoke about talent. So what about capital and markets?

Capital liquidity is critical to support the growth of any entrepreneurial ecosystem. South Florida has no lack of capital, but it’s just not readily accessible to be invested in high risk / high return endeavors. To all the investors out there in the region, I say to you: Invest in the startups that will create the markets of the future, so you can continue to participate from the wealth created by businesses that are changing the rules of the game at an extraordinary pace. And if you are in real estate, invest in the success of your future tenants!

Access to markets is the missing piece of the puzzle and can be unlocked through Corporate Innovation Engagements that create great value both for startups and corporates. So to the corporates out there, I say: Recognize what you are good at: deep industry expertise, deep pockets, distribution channels, brand recognition, and think about how these assets can be a great platform for digital transformation and innovation when you pair up with a startup. These engagements will grant you access to innovation and technology, talent you wouldn’t typically be able to attract, speed of operation and time to market, and potentially new markets you haven’t been able to tap into.

Startups: Think big

I have seen many startups in South Florida that are “me too” businesses, addressing local markets with a differentiator for a niche segment. In contrast, I have also observed that the lack of local capital forces some startups to be much more resourceful and find ways to scale more efficiently and reach profitability sooner. So I encourage startups to leverage these skills, focus on the verticals where the region is stronger, and set out to build business that can be relevant at a global scale.

Connect Florida internally and externally with the Southeast

Florida can profit from further connecting with internal hubs of innovation – Miami, FLL, Boca Raton, West Palm Beach, Gainesville, Tampa, Orlando – rather than continue to work in silos. Further, Florida as a whole should seek collaboration with other Southeast hubs such as Georgia, the Carolinas, Texas, and Tennessee. The exchange of talent, expertise, mentors, sources of capital, and markets can only make everyone stronger.

Celebrate successes

Finally, I cannot emphasize how much we need to continue to celebrate the local successes. This is crucial to attract more and better resources, inspire the next generation of innovators and risk-takers, and make the pie bigger for all. But this is not “over-hyping” early successes that are still to be proven, an extreme that South Florida unfortunately often falls into. Rather, let’s focus on creating good quality content that tells the stories of successful founders in the region. These  may serve as case studies that will inspire future founders, as well as attract talent and capital from around the world. In my opinion, Nancy Dahlberg is an example of good progress done in this direction, but we need still so much more.

In conclusion…

My vision is that Miami will become a truly global hub for innovation and entrepreneurship focused on diversity and strong verticals yet to be defined. I like to think that in the near future, when people think of building and scaling a startup in some of the industries mentioned above, South Florida will be the top of mind place to move to succeed.

This is of course a work in progress, and only time will tell what shape this ecosystem takes, but I remain confident and optimistic that whatever turns out will be exciting, and the journey to help make it happen more than makes up for it!

Finally, I recognize that 500 Startups Miami humbly stands on the shoulders of giants, and our success in helping to fill the gaps and accelerate the local ecosystem will depend on our fruitful collaboration with all local players to the benefit of the founders that we support. We’re so excited to be on this journey!

500 Startups Miami has open applications for VC Unlocked Miami, a 2-day seminar for up and coming angel investors and VCs on Nov 1-2. Learn more here.

If you’re an accredited investor interested in attending our Demo Day, please email as at [email protected].

This piece was originally published on the 500 Startups blog on Oct. 18, 2018. 

To support the citywide Read Charlotte campaign through expanded community and parent outreach, and the recruitment of new tutors.

MIAMI — October 16, 2018 — Venture Café Miami will expand its work in providing programming, networking opportunities and other resources to help local innovators across all Miami’s communities build and scale their ideas with $1 million from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

“After years of rapid growth, Miami’s startup culture has taken root, and entrepreneurial activity is everywhere. But to ensure the long-term success of our innovation ecosystem, all of Miami’s communities must have a seat at the table,” said Raul Moas, program director for Knight Foundation. “With its distinct community-focused approach, Venture Café Miami is uniquely positioned to facilitate much-needed opportunities for new entrepreneurs to get involved and grow their ideas.”

Venture Café Miami, a nonprofit founded in 2016, seeks to create an inclusive and accessible local innovation ecosystem in Miami, providing entrepreneurs of all backgrounds with the support they need to build their ideas. It hosts the largest weekly convening of innovators in Miami, connecting upwards of 325 entrepreneurs and investors at its “Thursday Gathering” to network and share learnings and resources. It has offered more than 1,500 free educational sessions, 40 percent of which were led by women and 70 percent by people of color. 

