2003 KF Annual Report

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From the Chairman 2

From the President 4

2003 Programs 6

Journalism Initiatives 10

Community Partners Program 20

National Venture Fund 30

Trustees, Officers, Staff 40

History 42

Investment Report 48

Auditors’ Report 49

Financial Statements 50

Letter of Inquiry 56

Grants 57

Acknowledgments Inside Back Cover

he John S. and James L. KnightFoundation was established in 1950 as a private foundation independent of the Knightbrothers’ newspaper enterprises. It is dedi-cated to furthering their ideals of service to community, to the highest standards ofjournalistic excellence and to the defense of a free press.

In both their publishing and philanthropicundertakings, the Knight brothers shared abroad vision and uncommon devotion to thecommon welfare. It is those ideals, as wellas their philanthropic interests, to which thefoundation remains faithful.

To heighten the impact of our grant making,Knight Foundation’s trustees have elected tofocus on two signature programs, JournalismInitiatives and Community Partners, eachwith its own eligibility requirements. A thirdprogram, the National Venture Fund, nurturesinnovation, leadership and experimentation forcommunity investments that might benefitKnight communities.

In a rapidly changing world, the founda-tion also remains flexible enough to respondto unique challenges, ideas and projects thatlie beyond its identified program areas, yetwould fulfill the broad vision of its founders.

None of the grant making would be possi-ble without a sound financial base. Thus, pre-serving and enhancing the foundation’s assetsthrough prudent investment managementcontinues to be of paramount importance.

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S T A T E M E N T O F P U R P O S E T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S

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The National Constitution Center, which opened to the publicJuly 4, 2003, on Philadelphia’s Independence Mall, serves as thebackdrop for many of the photographic images in this annualreport. We are grateful to the center’s staff for helping. Visit thecenter on the web at: http://www.constitutioncenter.org

On the cover: Isabel Virilli enjoys opening day at the NationalConstitution Center.

The images from theNational ConstitutionCenter that you will seethroughout this reportconvey the message aswell. From its openingday on July 4, 2003,the center on Philadel-phia’s IndependenceMall has helped visitorssee that democracy isconstantly being chal-lenged and reinterpreted.Knight Foundationinvested some $2 mil-lion in the new center,i n c l u d i ng support for itswork with Public Agen-

da on a national study of the public’sunderstanding of constitutional issues.

All of our grant-making investmentsare made possible by careful stewardshipof the foundation’s asset base ( Page 48).In 2003, we made total gifts of $90.4 million. Of this amount, 349 new grants,in addition to our ongoing commitments,were awarded to nonprofit organizationsworking nationally in journalism, in ourcommunities, and through our NationalVenture Fu n d .

We ended 2003 with assets of $1.846billion, an increase of 13.6 percent overthe previous year. That followed threeyears in which the financial marketsexperienced the worst performance sincethe Great Depression. Knight Fo u n d a t i o nweathered that storm quite well. In fact,during the three years 2000, 2001 and2002, when the Standard & Poor’s 500I n d ex lost almost 38 percent of its value,the foundation’s cumulative investmentreturn was positive by 2.5 percent. Inother words, Knight Foundation lostnothing. Our assets declined, of course,because we continued to make grantsand pay our administrative expenses.

The Knight brothers’ philosophy andHill’s statement are the guideposts theKnight trustees and staff have followedacross the decades. We added a newchapter to this story in 2003 by contin-uing to support democratic institutionsworking to improve journalism world-wide and investing in the vitality of the26 Knight communities.

That is why “a more perfect union”neatly serves as a theme for this latestKnight Foundation annual report. Thatongoing work ranged far and wide lastyear. Carolyn Robinson, Knight Interna-tional Press Fellow, trained journalistsin East Timor, one of the newest democ-racies in the world (Page 18). RichardKimball, president of Project Vote Smartand a former candidate for the U.S.Senate, encouraged American politi-cians to lay out clearly their issues,enabling voters to make informed deci-sions (Page 30). On the coast of SouthCarolina, Paula Lynn Ellis and theKnight Community Advisory Committeebegan rolling out a plan to boost thecrop of volunteers and increase citizenparticipation in Myrtle Beach ( Page 28).

t the John S. andJames L. Knight Foun-dation, we have hadmany discussions overthe years regarding therelationship betweenjournalism and ourcommunities. What isthe common thread thatbinds our two majorprogram interests?

Our Founding Fathersknew. James Madison,author of the U.S. Con-stitution and fourthpresident of the UnitedStates, stated:

“A popular govern-ment, without popular information, orthe means of acquiring it, is but a pro-logue to a farce or a tragedy ... a peoplewho mean to be their own governorsmust arm themselves with the powerwhich knowledge gives.”

Jim Knight wrote on the subject. “It’s the individual reader who is on my mind,” he said. “How can we bestrespond to the needs, problems andinterests of every man, woman andyoungster who reads our newspapers?”

And Lee Hills, my predecessor aschairman of Knight’s board of trustees,was precisely right when he said:

“The emphasis on good journalismshould be on serving citizens, not onserving newspapers or TV. People haveto know what’s going on if they want togovern themselves.”

I add the emphasis to the words c i t i z e n sand g o v e r n because they bring intofocus the rationale Jack and Jim Knightused in setting the measures of theirphilanthropy – journalism of excellenceto sustain their chosen profession andstrong communities where they estab-lished their newspapers.

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Common Threads

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W. Gerald Austen, M.D.

grounding in the foundation’s program-matic work. A Pulitzer Prize-winningpublisher with the Grand Forks (N.D.)Herald for 21 years until his December2003 retirement, Mike also served as aKnight trustee from March 1999 to M a r c h2004 and was a very active member of the Grants Review Committee. Astrustee and chair of Knight’s CommunityAdvisory Committee in Grand Forks,Mike has both shaped and implementedour Community Partners Program.

President and CEO Hodding Carter’sthoughtful essay on the following pagesfurther describes how our support ofdemocratic institutions is the focus ofKnight Foundation’s ongoing mission.Nurturing democracy is a continuingchallenge and a never-ending opportu-nity. It is an extraordinarily importantrole we strive to play in our society.

W. Gerald Austen, M.D.Chairman

activities. Bud Baker has an outstandingbackground in finance and investmentsas well as philanthropy, and is a wonder-ful addition to our board.

We also offer thanks and best wishesfor great success to Penelope McPheeas she heads north this spring to becomepresident of the Atlanta-based ArthurM. Blank Family Foundation. Pennyserved Knight Foundation’s programinterests exceedingly well for 13 years.A national leader in the arts, she joinedthe foundation in 1990 and helpedlaunch the national Arts and CultureProgram. She became vice presidentand chief program officer in September1996. In that role, she helped lead thefoundation through its recent strategicplanning process, and she played a keyrole in the development of our newCommunity Partners Program.

We are delighted that MichaelMaidenberg will be joining the founda-tion as vice president and chief programofficer this spring. He is a man of greatability and judgment and has a solid

Much of the credit for this commend-able performance goes to Gordon Heffern,an Ohio banker and Knight trustee.Gordon joined the board in 1980 whenthe Knight Foundation assets wereapproximately $22 million. He chairedthe committee overseeing our investmentsfor 22 years. During his tenure, wereceived the bequests from the John S.and James L. Knight estates, elevatingtheir foundation into the ranks of ourcountry’s largest.

Our assets at the beginning of 1991were $522 million. By the end of 2003,just 13 years later, our assets hadincreased by more than three times. Theaverage annualized performance duringthis period was 13.9 percent, which isamong the highest returns in the foun-dation world. Because of this success,the foundation has been able to pay outmore than $667 million in grants duringthis 13-year period. Gordon retiredfrom the Knight board in March 2004.His investment leadership set a path forthe outstanding work of Vice Presidentand Chief Investment Officer TimothyCrowe and his staff. We are grateful forGordon’s wisdom, good judgment andcommon sense in his role as a trustee.

As a new year begins, my fellowtrustees and I are pleased to be joinedby North Carolina banker L.M. “Bud”B a ker Jr. Bud joined Wachovia Corp. in1969 and retired in 2003 as chairmanof the board. His career at Wachoviaincluded stints as president and chiefexecutive officer, chief operating officer,president of Wachovia’s North Carolinabank, chief credit officer and managerof the international division. He helpedengineer the merger of Wachovia withFirst Union Financial Corp., creatingwhat is today the nation’s fourth-largestbank. He has been and continues to bevery involved in a number of nonprofit

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L.M. Baker Jr.Gordon Heffern Penelope McPhee Michael Maidenberg

The Year in Review Jan. 1, 2003 – Dec. 31, 2003

Assets:* $1.846 billionGrants paid out: $90.4 millionProposals received: 432New grants approved: $128.7 million (349 grants)Average approved grant: $368,823

* At Dec. 31, 2003

views and is willing to finance the roleof government; new, unexpected factorssuch as the great flood of immigrationof the past 20 years; changing moresand the surfacing of demands for changethat sharply conflict with the clear moralimperatives of other Americans: All ofthese and numerous other threads arepart of the warp and woof of contempo-rary life. They inevitably affect Knight’sdecisions about what we can most usefullysupport and what is, for the moment, lessimportant or undoable given our limitedresources.

But, like others in philanthropy, wehave determined that reinvigorated civicparticipation is a must if the essence ofthe American creed is to be preservedand enlarged:✔ The new Americans must be incorpo-

rated into the body politic. ✔ All Americans should be encouraged

to rediscover and recommit to theunderlying political philosophy thathas historically defined our nation –even when it was far more narrowlyrestricted by law and practice than it is today. No less they should beencouraged to take individual action,from voting to participation in civiclife, that takes advantage of the free-doms flowing from that philosophy.

✔ Those who have done well, those whomost benefit from the ordering ofaffairs in contemporary America,should particularly be encouraged tomake common cause in this effort,remembering the injunction, religiousand political, that “of those to whommuch is given, much is required.”The notion of “I’ve got mine, Jack” isa far cry from “E Pluribus Unum.” As Jerry Austen noted in the preceding

pages, our grant making in each of ourthree program areas increasingly reflectsthis conviction. As heirs of the Founders’

a finished work.” Over a century later,it still isn’t, which is something we atKnight Foundation experience virtuallyevery day in our communities and inour journalism-related and National Ven-ture Fund work. That fact is a challengeand an opportunity. It is simultaneouslythe source of the nation’s vitality and aconstant threat to its stability. Nothingis finished in the here-and-now; nothingis certain about the future of our grandventure in self-government.

Knight Foundation is hardly unique inrealizing that there are numerous tasksbefore the nation as it continues to tryto perfect the state of the Union, andthat we share responsibility for tacklingsome of them. There is no clear ideolog-ical or political road map on this subject,no infallible text. The circumstances inwhich we take on this work are fluid. Aconstant ebb and flow in how the public

he Founding Fathers of this republicwere geniuses, not merely because theDeclaration of Independence and theConstitution they forged became basicdocuments propelling the long march of humanity toward truly free, demo-cratic and open societies. They werealso geniuses because those documentsrepeatedly made clear and left open thepossibility that constant change wouldbe required to improve upon their work.They did not pretend to be infallible,nor did they decree that their monu-mental work should be treated as anuntouchable monument.

As a result, the history of the UnitedStates is the history of ever-evolvingefforts to create “a more perfect Union.”The 27 amendments to the Constitutionin themselves contain revolutionaryadditions to, and expansions upon, theFounders’ original framework. Theremight not have been a Constitution ifthere had not been belated agreementto adopt the Bill of Rights, the first 10amendments. The very notion of who isentitled to citizenship was fundamentallyaltered by later amendments, just as thenation’s future was altered dramaticallyby the outcome of the Civil War.

There is an interesting way to illustratethis point, offered by the great PrincetonCivil War historian James McPherson.Before the Civil War, he has noted, thecommon usage was to say, “The UnitedStates are…” After the war, it graduallybecame, “The United States is…” Inthat change of verb form, from plural tosingular, lay a major shift in both realityand image for the nation that emergedfrom the Revolutionary War. We are one.The United States is.

It was against the nation’s history upuntil his time that the American philoso-pher John Dewey observed that the Amer-ican “experiment in democracy is not

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An Unfinished Work

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‘... there are numeroustasks before the nation asit continues to try to perfect the state of theUnion.’

Hodding Carter III

bottom, not from the top; that the geniuswhich springs up from the ranks ofunknown men is the genius which renewsthe youth and energy of the people.”

Hodding Carter IIIPresident and CEO

civic education in the schools hasbecome a sometime thing at best. Bywhat they collectively don’t do as citi-zens, they pose a direct threat to aUnion repeatedly perfected over thepast 200-plus years and now placedsquarely in our hands.

What further animates my thinking onthis subject comes from something writ-ten by Woodrow Wilson 90 years ago:

“When I look back on the processesof history, when I survey the genesis ofAmerica, I see written over every page:that the nations are renewed from the

genius, we owe this to them as well asour heirs.

In last year’s annual report Dr. Austensaid something else that is particularlyrelevant to this subject. “Knight trusteesagreed that a major focus of our grantmaking is aiding those least able tohelp themselves.” As it turns out, thosewho are most alienated or distant fromthe nation’s civic life are disproportion-ately drawn from precisely such fellowAmericans. They are joined in thegrowing army of apathy and nonpartici-pation by young Americans, whose

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George Washington’s statue watches over Samantha and Sean Black in Signers Hall at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

In the hotly contested 2000 presidential election, Al Gore won more popular votes,48.4 percent to 47.9 for George W. Bush.Bush won the electoral vote, 271–266, yettook 31 of the 50 states, creating the unevenred state/blue state continental U.S. map.

We the People ... ?

... in order to form a more perfect Union?

... establish Justice?

31/19In Knight communities where drivers com-mute 45 minutes or more, trust of others is weaker for everyone. Translation: Urbansprawl could well be bad for communityengagement.

45min.In order to form

The U.S. graduation gap for black high schoolstudents in 2001 (while 75 percent of whitestudents graduated, only 50 percent ofblacks did so).

25%

George WashingtonFirst president of the United States

‘A nation is never finished. You can’t build it and then leaveit standing as the Pharoahs didthe pyramids. It has to be builtand rebuilt, recreated in eachgeneration by believing, caringmen and women. It is now ourturn. Today our communitiesneed us desperately.’