Knight Foundation’s investment will build on this work and enable Venture Café Miami to advance its high-quality programming and partnerships, including the launch of new initiatives aimed at accelerating business growth and incorporating students and faculty in the entrepreneurial community.

The funding will also support Venture Café Miami in expanding its:

  • Geographic reach to engage entrepreneurs from all local communities.
  • Efforts to connect innovators and broaden access to capital, resources and opportunities needed to scale—including its Captains of Innovation initiative, which connects larger companies to startups to foster better understanding about new technologies, market trends and business-to-business (B2B) opportunities.
  • Initiatives that drive more inclusive engagement in Miami’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, such as its Thursday Gathering and free professional one-on-one advising for entrepreneurs from traditionally underrepresented constituencies.

“The currency of innovation is opportunity,” explains Leigh-Ann Buchanan, founding executive director of Venture Café Miami. “Each week, we encounter hundreds of individual innovators navigating varying stages of scaling ventures. Their individual and collective experiences demonstrate that access is not equally distributed—even in a diverse metropolitan center like South Florida. That’s why Venture Café Miami’s work focuses so heavily on pursuing solutions for economic and social mobility and accelerating the growth of an inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystem.”

Venture Café Miami’s “collaboration-first” approach of partnering with local and national organizations to execute its programming allows it to offer unrivaled levels of quality, content and diversity, as well as access to investors, community leaders, job creation and workforce development for entrepreneurs and members of the community at no cost.

The new $1 million investment will be distributed over a three-year period and aims to be a catalyzing force for the local entrepreneurial community. 

The investment is part of Knight Foundation’s strategy to engage new innovators in Miami’s growing entrepreneurial ecosystem, expanding opportunity for residents and the city as a whole. Since 2012, Knight has made more than 200 investments totaling more than $25 million in entrepreneurship initiatives across Miami.

###

About Venture Café Miami
Venture Café Miami is an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to creating an inclusive and diverse innovation ecosystem. Our goal is to fill the gaps in Miami’s entrepreneurial and startup community that limit access to capital and opportunity. We achieve this by collaborating with other stakeholders to curate programs, design activations, and create partnerships that foster the social and economic growth of the region.  The Venture Café Miami team is a passionate group of community leaders supported by an active and engaged group of volunteers committed to making miami a true hub of innovation for all. To learn more or to get involved, visit venturecafemiami.org.

About the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation

Knight Foundation is a national foundation with strong local roots. We invest in journalism, in the arts, and in the success of cities where brothers John S. and James L. Knight once published newspapers. Our goal is to foster informed and engaged communities, which we believe are essential for a healthy democracy. For more, visit kf.org.

Contacts

Anusha Alikhan, Director of Communications, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, 305-908-2646, [email protected]

David Barkoe, Carve Communications for Venture Café Miami, 917-359-7222, [email protected]

Image (top): Entrepreneurs and investors at Venture Café Miami’s Thursday Gathering. Photo courtesy of Venture Café Miami.

To support Philadelphia’s citywide Read by 4th Campaign by expanding early childhood literacy activities in libraries and recreation centers.

To offer advising and education to San Jose manufacturers to help them grow. Deploy workforce and youth development services to connect individuals from disadvantaged communities to jobs in manufacturing.

To engage residents in the Historic West End and West Charlotte communities in contributing to Charlotte Future 2040, the City of Charlotte’s two-year Comprehensive Plan process.

Strong democracies depend on freedom of expression and access to accurate information about community and public affairs. This is as true today as when freedom of the press was enshrined by the framers of the U.S. Constitution in the first correction they made to the governing principles of our country — what we call the First Amendment.  

What is changing in ways the founders could not have imagined are the conditions of our digital age. Theirs was a world of print reporting through largely local circulation. Ours is a world in which every element of how we produce, distribute and consume information continues to relentlessly surge forward.

At Knight Foundation, we believe it’s critical to understand how the information landscape is shifting, and how that evolution affects our society and democracy. That’s why we are investing in what we hope will become a new, multidisciplinary field of research. Starting today, we are calling for proposals to establish or accelerate the growth of centers of study focused on the role of information in our democracy and the changing conditions of an informed society. We are prepared to provide substantial, multiyear support.

We are calling for proposals to establish or accelerate the growth of centers of study focused on the role of information in our democracy and the changing conditions of an informed society.