– John W. Gardner

Founder, Common Cause


Historic and recent trends, some documented by the numbersshown below, paint a mixed picture of the state of today’s Union.*

*See inside back cover.

... insure domestic Tranquility?

...provide for the common Defence?

... promote the general Welfare?

a more perfect Union?

The median housing value in Santa ClaraCounty (San Jose) in 2000 (compared withthe U.S. median of $119,600).

$446,000Number of new exemptions annually, since2001, to Florida’s sunshine laws protectingaccess to information – twice the rate as ineach of the previous six years.

120Percentage of Americans who read news-papers in 2002 (compared with 81 percentin 1964).

55%... and secure the Blessings of Liberty

to ourselves and our Posterity?

Percentage of Americans who said the pressin America has too much freedom to do whatit wants, up from 42 percent the year before.

46%

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Percentage point increase between 1999 and2002 of residents in Knight communities whobelieve that people like themselves can have abig impact in making their community better.

We the People ...

5%

... in order to form a more perfect Union

Number of key areas addressed in newguidelines adopted by the Association ofGoverning Boards of Universities and Colleges(AGB) for university trustees, encouragingthem to become more engaged in oversightof intercollegiate sports. The guidelines are in keeping with a recommendation of the Knight Foundation Commission onIntercollegiate Athletics.

8

‘We are not afraid to entrustthe American people withunpleasant facts, foreignideas, alien philosophies,and competitive values.’

– President John F. Kennedy

At Knight Foundation, we’re privilegedevery day to work with partners andfunding recipients in journalism andcommunities who take on tough issuesand confront unpleasant facts –because it’s the right thing to do. Theywork with the neediest among us,striving to improve the quality of journal-ism globally and making communitiesmore livable, producing numbers inthe form of results. In so doing, theygive us all reason for optimism.


... establish Justice

Number of U.S. inmates on Death Row exon-erated with evidence of their innocence since1973. In North Carolina, efforts to continuereviewing such cases are led by the Centeron Actual Innocence, launched by a Knightgrant in 2002 to Duke University.

113

... insure domestic Tranquility

New dollars from the Earned Income TaxCredit program coming into Miami-DadeCounty in the first year of the MiamiProsperity Campaign.

$62million

...provide for the common Defence

Crimes per 10,000 residents in Knight communities in 2000, down considerablyfrom 718 per 10,000 a decade before.

530

... promote the general Welfare

Number of high school teachers trained torevitalize high school journalism from 2001to 2003. Nearly all have gone on to start orimprove newspapers.

554... and secure the Blessings of Liberty

to ourselves and our Posterity.

Number of sixth graders in Milledgeville whowill work from now through their high schoolgraduation with Dr. Michael Carrera and ahost of community volunteers in a full-scaleyouth development program.

30p.10 Bill Moyers’ reporting got Americans

to care about media ownership

p.14 Charlotte Grimes gets her students fired up about political reporting

p.18 Carolyn Robinson trains journalists in the world’s newest democracies

p.20 Arnold Gaither helps Lexington take responsibility for children’s education

p.24 Robert Farley and Team NEO plan toboost the Northeast Ohio economy

p.28 Paula Lynn Ellis helps Myrtle Beach envision a new wave of volunteers

p.30 Richard Kimball holds candidates accountable for their issues

p.34 Ted Selker and Michael Alvarezseek secure voting systems

p.38 Shona Chakravartty helps newAmericans learn to participate

‘It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.’

– Thomas Jefferson

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In an era of 24/7 news – relentless coverage that makes little effortto discern the wheat from the chaff – it’s difficult for even the mostattuned citizen’s ear to grasp what issues are important. With theInternet – online newspapers, blogs, streaming media, e-mail alerts –and round-the-clock cable channels, Americans are inundated … surfeited. You’re called upon to be your own news editor. Hard enoughunder normal circumstances when you have a job, family, communityactivities to keep up with.

Then along comes deregulation … a handful of companies set the

Q: Americans went from not knowing about the FCC approval ofmedia mergers to protesting loudly to Congress. What happened?

A: A combination of strong reporting and grassroots activism – that’swhat happened. Walter Lippmann defined news as information peopleneed to act on as citizens. In this case, journalism helped peopleunderstand that something was going on behind official and closeddoors that was very important to them – and then those people didsomething about it.

Reporting News in the Public Interest

A Knight Foundation grant to the Public Broadcasting Service made it possible for the Friday night television series, NOW with Bill Moyers, to add coverage of media issues. The show pioneered coverage of the Federal Communications Commission plan to allow commercial media compa-nies to grow larger. Following protests, Congress reduced the FCC’s rules somewhat, allowing no single company to own more than 39 percent of the national television market, and is considering other changes to the FCC’s ownership guidelines. We asked Bill Moyers – documentary film-maker, investigative journalist, public service broadcaster and now media critic – about the story.

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J O U R N A L I S M Q & A

Bill Moyers, on the set of NOW with Bill Moyers. His reporting on FCC hearings into media ownership caught the public’s attention.

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Journalismagenda, motivated by the bottom line, defining what’s “news.” As theAmerican Journalism Review [said recently], the big media newscompanies in effect conducted a blackout of coverage of their ownlobbying of the FCC.

A year before the FCC acted, our team at NOW in effect took onmedia ownership as a “beat.” We stayed with it. We producedreporting pieces. We interviewed people in the know – scholars likeRobert McChesney, journalists like John Nichols, FCC commissionerslike Michael Copps … moguls themselves – Barry Diller, for one. Wediscovered the audience was with us on this; every time we did asegment on media conglomeration, our website reverberated; letterspoured in. And we were virtually alone, so where else did peoplehave to go to find out this vital information about what was happen-ing in their own government?

The AP called us “the rare newscast” covering the issue. And theproverbial “ordinary American” responded. One reader of The FresnoBee wrote to the editor that we had “hit the bull’s-eye” and encour-aged people to call Congress. Our colleagues began to pay attention.CNN’s Jeff Greenfield mentioned the absence of media, including hisown network, in covering the story, pointing out N O W as the exception.

Activists started watching in droves and linking to our web site,shuttling the transcripts of the broadcast out into cyberspace whereothers were waiting to pick them up and pass them on. Events tookon a life of their own; the more we reported the story, the more peo-ple claimed it and shared it until a critical mass of awareness beganto form “out there” – as we journalists like to say. It was really quiteremarkable. And when the FCC finally acted, hundreds of thousandsof them – some accounts say as many as two million – roared inprotest. Washington was shaken by a powerful chorus of citizen opinion.

Q: Does this mean it is possible to organize a “news consumer”movement in America today?

A: People get it – democracy needs a free and independent press.And yes, there is an active constituency of news consumers inAmerica today – there always has been. At NOW we hear from themevery week. It’s true that the big corporations would be satisfied ifwe just bought their “junk news” and settled for titillation instead oftruth-telling. The media oligarchy (not my word, but Barry Diller’s)would prefer if we only wanted to know about Paris Hilton (so wouldParis Hilton). If they can distract the general public with MichaelJackson they know they can purr and pay their way past the gate-keepers in Washington with no one noticing they are trespassing ondemocracy. But once awakened, public opinion will roar, as it did thistime. Yes, I think media reform is going to be the catalyst in the nexttwo years for the renewal of democracy.

Q: What concerns you most about the state of journalism?

A: The realities that face journalism today should trigger alarms.Consider the following: Only 13 percent of eligible young people castballots in the last presidential election. A recent National Youth Surveyrevealed that only half of the 1,500 young people polled believe votingis important, and only 46 percent think they can make a difference in solving community ills. The Carnegie Corp. conducted a youth chal-lenge quiz of 15- to-24-year-olds and asked them, “Why don’t moreyoung people vote or get involved?” Of the nearly 2,000 respondents,the main answer was that they did not have enough informationabout issues and candidates. And yet, we are being inundated with“news” and information. Today, those contending giants of big gov-ernment, big publishing and broadcasting are seeing eye to eye inputting the public’s need for news second to free-market economics.It’s clear that it’s not simply the cause of a free and independent jour-nalism that is at stake today, but the quality of democracy itself. Iknow it’s a cliché, but clichés mean what they say – you can’t havedemocracy if people don’t know what they need to know. If journal-ists don’t fill that need, who will? Do we really think the powers-that-be – corporate or political – will do it? Secrecy is the enemy ofjournalism. But so is the self-censorship that comes when journalistsare tethered by the constraints of the economic organizations thatdecide what’s news and what’s not.

Q: What attributes will the next generation of newsroom leadersneed and why?

A: One, the ability to do the right thing – accuracy, fairness, all thatin the face of unprecedented competition. Two, a visceral instinct forwhat matters to democracy. Three, as old-fashioned as it sounds, aconviction that journalism is the public’s best friend. When the chipsare down, who else can they count on?

support to increase “news in the pub-lic interest” – the news citizens needto help democracy itself become “amore perfect union.”By working together, journalists hope

to raise the profile of these efforts, tomake them stand out in this age of mediaoverload. Jack Knight described thatoverload back in 1958: “Consideringthe conflicting points of view and readyrationalizations with which the public is saturated by newspapers, magazines,radio and TV, it is mighty difficult thesedays not to be a confused person.”What’s new then, is not a call for betterjournalism, but rather how journalismprofessionals and journalism founda-tions in this ever-more-confusing worldhave been willing to set aside theirhypercompetitiveness and cooperate tomake the call together.

or Knight Foundation, “a more perfectunion” in the world of journalism standsfor professionals working together toadvance press freedom and journalismexcellence.

If cooperation is the measure, 2003was a good year:✔ A coalition of journalism groups

spurred the creation of Tomorrow’sWorkforce, a major nationwide push for improved training and midcareereducation.

✔ New groups of citizen-advocates andjournalists promoted a Campaign forFreedom and other public projects tofight for a free flow of information.

✔ Classrooms and newsrooms helped bringthe latest technology to the cause ofnews diversity through the creative webcollaboration, highschooljournalism.org.

✔ Concerned news leaders sought new

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News Professionals, Working Together

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‘If someone’s bettertrained, they becomemore valuable.’

Walter Hussman Jr., above, leader of the Southern Newspaper PublishersAssociation’s efforts to endow theTraveling Campus program, whichtrained 6,140 newspaper employeesfrom 447 daily and nondaily newspa-pers in 2003. The program is a modelfor an industry working to improve the quantity and quality of training.

F

ed Press Managing Editors and theRadio and Television News DirectorsFoundation (RTNDF) to show 1,000middle managers each year the value of training; the Traveling Curriculum,a project of the Committee of ConcernedJournalists and the Project for Excel-lence in Journalism that demonstratesexactly how focused training can have a direct impact on news content; andNews University, a project by thePoynter Institute to give journalists ataste of training with e-learning via theWorld Wide Web.

But the greatest early success story is the Traveling Campus programlaunched by the Southern NewspaperPublishers Association. This uniquetraveling training is a model for othersbecause the industry itself – through a $10 million endowment that is nearlyraised – will support this program inperpetuity.

“If someone’s better trained, they

training. The result was a four-yearKnight grant to Northwestern Universityto launch Tomorrow’s Workforce.Program director Michele McLellan ismeeting with chief executive officersand working with newsrooms to improvethe quantity and quality of their training.Her project will explain how midcareertraining improves newsroom quality,productivity, retention and diversity, andwhy better-trained journalists are essen-tial to the 21st century media world.

Tomorrow’s Workforce was the leadgrant in a $10 million, three-year jour-nalism training initiative announced in2003 by Knight Foundation.

The initiative includes: The LearningNewsroom, a joint project between theAmerican Society of Newspaper Editors(ASNE) and the American Press Institute,to show top editors at newspapers of allsizes how they can change newsroomculture to create “learning organizations;”NewsTrain, a project with the Associat-

EXPANDING MIDCAREER TRAINING

In 2003, Knight Foundation expandedits campus-based midcareer trainingprograms and took them on the road,either through traveling modules or onthe information superhighway.Expanding their reach are the topic-based seminars at the Knight Centersfor Specialized Journalism at the Univer-sity of Maryland and the University ofSouthern California. With the help ofthe Internet, the programs will expandfurther as trainees teach others upontheir return to the newsrooms.

Expanding too are: the Nieman pro-gram at Harvard, which again opened itsdoors to a narrative journalism confer-ence attended by 1,000; the KnightCenter for Journalism in the Americasat the University of Texas, which trained1,500; the Committee of ConcernedJournalists, which helped 1,400 raisetheir own newsroom standards; and theSouthern Newspaper Publishers Associ-ation, which traveled to more than 20sites and trained 3,500 journalists,some from small papers who were will-ing to drive up to 100 miles for training.

In all, Knight training programsreached some 12,500 journalists in 2003,about 10 percent of the nation’s estimat-ed 125,000 general news journalists.

Why are journalists so hungry formidcareer development? Because theydon’t get enough at work. A KnightFoundation study for the Council ofNational Journalism Organizationsshowed the $100 billion-a-year newsindustry spends just 0.7 percent of pay-roll on professional development,roughly a third of the national averageof 2 percent.

After that study was released, a coali-tion of more than 40 professional groupsrecommended a project to encouragegreater news industry investment in


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A 2003 grant will help Internews Network design a project to train Middle Easternjournalists in the United States. Fifteen print journalists from Cairo, Egypt – 13women and two men – participated in an eight-week Internews training programat Western Kentucky University.

Grimes, in ’89, covering the Panama invasion and holding an M-16;Grimes in ’91, chasing an annoyed Sen. John Danforth, R-Mo., up the steps of the Russell Office Building during the Anita Hill-ClarenceThomas hearings; Grimes in ’92 with a C-130 Air Force crew thatflew into Liberia to retrieve the bodies of three nuns slain in the civilwar; and Grimes, in a gold satin jumpsuit, posing with Bill and HillaryClinton at a White House Christmas party.

“You have to be adaptable,’’ she says.The former Washington correspondent with the St. Louis Post-

Dispatch has just finished teaching a class and is about to head toNew Hampshire with 20 students to cover the primary. Since takingthe Knight Chair in the spring of 2003, she has helped develop severalspecial projects, including midcareer training that helps political reportersuse new online campaign finance databases, a Washington programfor the S.I. Newhouse broadcast journalism students, and an April2004 national symposium on civil rights and the press to mark the40th anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 50th anniversaryof the Brown v. Board of Education ruling.

Grimes’ political journalism post is one of 17 Knight Chairs createdat top journalism schools nationally since 1990. Knight Chairs coverall facets of the profession, from business reporting to internationaljournalism to the media and religion.

Grimes, 54, likes spy novels, murder mysteries and chocolate. Butserious journalism is her life’s passion. She was the first generationof her blue-collar family in Alabama to graduate from college and oneof few to move away, and it happened because of two events.

First was growing up a young woman in the South during the turbu-lent 1960s: “The Civil Rights movement made me realize the courageit took to be that voice for the voiceless.’’ Next was Vietnam. Whenher eighth-grade teacher assigned an essay on the U.S. military’s rolein Southeast Asia, Grimes searched newspapers and magazines foranswers she could not find. “Most of the stories were about bodycounts or expositions of domino theory,’’ she said. “But what did thepeople of Vietnam want? How would this affect us and Vietnam?’’

It struck her, at 14, that she wanted to be a war correspondent, goto Vietnam and find some answers. “All of life is essay questions,’’Grimes said. “Our job as journalists is to help people answer thoseessay questions of life.’’

he watercolor on her office wall is called Dawn. Her artist husband,Tom W. Whitford, painted it. Lots of blues with a bright red streakthrough the center.

It’s small, but bold – just like Charlotte Grimes, the 5-foot-11/2-inchKnight Chair in Political Reporting at Syracuse University.

There, in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Grimespreaches her own passionate gospel of journalism and political report-ing to the next generation of journalists. She teaches three courses a year, and hopes her students will become a small but fierce “guerrillaarmy’’ to reclaim journalism from some of its modern-day problems.

GRIMES ON NEWS

“Minor stories, such as celebrity scandals, constantly get recycledand take on a life of their own. It squeezes out the other more sub-stantive information. Take Michael Jackson’s arrest [for suspicion ofchild molestation] … that’s like giving candy to a diabetic. We alllove the sweets, but we’re going to die, socially and politically, if that’sour steady diet.’’

ON ENGAGING YOUNG PEOPLE

“Politics is life. We have to report more on young people as actorsin our society, not just as consumers of pop culture. We have to domore to show them how things affect their lives, like how the record-ing music industry is lobbying to put more restrictions on copyrightsor about a financial aid bill passed by Congress.’’

ON NEWSROOMS

“There’s an awful lot of good journalism done every day across thecountry, but not enough. The profession is under terrible pressures …I want to be a platform for ideas on how newsrooms can resist thetemptation to create cookie-cutter journalism.’’

ON ELECTION-YEAR COVERAGE

“Tactics and strategy and political insider dope cannot be the end-alland be-all. We need to help people understand how the issues affecttheir lives. We need to do more fact checking – plain old shoe-leatherreporting.”

The watercolor is just one of the pictures covering the walls of her fourth-floor office. Others are photos showing Charlotte Grimeschecking things out:

An Activist for Political Reporting


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Knight Chair in Political Reporting Charlotte Grimes in her office at Syracuse University. On the wall is a photograph of her holding an M-16 and flanked by U.S. soldierstaken in 1989 during the invasion of Panama: “I like to impress upon my students that this is a woman who can carry a gun,” she jokes.

Journalism

experience they need to break into theprofession. In just two years, the RezNetproject alone has placed 20 NativeAmerican students in newspaper intern-ships – significant progress given thatonly 300 Native Americans currentlywork in daily newspaper newsrooms.

NEWS IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST

Knight grantees are making these newefforts in support of an old idea: thatjournalism is a public trust. “No princi-ple is more important than excellence,”said former Knight Ridder executiveand Knight Foundation chairman LeeHills, in 1981. “It is not a goal to besought and one day acquired and thenretired to the trophy case. It is insteadan ambition which must be pursuedanew each day.”

Journalism excellence – the accurate,fair, contextual pursuit of the truth –acts in the public interest. Good jour-nalists verify and clarify. They monitorpower as fair, independent auditors. Theirnews is interesting, relevant, presentedin context. They consciously seek truthon behalf of their whole community.

At times, this means bringing forwardnews that is unwelcome but necessaryto the public good. Toward that end,Knight has increased support forTRACFED, the Syracuse Universityproject that has created the best data-base tool yet for journalists and citizens who want to track federal governmentspending, court decisions and agencyactions; the Center for Public Integrity,the nation’s leading nonprofit investiga-tive reporting unit; and InvestigativeReporters and Editors, which trainsjournalists internationally to be betterwatchdogs on behalf of us all.

Can newspapers be tough, but stillfair? Yes, says Knight’s JournalismAdvisory Committee chair, Sandra Mims

DIVERSITY AND NEW MEDIA

The World Wide Web has attracted aseries of collaborations. One, highschool-journalism.org, the product of ASNE,RTNDF and journalism educators, aimsto create 1,000 new high school newsoutlets in the next three years, most atschools with a majority of students ofcolor. So far, 350 new student outletshave been created. A second effort,ConsumerWebwatch.org, has workedwith more than 100 major companies,including CNN and The New YorkTimes, to make it easier for consumersto understand the difference betweenadvertising and news on the web.

A joint project between the Society ofProfessional Journalists and the NationalCouncil of Journalism Organizations hopesto use the power of the computer tocoordinate journalism training projects.SPJ launched journalismtraining.org, asearchable national calendar. And finally,two new teaching tools, blackcollege-wire.org and RezNetNews.org are – withthe help of the Black College Communi-cations Association, the University ofMontana and the Robert C. MaynardInstitute for Journalism Education –providing students with the writing

become more valuable,” said WalterHussman Jr., leader of the SNPA effort.

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS AND

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION

Cooperation works. The Inter AmericanPress Association this year launched a public campaign to draw attention tothe murder of journalists in the Americas.North and South American newspaperowners united to donate $3 million inadvertising space. Results: Traffic toIAPA’s Impunidad web site increased500 percent. Convictions of assassins ofjournalists increased. Colombia agreedto reopen all its old cases. A broadcastversion of the campaign starts this year.

If freedom of information and freedomof expression efforts are to succeed, theymust have public support. In the UnitedStates, the Advertising Council wasgiven the nod to help bring press free-dom messages directly to the Americanpublic in its Campaign for Freedom,which has received an estimated $100million in airtime. In Washington, D.C.,two coalitions have formed. Journalismgroups have come together to fight forfreedom of information with the help ofa coordinator at the Reporters Committeefor Freedom of the Press. Another coali-tion of citizen-advocates, coordinated byOMB Watch, is taking the case to policy-makers that secrecy beyond the boundsrequired for security is dangerous toany democracy.

Additional free press grantees includethe National Freedom of InformationCoalition, which has helped groups startin more than 30 states; the Student PressLaw Center, currently raising an endow-ment to support a free student press;and the National Security Archive Fund,which continues to obtain and releasevolumes of government informationunder the Freedom of Information Act.



‘Considering the conflict-ing points of view andready rationalizationswith which the public issaturated by newspapers,magazines, radio andTV, it is mighty difficultthese days not to be aconfused person.’

– John S. Knight, 1958

turing of politicians and bureaucraticpronouncements, but a voice of substanceand caring, a voice authentic anduniquely useful, a voice that reflectsthe face of the age at that time and inthat place.” Good journalists, she adds,are “fiercely independent and brimming

Rowe, who as editor of The Oregonianin Portland won the 2003 Editor of theYear award at the National PressFoundation.

Good news organizations, Rowe says,“give a community voice – not a remote,institutional voice filled with the pos-


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David Burnham, co-founder and co-director of the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), presents TRACFED, a database for journalists and citizensbased on federal records. He presented at a gathering of Internet-oriented Knight journalism grantees in Kansas City, Mo.

over with the soul and substance of thecommunity.”

Soul and substance: Together, some-thing worth working on. ✔

For details on 2003 grants, see Page 59.

city of Dili, so I began looking outside to the districts. I found someradio journalists to the east, in Baucau, and asked if they’d like tolearn video production in their spare time. They were quite excited;they told me they had just formed a community arts group called“Creativision” and were looking for some training.

Within half an hour, word had spread and about 20 young televisionproducer hopefuls gathered at their clubhouse. I took an inventory oftheir resources – seven old computers ready for the scrap heap and avideo camera on loan from one of the U.N. peacekeepers. Short onequipment but long on enthusiasm; how could I resolve this dilemma?

I had a Macintosh G4 Powerbook loaded with i-Movie editing soft-ware and a Sony TRV30e handycam. What if I taught them thebasics of news production using my own equipment, then produced a basic newscast tape? Could we use this to convince some donorsor sponsors to provide them with their own cameras and computers?

I hired a local assistant – former TVTL producer Levi Branco – and together we began teaching the group how to shoot, write andedit a news story. Within three months, we had a credible half-hournews bulletin shot, edited and taped. The finished reports may nothave been the timeliest news, but we hoped the total effort would beenough to impress the donors.

Our team also produced an interactive current affairs program, Ask the Government, in which local community leaders posed ques-tions to government leaders. The reporters took these questionsdirectly to cabinet ministers (including the prime minister), taped theirresponses, then edited the questions and answers together with abrief discussion of the issues. In a nation inexperienced with this kindof government openness, the show proved surprisingly popular withboth citizens and officials, who were pleased with this new, directmeans of communicating with the populace.

Word about our local project began to spread. Other groups saw thatindependent television production could be cheap, easy and practical.Several grassroots TV production teams have now sprouted in Dili,using the most basic computers and cameras.

And some of these small television groups are not waiting aroundfor broadcast time. They’ve managed to secure video projectors andsmall generators and are arranging video nights in remote districtswith hundreds of people attending. Others are considering burningVCD copies of their programs, which can then be sold at a minimalprofit and distributed easily on the street.

hen the flag of independence went up, TV went down,” said a resident of Baucau, describing poignantly to me how much peoplemissed local television news in East Timor’s second-largest city.

East Timor’s only television station, TVTL, had struggled to find acreative way to distribute its news bulletins around the country –even though virtually no functioning TV transmitters or microwavelinks remained after August 1999, when pro-Indonesian militiasburned 80 percent of the country in the violence and destruction following the vote for Timorese independence.

The United Nations-funded station had been using the U.N.’s informa-tion network and couriers to distribute its taped programs to Baucau’slocal TV transmitter, and to video projectors located in remote districts.Thousands had appreciated seeing weekly local news reported for the first time in the local language, Tetum.

But when the U.N. handed over administration of the country to thefirst democratically elected Timorese government in May 2002, TVTLwas suddenly left without cars, phones or international advisers. The local staff was completely overwhelmed. Taping news programsand distributing them to all districts in the island nation was simplytoo big a task.

Right about then, I began work as a Knight International Press Fellowin East Timor. The International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) hadgranted me this fellowship specifically because no other organizationswere focusing on training television journalists in East Timor after the U.N. mission withdrew. The program administrators asked, in anutshell, to see what I could do to develop independent televisionjournalism in the shattered country.

It was an uphill struggle. The usual international donors weren’teven mildly interested in local television. They seemed mired in out-dated notions about the cost of production, and weren’t particularlyinterested in exploring newer, cheaper technologies and deliverymethods. Most couldn’t imagine why they should encourage televisiondevelopment in a place as poor and mountainous as East Timor.

I couldn’t imagine why not to try some new, less expensive way.The population, about 800,000, is 60 percent illiterate and obviouslycraving any kind of locally produced video news and entertainment.If I could find local journalists who were interested in creating independ-ent television news and programming, perhaps we could then getsponsors and airtime for these programs on the national broadcaster.

TV production and distribution had become limited to the capital

Exporting News to New Democracies

Knight International Press Fellow Carolyn Robinson, whose wide-ranging journalism career began as a producer with CNN, has spent most of thelast decade in Asia. She recently completed an extended Knight Fellowship in East Timor. Here, in her own words, is her experience in the nascentdemocracy.


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I learned a lot in the process of teaching Timorese journalists. TVproduction and distribution don’t have to be huge financial undertak-ings; the equipment I used to create their shows cost about $5,000and could fit in a large handbag. Broadcasting isn’t the only way for pro-grams to reach a wide audience. Developing countries no longer needto bankrupt their budgets to bring locally produced television pro-grams to their citizens. With 21st century technology, all that’s reallyneeded is modest funding plus a little creativity, ingenuity and pas-sion for bringing TV news to any corner of the world.

AUSTRALIA

INDONESIA

MALAYSIABRUNEI

EAST TIMOR

SINGAPORE

Carolyn Robinson works with journalists in East Timor, using easy-to-carry video and production equipment. Robinson became a Knight International Press Fellow inDili, East Timor, and served in 2002 and 2003.

Journalism

Q: One Community, One Voice has commitments from an astonishinglybroad-based list of supporters from all segments of the communityand at the state level. Does that raise the stakes and heighten expec-tations?

A: Yes it does, and it should. In my view, heightened expectationsincrease the chances the people will be more accountable for results.We can no longer afford the price of what one researcher calls “aneducation of the lowest expectations.” We have a moral obligation toour children to produce meaningful results.

Q: What, in fact, will One Community, One Voice do with the planninggrant you received from Knight? What will need to happen to improveeducational equity in Kentucky?

A: We’ve developed a comprehensive action plan that includesimmediate, mid-range and long-range strategies for closing the gap.For example, our goal, printed on the cover of our report, says: “By2007, all students will be proficient in reading prior to entering firstgrade.” One Community, One Voice will hold the Fayette CountyPublic School System accountable for results, and we will hold thecommunity responsible for meaningful involvement in educationinside and outside of the school buildings.

Q: Complete this sentence: We’ll know One Community, One Voicewill succeed when ….

A: When each and every child has access to and opportunity for ahigh quality education.

Q: Kentucky has a national reputation for education reform. How’dthat come about?

A: In 1989, the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled that the state’s systemof public schools was unconstitutional. It charged the state’s legisla-ture to create a new system of public schools that would provideevery child with an equitable and adequate education. The legislaturetook the directive from the courts very seriously and created theKentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) in 1990. KERA provided for a comprehensive program that started with a standards and account-ability system that held schools accountable and created lots of programs around it to help them meet those standards. Many elementswithin the state took up the banner of education, including grassrootsorganizations such as the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence,the Chamber of Commerce, education advocates, the business community and the media. One of the significant things about KERAis that 14 years later it is still intact.