This is not the first time that the supply of information has seemed out of sync with the information needs of citizens in a democracy. Over the course of the 20th century, Americans institutionalized mass communication through a national print press, broadcast television and radio. We also perfected the basic principles of journalism and journalistic verification. This was not by accident.

In 1946, a commission on “The Freedom of the Press” sponsored by Henry Luce, then publisher of TIME, analyzed the state of press freedom. They pointed to concerns about the “economic structure of the press,” “the industrial organization of modern society,” and “the failure of the directors of the press to recognize the press needs of a modern nation and to estimate and accept the responsibilities which those needs impose upon them.”

Sound familiar?

Today we are living in a world in which the economic structure of the modern journalism enterprise has nearly collapsed at the local level. We are living in a world in which the industrial organization of modern society is rapidly changing, due in no small part to the commercial internet. We are living in a world where the commercial internet and social media have changed our relationship to journalism and information in ways we still do not fully understand. And we are living in a world in which we have new “directors of the press”— the Silicon Valley leaders who play an enormous role in determining what we see, but reject the mantle of publisher.

The internet has undoubtedly further democratized access to information — its production, its distribution and its consumption. Yet, as the Knight Commission on Trust, Media and Democracy notes in a public draft of the first chapter of its report, the internet has also “given rise to a cacophony of voices that has raised new concerns about what news is and how its veracity can be determined, and about the extent to which these new media pose a challenge to democratic process.” And, in a Knight-Gallup survey of 20,000 Americans, nearly 60 percent said that it is harder rather than easier to be informed today due to the plethora of information and news sources available.

This is the paradox of our age. Information is easier than ever to grasp, yet we feel less informed.

In many ways, we are confronting challenges to an informed democracy akin to the health challenges that emerged in cities in the early 20th century or the environmental challenges caused by industrialization. We needed new tools to meet those challenges. We also needed new disciplines like public health and environmental science. These disciplines not only armed us with knowledge and insights, they also trained the whole generation that would take on these issues — in government, in civil society and in the commercial sector.

A significant problem today is that we simply don’t have the knowledge or the spaces to confront the impact of the internet on our informed society in a thoughtful and deliberate manner. Basic questions about how our digital information environment affects the production and consumption of information and the effect on citizens and communities remain unanswered. Answering these questions is hard. They require new approaches that bring together diverse fields like computer science and anthropology. Much like the physical sciences, these questions also demand sometimes costly tools to collect and analyze digital information.

A significant problem today is that we simply don’t have the knowledge or the spaces to confront the impact of the internet on our informed society in a thoughtful and deliberate manner.

This Request for Proposals is intended to spark ambitious thinking about the 21st century needs of our democracy. We aim to be intentionally broad. From access to information, to the proliferation of misinformation, to the nature of online speech to issues like anti-trust policy — we’re not setting limits. What we want to identify are the people and places that recognize the fundamental, long-term nature of these issues and an ambition to provide new ideas and insights, and to contribute new leaders and voices.

At Knight Foundation, our response to the dramatic changes in media has been to focus on the question of trust. We have sought to understand the causes and consequences of declining trust in journalism and to promote solutions that enable trust in journalism and affirmation of common facts. This approach is rooted in the views of our founders, Jack and Jim Knight, who led and grew the Knight newspaper chain to what would be the largest in the country. Jack Knight spoke about journalism as a way to “bestir the people into an awareness of their own condition, provide inspiration for their thoughts and rouse them to pursue their true interests.”

Some of what is needed to begin to restore trust in journalism has to happen today. We need new tools to improve the experience of navigating information online and to identify and address deliberate misinformation. We need efforts that increase the quantity, quality and relevance of reporting in communities. We need to explore new, more sustainable models to support local journalism, the hardest hit facet of the industry.

At Knight, we’re supporting efforts in all these domains. But we need longer-term thinking as well.

Recent controversies around whether social media and technology companies should ban specific sites and individuals illustrate how poorly equipped we are to address the future impacts of technology on an informed society.

To date, few places consistently provide the time and resources necessary to sustain long-term multidisciplinary work and to cultivate a new generation of leaders, thinkers and scholars ready to tackle these issues. It’s time for that to change.

Interested parties can find the Request for Proposals here.

Sam Gill is VP/Communities and Impact and Senior Adviser to the President at Knight Foundation. You can follow him on Twitter @thesamgill.

Image (top): Photo by Rodion Kutsaev on Unsplash