Q: Knight’s Community Advisory Committee in Lexington spent pre-cious little time (compared to other communities) deciding to focusour funding efforts there on closing the educational equity gap whileimproving academic achievement. Why this speed and certainty?

A: Lexington has put education before so many other needs becausewe understand how important education is to the overall well-beingof our community. Very simply put, the causes of so many of oursocial, political and economic problems are affected by how we edu-cate our children and prepare them for life’s challenges. Equally asimportant, over the past 15 years this community has engaged inmeaningful conversation about the educational outcomes of all ethnicgroups. Because as a community we had discussed the issues – thegood, the bad and the ugly – we were able to reach agreement thatwe had a problem that reached beyond ethnicity. The One Community,One Voice Achievement and Closing the Gap Community Committeewas established by the Fayette County Board of Education in February2002 to develop a plan to ensure that every child is on the samepage. We’re all on the same page here.

‘We’re All on the Same Page Here.’

Lexington has undertaken a full-scale effort to narrow the achievement gap between children from low-income families and their more affluent peers in the classroom. Knight Foundation is pledging up to $5 million over five years to support the communitywide effort to improve academic achievement. Arnold Gaither, chair of One Community, One Voice, offers the background on how the course was set.


C O M M U N I T I E S Q & A

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Communities

Arnold Gaither, chair of the One Community, One Voice effort in Lexington, stands in front of the Fayette County school system headquarters.

those local advisers. Through painstak-ing deliberation, research and hardchoices, our communities have zeroedin on the approaches, programs andmethodologies that flow from their prior-ities and local capacity. In the processthey have spearheaded coalitions, iden-tified lead agencies, designed evaluationsand otherwise set in motion forces forchange that should continue beyond thelife of the individual grants.

Results will help us gauge progress,but time is a necessary ingredient. Inthe meantime, examples of leverage andinfluence suggest Knight’s role is alreadybeing seen and felt.

Collaboration has certainly been theprevailing operational force, as illus-trated by the tale of two cities: GrandForks, N.D., and East Grand Forks, Minn.,separated by the Red River and a stateline. Despite proximity and because ofthose political and topographical barriers,the two communities considered them-selves totally separate until, through thethe local advisory committee’s work onregional economic development, thechambers of commerce of both townscame to realize the logic of an alliancethat benefited the entire region.

WELL-BEING OF CHILDREN AND FAMILIES

It’s not surprising that 20 of our 26communities have chosen to focusattention and dollars on programs thataddress the needs of vulnerable childrenand their families. The American credohas us believing that we foster democ-racy through education in a systemavailable to all. Best practices tell usthat the years before formal educationand the hours outside the classroommatter as much as those spent in school.

Our communities have chosen a rangeof approaches to preparing young peo-ple for productive roles in society. They

from Long Beach to State College, fromDuluth to Biloxi – are concentratinggrant dollars on local priorities identi-fied by community advisory committees.

The foundation’s six priority areasserve as a generous umbrella – well-being of children and families, economicdevelopment, community developmentand housing, civic engagement, vitalityof cultural life, and education. But thanksmainly to the 246 experienced localresidents serving on those advisorycommittees across the country, eachKnight community has arrived at a dis-tinctly local application to deal with itsissues. So Aberdeen’s committee is notjust funding economic development inits corner of South Dakota, it’s workingto mobilize the community toward aunified vision for growth. In Gary, thewell-being of children and familiesmeans making sure that a lack of childcare won’t remain a barrier to parentsgetting and keeping jobs. And Bradenton’sfocus on middle-school youth empha-sizes volunteerism and civic participa-tion as paths to positive behavior.

All told we made 219 CommunityPartners Program grants for more than

$57 million in 2003.(That’s in additionto 11 grants totaling$22.3 million toenhance Knightdonor-advised fundsas part of ourCommunity Founda-tions Initiative).They are the col-lective result ofextraordinary col-laboration amongstaff and our non-profit partners, andthe unprecedentedinvolvement of

ogether, Knight Foundation’s 26 com-munities represent a pretty fair cross-section of American locales. You’ll findcollege towns. Agricultural centers.Urban neighborhoods. Regional hubs.

That includes Charlotte, N.C., a cen-ter of the New South that now finds itself home to a growing population ofHispanics, a great many from Mexico.Barbara Guilds, a native of Argentina,describes how the Central AvenueBilingual Preschool there already serves60 children and has a growing waitinglist. “The community has grown sub-stantially, especially families with youngchildren,” she says. “We’re proud of thework we are doing, but it is not nearlyenough to meet the needs of the grow-ing Hispanic population in Charlotte.”

Illustrating what? That our communi-ties are constantly challenged to meetemerging needs, just as our nation hasalways managed to adapt to seismicdemographic and economic shifts.

We marked a milestone in Knight’sCommunity Partners Program in 2003.Two and a half years into the reinventionof our outcomes-based local fundingprogram, all 26 Knight communities –

C O M M U N I T Y PA R T N E R S P R O G R A M N A R R A T I V E

Marking a Milestone


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Children at the Little Early Childhood Education Center in Wichita listen raptlyto a story during the launch of Wichita CARES (Children Able to Read willExcel in School), a Knight-funded school readiness project.

have mobilized around the issue, nowbeing addressed by a strong and inclu-sive Whole Child Leadership Council.Though the need was there, and hadbeen recognized by many in Tallahas-see, Knight’s investment has been acatalytic force.

Coordinated services: It’s not allabout education, of course, when it comesto children. At-risk kids need all kindsof assistance – health care, mentalhealth services, and speech and lan-guage therapy – to make sure they areon track and thriving.

In several of Knight’s communities,

elementary schools. Meanwhile, theSchool Readiness Coalition, in partner-ship with United Way and Kids Inc.,was coming to a similar conclusionbased on an assessment of needs andon consensus-building interviews.Alfredo Cruz, Knight’s liaison forTallahassee, was surprised one daywhen a delegation from the coalitionarrived unannounced with a request:Could they join in Knight’s efforts? As the collaboration took shape, otherfunders such as the Lawton ChilesFoundation have demonstrated leader-ship by declaring Tallahassee a WholeChild community. Community leaders

fall into four broad categories: qualityenhancement, coordinated services, helpfor families and youth development.

Quality enhancement: In Tallahassee,our Community Indicators research and the local knowledge of Knight’sadvisory committee showed the obvious:the quality of child care in Leon Countywas abysmal. The big need for qualitychild care lies in Southside, the under-served blocks south and east of Florida’shigh-rise Capitol. The foundation grant-ed $1 million over four years to FloridaState University to improve the qualityof 10 preschools near two Southside


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Against the January 2004 backdrop of downtown Duluth, Knight Community Advisory Committee Chair Marti Buscaglia announces grants by Knight Foundation to fiveorganizations working to improve the region’s economic development climate through projects ranging from online resources to storefront improvements.

of workers once produced much of the nation’s steel and rubber.Decades of decline, changes in international trade policy and thenational economic downturn of the last few years are among the con-tributors to the region’s unprecedented economic and social crisis.

All too familiar with layoffs, rising unemployment and business closures, Akron’s Community Advisory Committee recommended thatKnight Foundation try to help the city and its neighbors recover fromyears of waning growth.

ou don’t have to be in business in Northeast Ohio to know thatthe region’s economy has suffered, and the forecast is gloomy.

Just consider the job cuts made by some of the top employers inAkron and its neighboring cities in 2003. Rubbermaid eliminated 1,250positions, Boise Cascade Corp. 1,100 and Goodyear Tire & Rubber350. Other major employers to cut jobs included Marconi (230), PioneerStandard Electronics (230), KeyCorp (135) and FirstEnergy (110).

In all, nearly 7,000 jobs were lost in 2003 in the region where legions

Priming a Region’s Job Pump


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Robert Farley, president of Team NEO, visits Network Diamond Polymers in Akron. Team NEO is a coalition of the leading business organizations in Northeast Ohio. Itis using a $1.5 million grant from Knight to increase job opportunities, private investment and business services to existing industries. Lawrence E. Christian works inthe background.

producing cars and car parts. Companies, however, took a major hit in the 1970s when the region went into a recession. Internationalcompetition and the lack of investment led to layoffs and businessclosures.

In the 1980s, almost all of the tire plants in Akron closed as produc-tion in Detroit declined. Northeast Ohio had become part of the RustBelt, home to abandoned factories and tarnished dreams.

Ohio leaders say the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)signed in 1993 has further hampered economic recovery efforts.Studies seem to back those claims. A report by Policy Matters Ohio,a Cleveland think tank, shows that the state lost 14,653 jobs from1999 through 2003 as a result of NAFTA, which created a free-tradezone among the United States, Mexico and Canada.

Knight’s grant-making efforts help create an environment that fostersgrowth by capitalizing on existing assets. Briggs says the region hasplenty working in its favor, including a vast pool of talent (42 percentof the U.S. population lives within 500 miles of Northeast Ohio); inter-nationally recognized health care services; a robust system of highereducation; a high concentration of growing industry clusters includingpolymers, bioscience, instruments and insurance; professional sports;high-quality arts and culture organizations; and ample natural resources.

Other foundations have joined in the effort to stimulate the regionaleconomy. The Fund for Our Economic Future, made up of 35 local andnational foundations, has pledged nearly $30 million to promote busi-ness growth and development in nine Northeast Ohio counties. Knightjoins The Cleveland Foundation, the Akron Community Foundation, theGAR Foundation and the George Gund Foundation in the effort, whichincludes supporting groups like Team NEO.

“We want to be partners with government, labor unions, ethnic andminority organizations,” said Brad Whitehead, senior program officerfor The Cleveland Foundation, during that same February conference,at which the Fund for Our Economic Future was announced. “Weneed to be a catalyst for change and take a regional approach, acollaborative approach.”

Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic sees Knight’s commitment, as well asthe support from area foundations, as an unexpected but welcomesource of economic development support.

“[Foundations] do a lot of good work, but I just never thought offoundations playing a part in improving the economic well-being of an area. … Government can’t do it all,” Plusquellic said.

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CommunitiesIn fact, Knight’s committees in Duluth, Grand Forks, Gary and

Aberdeen have opted to do much the same. They are focusing thefoundation’s efforts on programs aimed at reviving local economieshampered by unemployment and limited business opportunities.

“Philanthropy and nonprofit agencies must help shape the publicagenda by identifying long-term trends and needs, advancing potentialsolutions and advocating for those left behind,” said Knight trusteeand Akron resident Robert Briggs, during a February 2004 conferencein Akron for Northeast Ohio foundations cooperating to tackle regionaleconomic issues. “The truth is that while our financial power is, relatively speaking, quite limited when measured against public expen-ditures, our leadership potential is not.”

Akron’s eight-member Community Advisory Committee is helpingguide Knight’s investment – part of our $13 million commitment there over five years – to organizations already focused on economic development. One of them is Team Northeast Ohio (Team NEO), acoalition of the region’s leading business organizations working toattract, retain and expand business opportunities in 13 counties.

Knight’s $1.5 million grant to Team NEO in the fall of 2003 is expect-ed to help raise some $7 million to support the organization’s effortsto add jobs, market the region to businesses looking to relocate andcreate an environment that helps existing businesses prosper.

Team NEO grew out of the need for a regional approach to econom-ic development. For years, chambers of commerce, government officials and business leaders from neighboring cities often competedfor business.

“People are beginning to realize that we need to be thinking of thisas a region as opposed to how it has been before – Cleveland versusAkron, or Cleveland versus everyone else,” said Jim Crutchfield, pub-lisher of the Akron Beacon Journal and chair of Knight’s advisorycommittee. “This isn’t just a city in transition. It’s a region in transition.”

“Businesses have been stuck in the old way of doing things,” saidRobert Farley, president of Team NEO. “There has been a disconnectbetween organizations throughout the region. But now leaders arecoming together … They realize that as one unit they can be moreeffective.”

Northeast Ohio had long been home to industry, steel mills and rubber manufacturing plants that supply automotive companies likeFord and Chrysler. It was home to some of the nation’s leading indus-trialists – men like John D. Rockefeller, who amassed his millions inthe oil industry; Charles Kelly King, who built his fortune manufacturingelectrical fittings for railroads and trolleys; and Harvey Firestone,founder of the Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. in Akron.

Ohio’s economy flourished in the early part of the 20th century dueto the rapidly growing engineering and manufacturing industries,

boasting about what’s going on in theafter-school program.

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

While many Knight communities havechosen to focus on children and youth,others are tackling broader issues suchas community development and thevitality of cultural life. Despite the elu-sive and long-term nature of these challenges, Knight communities havenonetheless been proactive and creativein developing strategies and implement-ing programs.

A decade ago, Detroit’s Southwestneighborhood could only be describedas blighted. Today, Southwest is explod-ing with residents, commercial develop-ment and mom and pop enterprises.There, the Ford Motor Co.’s Rouge planta century ago drew immigrants fromEastern Europe, blacks from the DeepSouth and whites from Appalachia.Today, those cultures commingle withLatinos and Arab Americans, all con-tributing to a rich cultural mosaic andgiving the area a distinctive bustleand vitality. By working in six Detroitneighborhoods like Southwest, Knight’scommunity development projects promiseto reinforce revitalization and contributeto stability.

Detroit isn’t the only community seek-ing to inject new life and hope into itsurban landscape. The Payne/PhalenLake area of St. Paul is an extendedneighborhood 23 percent Asian-American,13 percent African-American, 2 percentNative American and 11 percent LatinAmerican. Large families, languagebarriers and low incomes make findingaffordable housing in the neighborhooda challenge. Beginning with the com-mercial corridor and working out to therest of the neighborhood, we are work-ing collaboratively with other national

a time when young people develop theirown special style. In the worst of cases,it’s when drugs, violence and early sex-ual experiences derail lives. Several ofthe foundation’s communities – Akron,Bradenton, Columbia and Columbus –have focused attention on just one ortwo or three middle schools where theyseek to make a difference through multifaceted programs that put kids inregular contact with caring adults.

In Columbus, five nonprofits are work-ing together to provide a range of after-school experiences for 120 students atMarshall Middle School. Subtle changesare already noticeable. Teachers nowask program staffers to help encouragebetter student behavior in the classroom.A new Parks and Recreation basketballteam puts academics and attitude aheadof athletics. A YMCA volunteer provideshaircuts to kids who need them – aslong as they don’t misbehave. The trueindicator of success: the students are

dental care surfaced as an unexpectedneed. Tooth decay, it turns out, is themost common chronic disease of chil-dren ages 5 to 17 years. And because sofew dentists accept Medicaid and statehealth-insured patients, the problem isparticularly acute among lower incomechildren. St. Paul’s Mary Sue Hansenhad this early report about a recent grant:“Just wanted to pass along some greatnews. Give Kids a Smile Day was ahuge success. All the clinics were veryhappy with the process. There was alow no-show rate, and the dentists feltthe referral process went very well. …Having interpreters and connections totransportation really helped. This was a team effort.”

Help for families: Even as we focuson children, we’ve learned that theirparents’ health, education, well-beingand financial stability are critical factorsin the health of the family. For example,in both State College and Macon, wehave funded the nationally recognizedOlds Nurse-Family Partnership, whichprovides regular, intensive home visitingservices to mothers, beginning no laterthan the 26th week of pregnancy andcontinuing until the child reaches age2. The relationship between mother andnurse is built on trust. And that, saysMacon home-visitation nurse Pat Prime,takes time and patience. “How do youtell a 16-year-old how to be a wife andmother when she doesn’t know how tobe a child?” asked Prime. The effectsof these grants will likely reach acrossgenerations.

Youth development: Any adult whohas worked and lived around childrenknows that the middle-school years aremarked by increased independence andpeer influence. In the best of cases, it’s



Preteen Skye Pilato gets a checkup from a dentalhygienist in State College, where a grant by KnightFoundation put a dental van on the road.

funders to create a new model that canleverage both economic and social cap-ital on a significant scale.

In Miami, the nation’s poorest urbancenter based on the 2000 census, weare combining home ownership programsand the development of assets to ener-gize residents of two downtown neighbor-hoods: historically black Overtown, now heavily depopulated, and teeming,entrepreneurial East Little Havana.From financial literacy to individualdevelopment accounts to assistance forfirst-time home buyers, we are seekingto give residents the tools they need fortheir version of the American dream.

VITALITY OF CULTURAL LIFE

The arts are considered the highestexpression of culture, but how can weensure they capture and reflect every-one’s culture, especially in the multi-ethnic United States of today? For toomany residents in Knight communities,art is for and about someone else. InDetroit, Philadelphia and Fort Wayne,the new approach is to provide program-ming that speaks to diverse audiencesand to import cultural events intounderused venues.

That means our arts programmingoften overlaps with education, childrenand families and community develop-ment work. The Opera Company ofPhiladelphia is bringing its traditionalart form to life in the predominantlyAfrican-American neighborhoods ofNorth Philadelphia and Camdenthrough teacher workshops, recordingsfor students and live opera performanc-es. The Euell A. Wilson Center in FortWayne is expanding an after-schoolprogram for at-risk youth of color toparticipate in arts activities such asdance, hair braiding, keyboards, poetryand visual arts. And to inspire our next


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An all-girls bell choir performs for Knight Foundation’s board of trustees and staff during a June 2003 visit toMarshall Middle School in Columbus. Knight partners are working to provide a full range of after-schoolservices for the school’s students.

Aberdeen, S.D. Lexington, Ky.

Akron, Ohio Long Beach, Calif.

Biloxi, Miss. Macon, Ga.

Boulder, Colo. Miami, Fla.

Bradenton, Fla. Milledgeville, Ga.

Charlotte, N.C. Myrtle Beach, S.C.

Columbia, S.C. Palm Beach County, Fla.

Columbus, Ga. Philadelphia, Pa.

Detroit, Mich. San Jose, Calif.

Duluth, Minn. St. Paul, Minn.

Fort Wayne, Ind. State College, Pa.

Gary, Ind. Tallahassee, Fla.

Grand Forks, N.D. Wichita, Kan.

KNIGHT COMMUNITIES

Knight’s Community Partners Programserves 26 U.S. cities where the Knightbrothers operated newspapers. A list ofcommunity liaisons is on Page 40.

generation of musicians, we are support-ing an all-minority orchestra developedin Detroit by the Sphinx Organization.

Some of the programs running in our26 communities will touch a few livesand change a few minds. A choice fewwill be expanded, replicated and perhapseven generate policy change that couldforever alter the social and economicfabric. This is the elusive gold standardin philanthropy. But with our focus andour cross-community efforts to experi-ment, learn and improve, Knight is wellpositioned to contribute substantively to the American ideals of equality andopportunity. ✔


Relocating or retiring baby boomers raise expectations about thequality of life as they abandon major metro areas to gear down at thebeach or on the back nine. These newcomers bring wealth and experience.

“We want people giving of time, money and knowledge,” a commit-tee member said in summary after several arduous discussions.

An earlier Knight Foundation community survey found the majorityof residents believe they can have an impact on the future of theircommunity. Residents who believe they can have an impact say themost effective ways to do so are to get other people involved and to volunteer time.

Our mantra: Create a community structure to call out what is noblein people.

Our method: Build a system that individuals can access to matchtheir talents with community needs. Help nonprofit organizations pre-pare to engage volunteers more effectively.

Expected results: Full-time and seasonal residents more productivelyengage in community life. Nonprofit and other service organizationsare stronger and their clients or members better served. Rootlessnewcomers deepen their community connections. More citizensassume leadership roles in the community. And, perhaps, the qualityof political life is stronger as more people vote and more leaders seekto shape our shared future by running for elected office.

“We came up with a plan that has awesome potential for allowingthe public to identify needs and come forward to assist in meetingthose needs,” said Barbara Blain, attorney for the Horry County Depart-ment of Social Services. “The involvement of people to people is the way to go.”

Over the next five years, Knight Foundation will invest $1.25 millionin Horry County to increase the community’s capacity to develop andnurture an engaged citizenry.

Coastal Carolina University, Horry-Georgetown Technical Collegeand the Community Coalition of Horry County are collaborating on thiseffort. This strategy hinges on the strength of local organizations toengage residents as volunteers and to mobilize their energies toaddress local issues. As a first step to strengthen area nonprofits, we selected three of the area’s best-known and most highly regardedorganizations that rely on volunteers. SOS Healthcare, Habitat forHumanity and Boys and Girls Club received grants to hire a volunteercoordinator and more effectively manage volunteers by developing

yrtle Beach and the diverse communities that hug South Carolina’snorth coast welcome more than 13.5 million vacationers a year.Visitors come to be renewed by the sea, to cast their worries aside andto play. Many return to enjoy their second homes or their new retire-ment nests. It is a wonderful place to stay and play. But permanentresidents ache to build a stronger sense of community and identity.

The Grand Strand has been my home since I moved here as presidentand publisher of The Sun News almost seven years ago. I also leadKnight Foundation’s Community Advisory Committee. Like most resi-dents, I’m not from here.

Evidence of our transient nature is everywhere. The population isexploding, up 35 percent from 1990 to 2000 with growth through2007 projected at 17 percent. Natives are outnumbered and valuescollide as a new sociopolitical culture is emerging. There are chasmsbetween “been heres” and “come heres,” senior retirees and youngadults, environmentalists and developers, urbanizing beachies andthose who live on rural back roads.

Evidence of the uneasy peace between prosperity and poverty iseverywhere. In 2000, 12.6 percent of county residents lived in poverty.Fifty-five percent of schoolchildren qualify for free or reduced-pricelunch under federal poverty guidelines. The job market is one of thefastest growing in the nation, but only two Texas counties borderingMexico have a lower average weekly wage, according to the Bureauof Labor Statistics.

“Horry County is not really a community. It is a series of small townsand small communities,” said Dr. Sally Z. Hare, an endowed professorof education, director of the Center for Education and Community atCoastal Carolina University and member of our local advisory committee.

As our 10-member committee wrestled with the far-too-commonnational issues of infant mortality, youth development, elder care, jobgrowth and low voter turnout – all evident here, we often felt frustrat-ed and overwhelmed. Our efforts bogged; optimism flagged.

Then, we refocused on our community’s abundant resources andassets. Our creative and collaborative energy took flight.

The Myrtle Beach area is what demographers call a micropolitanarea with bedroom communities surrounding the beachfront economicengine. It has bountiful natural resources from ocean to rivers andestuaries. It is a fast-paced entreprenurial community with few hide-bound institutions. Residential growth is fueled by an influx of retireesfrom “the greatest generation” with traditional ideals of service.

Starting a New Wave of Volunteers

To do its work well in each of the 26 Knight communities, the Community Partners Program relies on a deep local appreciation for place and people,assets and liabilities, history and potential. Setting a course for our long-term investments in local priorities requires a blend of logic, gumption, risk-taking – and faith. Here’s Paula Lynn Ellis’ personal account.


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The law of unintended consequences will ensure that improvisationovertakes our initial script. We welcome that as this effort touchesthe “time, money and knowledge” of a talented, diverse and engagedcitizenry.

Communities

programs to recruit, train, retain and reward them. We hope theseorganizations will develop successful models that may guide others.

These are ambitious goals with results that can be measured andsome that cannot. At The Sun News we often say that part of our jobis to introduce “immigrants,” mostly from the Midwest and Northeast,to their new homeland. Knight Foundation is making an importantcontribution to the public life of our rapidly developing region at thispivotal time of formation.

Paula Lynn Ellis, chair of Knight’s Community Advisory Committee in Myrtle Beach, helps Imani Simmons, 6, with her spelling homework at the Boys and Girls Clubof the Grand Strand. The club is one of three local nonprofits working to develop programs to recruit, train, retain and reward volunteers.

Protecting the Public’s Right to Political Issues

A Knight grant of $100,000 helped Project Vote Smart collaborate with newspapers nationwide as the organization pushes political candidates toprovide more issue-stance information. The project made headlines when President Bush and Democratic candidates John Kerry and Howard Deanrefused to participate in the National Political Awareness Test. We asked Richard Kimball – a former candidate himself and Project Vote Smartpresident – to tell us more.


V E N T U R E S Q & A

Richard Kimball, president of Project Vote Smart, visits The Carter Center in Atlanta during his tour of Southern newspapers. During the tour, the one-time Arizonapolitician urged editorial boards to ask political candidates to take the National Political Awareness Test.

do them, along with every public utterance (speech, interview orcommentary). Each year we get stronger, our database more powerful,our system easier to use and better known. When citizens becomeaware there is at least one source where they can turn in absoluteconfidence for easy access to abundant, accurate information aboutthose who govern or those who wish to replace those that do, theywill then be able to disregard the self-serving information from thosecampaigns that so often torture the truth.

Q: Staying on top of that information is a big task. How does ProjectVote Smart go about gathering all that candidate information?

A: More than 5,000 unpaid student interns and volunteers have comethrough the project’s doors to help build our Voter’s Self-DefenseSystem. The students come primarily from political science and jour-nalism schools while the volunteers are generally retired professionals.They all work full-time from two weeks to two years on the project’sprograms. Most of their work is in collecting, categorizing and proof-ing millions of relevant facts about each candidate, voting record,campaign finances, biographical background and issue positions.

Q: Complete the following: We’ll know Project Vote Smart has succeeded when …

A: … When the majority of Americans become aware of the project’sservices, those candidates who spend 80 percent of their time twist-ing arms for campaign contributions, who are willing to aggrandizethemselves in issueless mudslinging commercials, who are willing tobombard their fellow citizens with the resulting nonsense, can thenbe beaten. Real leadership more likely resides among those citizenswho would never consider behaving that way, but they won’t runbecause there isn’t a chance in hell they would win without behavingthat way. To quote Adlai Stevenson, when he was first asked to do a television commercial: “If we start advertising ourselves like boxesof cereal, democracy will die, for you could not win the presidencywithout proving you were unworthy of the job.”

Q: If we agree that understanding the issues is central to a voter’sability to participate in democracy, what were conditions that led tothe creation of Project Vote Smart?

A: Today candidates spend 80 percent of their time raising money to do three specific things: 1. Measure what the public wants to purchase in the public marketplace. 2. Have consultants tailor thecandidates’ images to fit what they then know will sell. 3. Buy thetelevision time necessary to bombard citizens with the meaningless,issueless messages that are the result. Enter Project Vote Smart,which as CBS News reported, allows citizens to “ignore the self-serving candidate hype” and get, as Dragnet’s Sgt. Joe Friday usedto say, “just the facts ma’am.”

Q: What then, is the National Political Awareness Test? How couldanyone seeking public office flunk such an altruistic-sounding thing?

A: The test measures each candidate’s willingness to sustain thatmost essential component in the struggle to self-govern, i.e., a citizen’s right to abundant, accurate and relevant information aboutthe backgrounds, experience and intentions of those who wish togovern as representatives. As one major party national committee-man told me, “It is not our job to educate, it is our job to win.” This cynical view is quickly closing the door on the citizen’s ability to see for whom it really is they vote. It has simply become more efficient and more economical for the candidates to move peopleemotionally rather than intellectually. You can move citizens’ passions,prejudices and hatreds in a 30-second commercial, but you can’t movethem intellectually in that time on problems faced by our society andthe means to solve them, so the candidates no longer bother trying.

Q: So if there is an unintended consequence to this for politicians –take the test and your opponent will use your positions to bash you innegative ads – then what’s the solution?

A: Oddly enough the project does not need the candidates’ coopera-tion to get the goods on them. The political awareness test is only atiny part of the data we collect. The candidates can make it difficultfor a citizen to acquire information on them, but they can’t hide entirelyfrom us. If the project manages to stay on track over the future years,maintains our integrity and independence, and continues to earn thetrust and support of the media, we will win the day on this fight.Right now we are collecting data on every campaign contribution,every biography, every recorded vote, and every evaluation done onthe candidates from the more than 100 varied special interests that

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Ventures

With funding from the CommunityPartners Program, a local coalition tookthis research and created the GreaterMiami Prosperity Campaign – a county-wide effort to help the working poor file for the asset-building EITC. In oneyear, the campaign helped bring anadditional $62 million in EITC creditsback to Miami families. By tapping into the national nonprofit Center forEconomic Progress, the Venture Fund isoffering hands-on support to launchsimilar campaigns in Biloxi, Akron andSan Jose.

In other instances, we made innovativetools and services affordable for Knightcommunities. Microloan programs, for example, have been invaluable inassisting small-scale entrepreneurs,including recent immigrants, to getstarted in a number of U.S. cities. In2003, we invested $250,000 in ACCION– a proven microlender – to launch aprogram in Miami’s East Little Havana.The effort surpassed its own projectionswith $800,000 in 117 microloans in just11 months. A more recent investmentof $1 million in ACCION will help theorganization offer its services and micro-capital on line to many more residentsof Knight communities.

2. WE SEEK TO ELEVATE ORGANIZATIONAL

PERFORMANCE TO SUSTAIN COMMUNITY

CHANGE EFFORTS.Once the 26 Knight communities had

completed their first round of settinglocal funding priorities, they fell natu-rally into related clusters. More than adozen are working on school readinessand early childhood issues. A half-dozenare developing enhancement programsfor middle-school youth. And in fiveKnight communities, we learned in arecent survey that grantees need helpdeveloping boards, enhancing evaluation

Knight’s previous national programs;other projects have been developed andnurtured in Knight communities; stillothers are being crafted by nationalorganizations capable of introducingthem both nationally and locally.

In 2003, through 23 grants totaling$9.3 million, the Venture Fund focusedon finding the nation’s best practicesand bright promises in civic engagement,community and economic development,education, the arts, and the well-beingof children and families.

As the Fund has taken shape, we havelearned important lessons about thefoundation’s priorities and how to movethem forward.

1. WE TRY TO FIND INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS

TO COMMON PROBLEMS ACROSS COMMUNITIES,TEST THEM AND REPLICATE THEM.

In Miami – America’s poorest urbancommunity based on the 2000 Census –Knight grantees were looking for waysto help low-income families improvetheir standard of living. We commissionedthe Brookings Institution to examinethe economic impact of the EarnedIncome Tax Credit (EITC) there and ina handful of other Knight communities.

t some point in the near future, a new citizen – a child being born inMacon or a native of another landbecoming a citizen in Wichita – maybecome the individual who pushes theU.S. population over 300 million.

That new American will join a nationstill under construction. Each day, wesee it being built across the countryand in Knight communities, often sur-mounting barriers and concerns. Highschool students in many communitieslack civics instruction or the chance to read their own school newspaper.Charlotte residents, both African Ameri-can and white, seek to discuss racefrom an honest and safe starting point.Latino families cluster outside ofBoulder, forced to live away from theirjobs because of the high cost and inad-equate supply of in-town housing. ArabAmericans in Detroit still cope withpost-Sept. 11 fear and mistrust. Thoughblack residents of Miami’s blightedOvertown neighborhood see constructioncranes piercing the sky just blocksaway, they still wonder when the fullcommunity’s prosperity will put downroots closer to their homes.

A key goal of Knight’s National VentureFund is to help more people live theAmerican dream. This means encourag-ing participation in the democraticprocess, from encouraging an 18-year-old in Camden to vote for the first time to helping newcomers apply forcitizenship in immigrant-rich towns like Lexington and Long Beach. It alsomeans overcoming barriers to participa-tion so that everyone’s vote is counted.

Like the other Knight programs refinedand reshaped in our 2001 strategic plan,the National Venture Fund is groundedsolidly on longtime foundation interests.Some efforts have been built on strongrelationships established through

N A T I O N A L V E N T U R E F U N D N A R R A T I V E

The State of the American Dream


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We’re privileged to serve many uniquelyAmerican interests inways we hope improvethe quality of lives.Knight’s National Venture Fund will continue to strike a balance.

capacity, conducting strategic planningand improving technology.

By sharing information across com-munities and finding ways to increaseorganizational performance, we are trying to leverage our philanthropicresources. Over the years, we’ve learnedthat when you bring together 15 Magicof Music symphony orchestras at aretreat for example, a culture of sharedlearning develops. Our support of theNational Association for the Educationof Young Children (NAEYC) has alreadyhelped 50 early childhood professionalsin 11 Knight communities attend lastfall’s convention in Chicago. There theyswapped experiences, learned from thetop experts in the field and began toadopt new practices to better servechildren in Knight’s local initiatives.

We’re also working to help seasonednational organizations serve Knightcommunities more effectively. Despite a strong track record of helping highschool students stay in school, Commu-nities in Schools (CIS) realized therewas a consequence to its rapid expansion.That growth was inhibiting the ability to support the CIS national networkadequately, ultimately reducing thenumber of kids benefiting from the pro-gram. With a $970,000, three-yeargrant, we funded a growth managementstrategy that will help CIS undergo anextensive evaluation of current practices,leading to an overhaul of the trainingand technical assistance program. Onthat basis, CIS has a chance to betterserve students in 12 Knight communities.

3. WE HAVE CONFIRMED THAT COMMUNITIES

EVERYWHERE NEED EXPERTISE.Knight’s Venture Fund has been

crafting relationships with nationalorganizations offering extensive, spe-cialized expertise. Such skills as


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A microloan from ACCION USA helps Sayda Marrero operate the Nicaraguan Mini Market in Miami’s EastLittle Havana. ACCION provides credit to small business owners who don’t qualify for bank loans.

The electronic terminals could be a solution, but they’re still contro-versial. The federal Help America Vote Act, or HAVA, gives $3.9 billion to states and counties for new voting technology, and DREsprobably will make counting smoother, says R. Michael Alvarez, apolitical scientist and VTP co-director at Caltech. Project researchersfound that the electronic ballot terminals, in scattered use for the lastfew years, increase countable votes by about 5 percent. But themachines have a history of bugs, miscounts and errors – and no wayto verify votes. As MIT’s computer security legend Ron Rivest, a VTPmember, says: “You try to take a typical Windows-based PC and propose that as a foundation on which to build a secure voting system,and most computer scientists have the reaction you’d expect.”

So what can they do? Watch a lot of elections; Selker has observedhundreds. The VTP got the kind of punch cards used in Florida bannedin most states. Alvarez works on SERVE, the Department of Defense’sexperiment in voting by Internet for Americans overseas; he plans tocontinue even though the Pentagon canceled the 2004 pilot project.VTP computer scientists are working on new voting systems and userinterfaces (though Selker’s favorite way to vote is a well-designedpunch card set-up). The VTP has proposed new standards and tech-nologies for electronic voting, and its leaders have issued a call forregular audits of election results. And Alvarez’s team recently gotaccess to the absentee voter database of Los Angeles County, thebiggest, most diverse polling area in the country. He’s crunching datato find out who votes absentee, and what happens to their ballots. No one’s ever done it before.

Meanwhile, much of what went wrong in Florida in 2000 hasn’tbeen fixed. And the kinds of reforms Alvarez and Selker advocate –streamlining polling places and ballots, fixing registration rolls – aregetting politicized. “It generates uncertainty for all candidates if youchange the rules of the game,” says Alvarez. Campaigns spend theirmoney based on ever-more precise polling, so elections get won onnarrower margins, and the problems VTP studies get more visible.

But if the Brazilians can make it work, the United States ought atleast to stand a chance.

t the annual meeting of the American Association for theAdvancement of Science last February, Ted Selker, an MIT computerscientist and co-director of the Caltech/MIT Voting TechnologyProject, got a little riled up. He was talking about Direct RecordingElectronic ballots, the ATM-like terminals many Americans will soonvote with. In the United States, these DREs cost about $3,000 each,and they don’t work so well. “But somehow or other,” said an exas-perated Selker, “in Brazil, DREs cost $400 and have batteries that last15 hours.” In 2000, after decades of infamous electoral malfeasance,Brazil brought in 106 million votes from cities and from rain forests,on DREs. Only 0.2 percent didn’t get transmitted.

The United States had substantially more trouble in its 2000 election.Maybe you heard about it.

The worst thing about the 2000 presidential balloting was the impli-cation that every American election had been a little bit catastrophic– and nobody had ever noticed. That’s where the Voting TechnologyProject (VTP) comes in. Until four years ago, only political scientistsand local bureaucrats really cared about problems with collecting andcounting votes. Today, the system’s limitations are on full display, and so are some of the solutions, both short- and long-term.

According to Selker, David Baltimore, president of Caltech, realizedin the shower one morning after the 2000 election that the country’stwo best-known technical universities might be able to make somesense of the voting thing. Now, four years later, VTP is one of the mostfar-ranging interdisciplinary collaborations in the country, comprisingcomputer security experts, interface designers and political scientists.

What they’ve found so far goes way beyond a few miscountedchads. Sure, the voting systems – the ballots people actually votewith – have problems, like punch cards that don’t punch or confusingdesigns. But polling places are often run poorly, by undertrainedworkers. And registration rolls remain as much as 20 percent incor-rect. In 2000, Florida went to George W. Bush, ultimately based on a few hundred votes. According to VTP estimates, problems in thethree categories they’ve isolated meant six million votes wentuncounted nationwide.

Battling for Voting Integrity, Coast to Coast

Heading into the 2004 presidential election, Americans have justifiable reasons to worry about the integrity of their voting systems. Knight funded theVoting Technology Project at Caltech and MIT. Adam Rogers, a 2002-03 Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT, took a look and filed this report.


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Ventures

The Voting Technology Project pairs the expertise of MIT’s Ted Selker, at right in Cambridge, Mass., and Caltech’s Michael Alvarez, on screen. A grant from Knight ishelping the researchers develop more reliable voting technologies as well as policies to protect voters.

Charlotte learn how to advocate effec-tively from one of the best nationalorganizations – Charity Lobbying in thePublic Interest. Grantees in many com-munities will benefit from the strategic

advocacy and mobilization aren’t alwaysreadily available in communities assmall as, say, Milledgeville, or as distantfrom Washington, D.C., as Aberdeen.

Thus groups in Philadelphia and



planning expertise that New Profit Inc. brings to Kids Voting USA whilehelping the organization reach a moreefficient scale.

Some expertise is simply underdevel-oped, even in the big urban settings.Many American locales wish to attracttalented young professionals who canhelp communities plan well and implement decent urban developmentstrategies. We joined forces in 2003with the University of Pennsylvania andseveral of the nation’s most experiencedprivate developers to create the Centerfor Urban Redevelopment Entrepreneurs(CURExPenn). By placing fellows inresidencies at private developmentfirms across the country, this programwill help develop the field’s new gener-ation of urban development professionals.

4. PARTNERSHIPS ARE VALUABLE RESOURCES. To find workable solutions over the

long haul, we joined forces with othersectors – governments, businesses, uni-versities and like-minded funders. OurEITC campaigns, for instance, hookedus up with chambers of commerce andlocal mayors. New projects in 2003 withthe National Executive Service Corps,CEOs for Cities and Utility CustomersCharitable Trust all relied on partner-ships with the private sector. We alsocooperated with community developmentand smart-growth advocates – TheFunders Network for Smart Growth andLivable Communities, and Policy Link – to promote sustainable urbandevelopment.

Living Cities has successfully trans-formed itself from NCDI; the NationalCommunity Development Initiative.Focused for its first decade almostentirely on providing pass-throughfunding for community developmentcorporations, Living Cities is now a

Concertgoers in Saratoga, N.Y., got to follow along with program notes in real time during a pilot test of the handheld Concert Companion, at right. A grant to the Kansas City Symphony, a Magic of Music Initiativeparticipant, helped symphony executive Roland Valliere develop the new device.


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separate 501(c)(3) organization involving17 partners with a stake in a number of urban development initiatives. Whilethe Living Cities partners continue tochannel the bulk of their pooled fundsthrough Local Initiatives Support Corp.and the Enterprise Corp. and overseethe results in 23 communities nation-wide, they are also now developing newresearch, concentrating attention onfour Pilot Cities and taking positions ongovernment policies and legislation thataffect affordable housing and familyresources.

5. SYSTEMS CHANGE IS A NECESSARY COMPO-NENT OF NEARLY EVERY KF COMMUNITY PRIORITY.

A community’s appreciation of system-level issues – the it-takes-a-villageapproach to education, civic engagement,smart growth and economic development– can help or hinder its pursuit of posi-tive change. The Pilot Cities programhas targeted four communities – Miamiand St. Paul included – where LivingCities’ members have agreed to fundcomprehensive redevelopment strategies.And One Economy has been buildingtechnology networks among residents oflow-income neighborhoods in two Knightcommunities, providing jobs and infor-mation to help residents lead better lives.

MOVING FORWARD

These and similar lessons will guidethe Venture Fund’s work. Look for us tobuild on recent experiences and navigateemerging issues:✔ An unprecedented demographic shift

is unfolding in communities large andsmall. Eleven million naturalized citi-zens need to be integrated fully intocommunity life.

✔ Too few Americans participate in vol-unteer associations, religious congrega-tions, community-based organizations,

Omar Blaik of the University of Pennsylvania leads 11 CURExPenn fellows – part of the next generation ofcommunity development professionals – on a tour of a mixed-use urban redevelopment he planned at Penn.The fellows were participating in a two-week orientation leading up to the start of their two-year fellowships.

political campaigns and elections.Attitudes among young people reflectthis trend; they are less informedpolitically and less likely to vote thaneither their older counterparts oryoung people of past decades.

✔ To engage more people in civic lifeand help them pursue their version ofthe American dream, we’ve worked to strengthen our portfolio of civicengagement grants. The accompanyingarticles on Project Vote Smart (Page30), the Caltech/MIT Voting TechnologyProject (Page 34) and the Four Free-doms Fund (Page 38), all speak toways we addressed the need in 2003.

✔ And in the new year, we’re working to reach the new generation byencouraging curriculum writers anddecision-makers to value the teachingof civics in schools. Our approach,which links to our initiative to re-

energize high school journalism, isbased on the recommendations pub-lished in The Civic Mission of Schools,a report funded by Carnegie Corp.and The Pew Charitable Trusts’ CIR-CLE project in consultation with theCorporation for National and Commu-nity Service.We’re privileged to serve many uniquely

American interests in ways we hopeimprove the quality of lives. Knight’sNational Venture Fund will continue tostrike a balance between providingdirect services arising from communityneeds and cross-community learningopportunities that benefit and comple-ment the work of our other programs. ✔


Building a Better Country for Everyone

Shona Chakravartty is a program officer with the Public Interests Project, which administers the Four Freedoms Project.


V E N T U R E S F I R S T P E R S O N

Program Officer Shona Chakravartty of the Four Freedoms Fund. Behind her is Plates by Scott Hanson.

In Dearborn, Mich., just outside Detroit and home of America’slargest Arab-American population, the Arab Community Center forEconomic and Social Services (ACCESS) is using fund support todevelop its membership base, helping members, in turn, develop theirpolitical voice. ACCESS will share civic participation lessons from itslocal community with 10 other Arab-American organizations aroundthe United States.

And in Long Beach, the fund is working with Khmer Girls in Action– high school and college women who have turned their community’stragedy toward civic action. Their civic participation campaign isaddressing the deportation of Cambodian refugees. As part of thelargest population of Cambodian-born outside Cambodia – some60,000 – nearly all of the members have a relative or friend underfinal orders of removal from the United States for often minor trans-gressions. Families all around them are being torn apart.

Khmer Girls in Action members are educating themselves about thelaw as they help people understand their legal rights. They’re trainingyoung leaders and facilitating community meetings with local police.They’re helping families, documenting stories and helping to raisepublic awareness. Above all, they are engaging newcomers in theirpiece of democracy, encouraging community members to learn toknow one another better as they work to improve their community.And their activism is earning respect from leaders like Him Chhmm,executive director of the Cambodian Association of America and amember of Knight’s local advisory committee.

The barriers these newcomers face challenge and test America’ssense of pluralism. Among the overlapping waves of tragedy that haverolled out from the events of Sept. 11, 2001, is an especially heart-breaking irony. That day of terror instantly made us all into moresolidly patriotic Americans, none more so than the one in nine of usborn in other countries around the world. Yet domestic security meas-ures meant to protect all Americans have eroded the human rightsand civil liberties of immigrants, and have fostered suspicion and dis-trust among communities.

In response, immigrants and refugees are demonstrating their patriotism by participating in growing numbers in the democratic traditions we are all trying to preserve. With the help of the civicorganizations they are creating as members and owners, newcomerAmericans are breathing new life into U.S. democracy. The rights to our freedoms, they are reminding us, rest on our collective respon-sibility to engage actively in building a better country.

am one of the privileged among America’s 33 million immigrantsand refugees. Since age 11, when my family brought me to theUnited States from India, I’ve never had reason to question my rightsto the four freedoms Franklin D. Roosevelt cited in 1941 to describethe foundations of a country worth defending and a world worthbuilding: freedom of expression and of religion, freedom from fear andfrom want.

Not until I began doing volunteer work with immigrant victims ofdomestic violence did I learn of the much harsher America experi-enced by so many newcomers. My adopted country, I found, was aplace in which immigration status could magnify fear and stifleexpression, where language isolation and cultural discrimination couldconstrain both economic opportunity and individual belief.

In my subsequent years as a program officer working nationally atthe Jewish Fund for Justice, I came to believe that encouraginggreater civic participation is one of the most sustainable solutions tothe problems these newcomers encounter. Immigrants have to helpbuild the democracy they have joined. That democratic system doesn’tguarantee perfection, only that people can come together in a contin-uous attempt to perfect it. If collective problems are to be solved,newcomers have to become collective problem solvers.

That’s what makes the Four Freedoms Fund so timely. Knight helpedestablish this fund-raising and grant-making initiative in the spring of 2003 along with the Carnegie Corp., The Ford Foundation, the OpenSociety Institute and the Joyce Mertz Foundation. Grants from thefund (supervised by Public Interest Projects, where I’m a program offi-cer) are designed to unite both immigrants and native-born citizensaround issues that promote and defend civil liberties and human rightsin the United States and increase civic integration among newcomers.

And what makes the fund so appropriate for Knight Foundation iswhere these new Americans are headed – not exclusively to traditionalreceiver states like New York, Illinois and Texas, but to new gatewayplaces like Georgia and North Carolina. Many are paying taxes, buyinghouses, attending schools, even as they deal with negative attitudes– barriers that have deepened since Sept. 11, 2001.

The fund’s first round of grants in 2003, totaling $1 million, went tosome familiar places for Knight Foundation.

In Miami, Four Freedoms Fund grantee People Acting in CommunityTogether (PACT) is working with yet another FFF grantee, the FloridaImmigrant Advocacy Center. Together, they are creating a statewidecoalition of immigrant organizations, amplifying the ability of new-comers to participate in positive policy change.

2 0 0 3 A N N U A L R E P O R T 3 9

I

Ventures

COMMUNITY PARTNERS PROGRAM

Joe ErvinDirector of Community Partners Program

Linda B. FitzgeraldDeputy Director of Community PartnersProgram

Alfredo A. CruzCommunity Liaison Program OfficerBiloxi, Miss.; Columbia and Myrtle Beach, S.C.;Tallahassee, Fla.

Vivian Celeste NealCommunity Liaison Program OfficerAkron, Ohio; Lexington, Ky.; Fort Wayne, Ind.

Susan PattersonCommunity Liaison Program OfficerCharlotte, N.C.; Columbus, Macon andMilledgeville, Ga.

Suzette L. Prude Community Liaison Program OfficerMiami, Palm Beach County and Bradenton, Fla.

Lizabeth L. SklaroffInterim Community Liaison Program OfficerDetroit, Mich.; Gary, Ind.

Polly M. TalenCommunity Liaison Program OfficerSt. Paul and Duluth, Minn.; Grand Forks, N.D.;Aberdeen, S.D.

Julie E. TarrCommunity Liaison Program OfficerPhiladelphia and State College, Pa.; Wichita, Kan.

John R. Williams IICommunity Liaison Program OfficerLong Beach and San Jose, Calif.; Boulder, Colo.

PRESIDENT’S OFFICE

Hodding Carter III President and Chief Executive Officer

Phyllis Neuhart Executive Secretary to Mr. Carter

John Bare Director of Planning and Evaluation

P R O G R A M S

Penelope McPhee Vice President and Chief Program Officer(through March 26, 2004)

Michael MaidenbergVice President and Chief Program Officer(as of April 19, 2004)

Meredith A. MaustExecutive Secretary to the Vice Presidentand Chief Program Officer

W. Gerald Austen, M.D.Chairman and Trustee

Jill Ker ConwayVice Chairman and Trustee

Hodding Carter IIIPresident, CEO and Trustee

Cesar L. AlvarezTrustee

L. M. Baker Jr.Trustee

Creed. C. BlackTrustee

Robert W. BriggsTrustee

Marjorie Knight CraneTrustee

Paul S. GroganTrustee

Rolfe NeillTrustee

Mariam C. NolandTrustee

Beverly Knight OlsonTrustee

John W. Rogers Jr.Trustee

Larry MeyerVice President of Communications and Secretary

Beatriz G. ClossickVice President of Accounting and Treasurer

T R U S T E E S A N D S TA F F

Bill Moyers Q&A

4 0 J O H N S . A N D J A M E S L . K N I G H T F O U N DAT I O N

2003 TRUSTEES & OFFICERS 2003 STA F F *

*As of March 29, 2004

I N V E S T M E N T S

Timothy J. Crowe Vice President and Chief Investment Officer

Ava M. Rostant Executive Secretary to Mr. Crowe

Raul A. Diaz Director of Investments

Maurice G. Perry Director of Investments

Erik PophamInvestment Associate

Angelique SellersInvestment Associate

Kathryn GrossmanInvestment Assistant

Elika LopezInvestment Assistant

Virginia M. MojicaInvestment Assistant

A C C O U N T I N G

Beatriz G. Clossick Vice President of Accounting

Juan J. MartinezController

C O M M U N I C AT I O N S

Larry Meyer Vice President of Communications

Robertson AdamsCommunications Associate – Webmaster

Patricia MaldonadoCommunications Associate – ProgramLiaison

Susan Perry-SmithCommunications Assistant

A D M I N I S T R AT I O N

Belinda Turner Lawrence Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer

Térèse Coudreaut Round Workforce Performance and Development Manager

Susan L. Gomez Office Manager

Lynne Noble Administration Assistant

Olga Diaz-GranadosArchives and Records andLibrary Assistant

Reba N. Sawyer Receptionist

I N F O R M ATION TECHNOLO GY

Jorge MartinezDirector of Information Systems

Philip C. FrancisInformation Technology Associate andWeb Technician

Tyrone A. BumpusInformation Technology Specialist

CONTENT TEAM

Julie K. KohlerContent Program Officer

Katherine T. LoflinContent Program Officer

Lizabeth L. SklaroffContent Program Officer

JOURNALISM INITIAT I V E S

Eric Newton Director of Journalism Initiatives

Denise TomJournalism Program Officer

N ATIONAL VENTURE FUND

Lisa VersaciDirector of National Venture Fund

PROGRAM ADM INISTRAT I O N

Julie B.A. BrooksGrants Administrator

Denise ChacinGrants Assistant

Julio BautistaProgram Administration Assistant

Naida E. GonzalezProgram Administration Assistant

Donovan Lee-SinProgram Administration Assistant

Tanya Nieto-WinzeyProgram Administration Assistant

Rhemila SmithProgram Administration Assistant

2 0 0 3 A N N U A L R E P O R T 4 1

Trustees & Staff

1965 with the foundation’s first majorinfusion of assets – a bequest of180,000 shares of Knight Newspapersstock from the Knights’ mother, Clara I.Knight, who died that November. Facedwith the prospect of administering amuch larger financial aid program, theboard of trustees voted in 1966 to endassistance for college students and toreplace it with grants to colleges anduniversities. Over the next few years alimited number of cultural and educa-tional institutions in Akron, Miami,Charlotte and Detroit – cities where theKnights owned newspapers – wereadded to the foundation’s list of grantrecipients.

A turning point came in 1972 whenthe board of trustees authorized the saleof Clara Knight’s stock in a secondaryoffering by Knight Newspapers. Thesale raised $21,343,500, increased thefoundation’s assets to more than $24million and initiated an expanded grantprogram focused on the growing numberof cities where the Knights publishednewspapers. Journalism, especially theeducation of journalists, became a mat-ter of more pronounced funding interest.

LAYING THE CORNERSTONE

In 1974 several events occurred thatlaid the cornerstone for a much largerKnight Foundation. Jack Knight’s wife,Beryl, died, and he underwent majorsurgery, thus creating concern amonghis associates about the future ofKnight Newspapers. Concurrent withthese circumstances, Knight Newspapersmerged with Ridder Publications tocreate Knight-Ridder Inc., at the timethe largest newspaper company in thecountry. Jack Knight was its biggestshareholder.

Heading the newly formed companyas chairman and CEO was the merger’s

cipally to carry out the work of theKnight Memorial Education Fund.Almost from the beginning, however,the foundation made small grants toeducational, cultural and social serviceinstitutions – mostly in Akron – and on a very limited basis for journalism-related causes.

For the first 10 years the foundation’sassets came from contributions from the Beacon Journal and The MiamiHerald and personal gifts by Jack andJim Knight. Other Knight newspapersbegan to contribute small amounts inthe early 1960s – a move that led to alimited number of grants to cities fromwhich the contributions came.

Newspaper contributions stopped in

he John S. and James L. KnightFoundation originated with the Knightfamily’s belief in the value of education.The brothers’ father, Charles LandonKnight, had a tradition of helpingfinancially strapped students pay fortheir college education. To honor hismemory, the Knight Memorial EducationFund was established in 1940 to pro-vide financial aid to college studentsfrom the Akron area. Supported withcontributions from the Akron BeaconJournal, the fund existed until December1950 when its assets of $9,047 weretransferred to the newly created KnightFoundation.

Incorporated in the state of Ohio,Knight Foundation was organized prin-

K N I G H T F O U N D A T I O N H I S T O R Y

Strategic Planning for the Future


T

John S. and James L. Knight

Knight Foundation the 21st-largest U.S.foundation based on asset size.

During that five-year period, Hills –at the request of Jim Knight, the foun-dation’s new chairman – guided theboard in an intense strategic planningprocess. With the settling of JackKnight’s estate complete, the newchairman declared the importance ofensuring that the foundation couldmanage the 20-fold increase in itsassets. In the future, Jim Knight said,operating the foundation “will be likerunning a major national institution.The job will require outstanding talentand leadership.”

The review by Hills and the boardresulted in the creation of a new govern-ing structure as well as programmingand financial policies. This planningprocess serves as the blueprint for thefoundation’s work even now.

In grant making, a formal Cities Pro-gram emerged focusing on all Knight-Ridder communities. In journalism, the foundation built on the Knights’legacy of support for education as thecornerstone of quality journalism byestablishing, salvaging or strengtheningsome of the profession’s most prestigiousmidcareer fellowship programs for journalists. Host institutions includedHarvard, Yale, Columbia, the

In addition, journalism education andfree press issues emerged as a foundationinterest with almost 25 percent of grantssupporting journalism-related causes.

Little more than a year after Maiden-burg took the reins, he fell ill. JackKnight asked C.C. Gibson, a friend andAkron civic activist, to fill in. By 1978it was clear Maidenburg could notreturn, so Gibson was named president.

A NEW CHAPTER BEGINS

One of Jack Knight’s directives duringthe final years of his life was that thefoundation’s trustees consider its future.The outcome was an early and largelyinformal strategic planning exercisethat resulted in direct statements fromJack and Jim Knight about foundationgovernance and grant making. Theirpreferences reflected a desire for anoptimum amount of flexibility “on thegrounds,” Jack Knight wrote, “that atruly effective foundation should havefreedom to exercise its best judgment as required by the times and conditionsunder which they live.”

Jack Knight died on June 16, 1981.The task of settling his estate requiredfive years. When the final transfer offunds to the foundation occurred on May5, 1986, the distribution from thebequest totaled $428,144,588, making

architect, Lee Hills, former president ofKnight Newspapers. A close friend andassociate of the Knights for more than35 years, Hills was the first person out-side the family to head Knight News-papers. He had been a foundationtrustee since 1960.

Hills recognized that Jack Knight’sstatus as Knight-Ridder’s largest share-holder placed the company in a precar-ious position. If the elder Knight died,leaving the bulk of his estate to hisheirs, they would be forced to sell mostof their Knight-Ridder stock to pay theestate taxes. That would leave Knight-Ridder vulnerable to management by outside interests and possibly atakeover by those who understood littleor nothing about newspapers and lessabout journalism.

Recognizing that both Knight-Ridder’sfuture and Jack Knight’s legacy of qual-ity newspapers and journalistic integritywere threatened by such a scenario,Hills moved slowly and gently to presenthis friend with another option: leavingthe bulk of his estate to the foundation.

The gentle persuasion worked. Knightrewrote his will, asking Hills to journeyfrom his office in Miami to Cleveland to review the document with Knight’sattorney. Signed in April 1975, the willleft the bulk of his estate to KnightFoundation.

That year the foundation acquired itsfirst office and hired its first two full-time employees. Ben Maidenburg, aBeacon Journal news executive, wasnamed president. Maidenburg had beena foundation trustee since 1957 andhad served as the foundation’s part-timemanager.

Over the next few years the foundationfocused on grants to educational andcultural institutions in the 11 citieswhere Knight Newspapers had published.


2 0 0 3 A N N U A L R E P O R T 4 3

A college basketball coaches panel addressed the Knight Foundation Commission on IntercollegiateAthletics in Washington, D.C., in February 2004. From left: Dean Smith, formerly of North Carolina; TerryHolland, formerly of Virginia; Wendy Larry, Old Dominion; and Oliver Purnell, Clemson.

collaborates with other national grantmakers and lenders in an effort tostrengthen community developmentcorporations as they work to increaseaccess to housing and social services tothe nation’s urban communities.

In 1990 the board of trustees voted torelocate the foundation’s headquartersfrom Akron to Miami, where severalboard members lived or spent consider-able time. Simultaneously, the staffnearly doubled to 14 – an outgrowth ofthe complexity of grants, the increasedamount of money given away and theneed for more sophisticated oversight ofthe foundation’s $522 million portfolio.

national presence grew with such high-profile efforts as the Knight FoundationCommission on Intercollegiate Athletics,a blue-ribbon body that continues into2004 to advocate for reform of collegeathletics; the Knight Chairs in Journal-ism, a program that seeks to elevate thequality of education at the nation’s bestjournalism schools by attracting notableworking journalists to serve as educatorsthrough endoweded chairs; and theNational Community DevelopmentInitiative (NCDI), the largest philanthrop-ic collaboration in U.S. history. As afounding member of NCDI (now knownas Living Cities), Knight Foundation

Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT), the University of Michigan, theUniversity of Maryland and Stanford,where the John S. Knight Fellowshipswere established in 1982.

Soon thereafter, the board createdseparate programs for education and artsand culture, the two fields in which thefoundation had traditionally made mostof its local grants.

A key change in leadership occurredin February 1988 as Creed Black, aveteran Knight-Ridder news executiveand former publisher of the LexingtonHerald-Leader, assumed the presidency.Under Black’s leadership the foundation’s



A Living Cities tour of Miami’s Overtown neighborhood in January 2003 brought together Lavinia Freeman, a program manager with the Trust for Public Land, andSandra Brock Jibrell, right, a program director at the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

newspaper company, now KnightRidder, neither sold nor acquired news-papers. However, a series of companypurchases and sales in the mid-1990sprompted a board review of the geograph-ic focus of the Community InitiativesProgram. In 1998 the board decidedthe program should cover only the 26cities that had been eligible for localgrants at the time of Jim Knight’s deathin 1991. The decision ended the prac-tice of the foundation following the

company as it bought orsold newspapers through-out the country.

Journalism proved anespecially fertile area forinitiatives dealing witheducational needs, freepress and First Amendmentissues. In 1993 the KnightInternational Press Fellow-ships, administered by theInternational Center forJournalists, were establishedto enable U.S. journalistsand media executives to gooverseas to provide profes-sional advice and trainingin emerging democracies.

The Education Program underwent amajor shift in direction – from highereducation alone to include K-12 – afterthe 1992 strategic plan was adopted.The foundation forged alliances withnational education reform groups suchas the National Center for FamilyLiteracy, New American Schools andTeach for America that resulted in suchorganizations incorporating many of thefoundation’s cities into their activities.

The Arts and Culture Programlaunched two initiatives in the early tomid-1990s. The “Magic of Music”Symphony Orchestra Initiative providedgrants to symphony orchestras willing

community foundations in cities andtowns where the foundation made localgrants. The donor-advised fundsbecame a mechanism for making small-er, quicker grants.

In an effort to remain responsive toemergency needs of foundation cities inthe aftermath of disasters, the boardadopted a grant procedure to expeditefunding in such times of need. Thelargest commitment was $10 million forthe recovery and rebuilding of Dade

JIM KNIGHT’S BEQUEST

Prompted by the dramatic and rapidchanges, the board in late 1990 initiateda new strategic planning process. Beforethe first meeting was held, however, Jim Knight died in February 1991,leaving a bequest to the foundation thateventually totaled $200 million. By thistime, the newspaper company the Knightbrothers founded and the foundationwere operating in 26 U.S. cities.

Hills was elected to succeed JimKnight as chairman, whileW. Gerald Austen, an internationally known heartsurgeon and the surgeon-in-chief at MassachusettsGeneral Hospital, waselected vice chairman tosucceed Hills. Austen, aboard member since 1987,was the Knights’ physicianand longtime friend.

Aware that Jim Knight’sbequest made the strategicplanning process even moretimely and important, theboard undertook an exten-sive one-year strategicplanning exercise that cul-minated in a decade of initiatives andmore focused grant making.

The Cities Program was renamed theCommunity Initiatives Program toreflect a proactive emphasis. Additionally,seven areas of special interest wereidentified as funding priorities: arts andculture, children and social welfare,citizenship, community development,education, homelessness and literacy.

Among the major initiatives launchedunder the auspices of the revampedprogram was a Community FoundationsInitiative. It provided more than $10million through 1997 to either enlargeor establish donor-advised funds at


2 0 0 3 A N N U A L R E P O R T 4 5

As part of a 1998 visit to Grand Forks, Knight trustees and staff attended aperformance sharing residents’ experiences of the epic 1997 flood and firethat destroyed the North Dakota city’s downtown.

County (now Miami-Dade) followingHurricane Andrew in 1992. The boardalso approved $1 million in grants afterthe Red River flood and subsequentfires destroyed much of Grand Forks,N.D., in 1997. And after the terroristattacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the boardapproved a $10 million program to aidagencies in Knight communities provid-ing direct services to individuals mostaffected by those events.

26 PARTICIPATING COMMUNITIES

During the early 1990s, the 26 citiescovered by the Community InitiativesProgram remained constant because the

a $10 million Newsroom Training Ini-tiative to improve and expand midcareereducation for journalists. Partnersinclude the Poynter Institute, North-western University’s Medill School ofJournalism, the American Society ofNewspaper Editors (ASNE), theAmerican Press Institute, AssociatedPress Managing Editors, the Radio andTelevision News Directors Association,the Society of Professional Journalistsand the Southern Newspaper PublishersAssociation. Knight-funded midcareertraining programs now touch some12,500 journalists, about 10 percent ofthe nation’s general news journalists. In2003, the Knight Center for Journalismin the Americas was launched at theUniversity of Texas at Austin to strength-en emerging press freedom in LatinAmerica and the Caribbean. And in2003, the International Center forJournalists noted that the Knight Inter-national Press Fellowships had, in itsfirst decade, sent 170 journalists totrain others in more than 70 countries.Finally, an ambitious program to reviveinterest in teaching and practicing highschool journalism, led by ASNE and the Radio and Television News DirectorsFoundation, holds the promise ofincreasing the flow of new journalists of color into U.S. media.

The National Venture Fund, formed inthe 2001 strategic plan, became thesource for nurturing innovation, leader-ship and experimentation for approachesto community investment that mightbenefit Knight communities. LivingCities, the NCDI successor, involved 17funding partners pledging to make a$500-million, 10-year commitment tothe well-being of U.S. cities throughcommunity development. Two Knightcommunities – Miami and St. Paul –are among a set of Pilot Cities receiving

tury, and the next key steps were takenat a retreat that September when theboard approved a five-year strategic planmandating the most extensive reinventionin Knight Foundation’s history.

The new plan reasserted the founda-tion’s commitment to journalism excellence and significantly deepenedits ties to its communities, positioningit as a proactive partner with localstakeholders in identifying needs andfocusing on results. The newly namedCommunity Partners Program promisedgreater resources from Knight Founda-tion directed over a longer period oftime to a locally recommended, tightlyfocused set of community investments.

The new approach echoed JackKnight’s belief that “small as our assetsare in relation to all the needs, thefoundation does have flexibility, it caninnovate, and can provide the seedmoney for promising new activities.”

The Partners Program deploys acrossthe 26 Knight locales a cadre of eightresident program officers developingfundable strategies in partnership withappropriate nonprofit organizations. Theliaisons work in concert with a team ofcontent officers researching and evalu-ating best practices and sharing whatworks across Knight’s communities.Each community benefits from a KnightCommunity Advisory Committee – agroup of up to a dozen local residentsoffering deep local knowledge of andexperience with local issues. In 2003,the liaisons and the committees hadidentified funding priorities in all 26communities and had made their initiallong-term investments. Those efforts arecomplemented by a commitment to invest$50 million by 2005 in expanded donor-advised funds at community foundationsserving all Knight communities.

In journalism, the foundation funded

to engage their entire organizationsin experiments designed to generate agreater sense of excitement about theconcertgoing experience and a morevital relationship between artists andaudiences. The second initiative, theMuseum Loan Network, is a collection-sharing program administered by MITthat gets artworks out of storage in onemuseum and onto the walls of another.

On Jan. 1, 1993, the foundationbecame the John S. and James L. KnightFoundation to honor the memory of thebrothers who had created it. A yearlater the foundation incorporated in thestate of Florida.

A review of the foundation’s strategicplan in 1995 resulted in fine-tuningthrough such strategies as needs assess-ment and evaluation. As the decadeended, the foundation launched an in-depth, ongoing Community IndicatorsProject to acquire more comprehensiveinformation about its 26 communities.

LEADERSHIP CHANGES

The strategic plan review also servedas a catalyst for a change in leadership.Hills stepped down as chairman in 1996and was succeeded by Vice ChairmanAusten. Jill Ker Conway, former presidentof Smith College and a visiting scholarat MIT, was elected vice chairman.

In February 1998 Black retired aspresident and was succeeded by HoddingCarter III, a nationally known publicaffairs journalist and former Mississippinewspaper editor and publisher whohad occupied the Knight Chair in Jour-nalism at the University of Maryland.

Lee Hills died Feb. 3, 2000, at theage of 93. The blueprint on which thefoundation operates was largely designedand drawn by Hills. His vision andthoughtful guidance had steered thefoundation successfully into a new cen-



by year’s end to $1.846 billion. KnightFoundation remains well positioned as it continues its efforts to promotejournalism of excellence worldwide and improve the quality of life in its 26 communities. ✔

additional resources. A new venturelaunched in 2003 – The Center forUrban Redevelopment Entrepreneursat the University of Pennsylvania(CURExPenn) – is a fellowship programdesigned to train the next generation of urban development professionals.

An economic rebound in 2003 helpedKnight Foundation’s asset base climb


2 0 0 3 A N N U A L R E P O R T 4 7

In November 2003, The Wichita Symphony’s Sound Waves concert included popular American themes to attract new audiences to classical music. The symphonyis one of 15 involved with Knight’s Magic of Music Symphony Orchestra Initiative.

the three-year bear market from 2000to 2002, when each of our portfoliobenchmarks lost considerable value,Knight Foundation’s portfolio not onlypreserved value but actually earned aslight return. And during the three-yearbull market run from 1997 to 1999, the portfolio surpassed its benchmarks.Looking over the past seven-year and10-year periods, which include 2003,Knight Foundation’s investment returnswere significantly above all benchmarks.

STRATEGIES THAT WORKED IN 2003International equity was the highest

returning asset class, gaining 39.5 per-cent for the year versus its benchmarkreturn of 16.6 percent. The exceptionalperformance relative to the benchmarkwas due primarily to the tactical decisionnot to hedge foreign currencies, whichgained value during the year relative tothe weakening U.S. dollar, and the deci-sion to overweight allocations to Asianand emerging markets for most of theyear and underweight European marketallocations.

Offensive Hedge Funds appreciated22.4 percent during the year, just slight-ly under the benchmark return of 22.7percent. Fifteen of the 17 managers inthis category posted very respectablereturns. Knight Foundation continued toadd managers to this group during theyear to increase diversification andminimize risk.

Defensive Hedge Funds gained 14percent for the year, easily outdistancingits benchmark return of 4.2 percent.Five of the six managers in this categoryposted positive returns for the year orpartial year, with many of the managers’performances benefiting from exposureto distressed securities.

Fixed Income posted an 8.3 percentreturn, outperforming its benchmark by3.6 percentage points. Knight’s portfoliowas able to outperform the index byopportunistically holding foreign bondsat various times during the year and byadjusting the duration of the portfolio to interest rate volatility. In addition,allocations to high yield bonds benefit-ed performance as credit yield spreadsnarrowed, increasing the value of suchbonds. An overweight exposure to

heightened and businesses began toraise revenue and profit guidance forthe year. By the end of 2003, most equi-ty markets around the world had postedstrong double-digit gains.

Knight Foundation’s portfolio returnfor 2003 was 13.6 percent. This perform-ance exceeded expectations establishedby the policy portfolio benchmark, whichreturned 12.3 percent. This result indi-cated that the investment and tacticaldecisions made by outside managersand staff added value above that attainedby the passive, policy portfolio bench-mark. Although this was a welcomeresult, the defensive strategies and allo-cations used by the portfolio did dampenits ability to fully participate in thestrong rebound of the equity markets.As a result, the portfolio’s performancetrailed that of its passive and peergroup portfolio benchmarks (Table 2).

Viewed beyond one year, the benefitsof a diversified portfolio, which strikesa balance between offensive and defen-sive strategies, become evident. During

he market value of Knight Foundationassets at Dec. 31, 2003, was $1.846 bil-lion, an increase of $127.7 million for theyear. Investment activity added $226.6million during 2003. Grant spending forthe year was $90.4 million and adminis-trative expenses $10.1 million. Theseexpenses were partially offset by $1 mil-lion in tax refunds and $600,000 incontributions and other (Table 1).

As 2003 began, equity markets haddeclined in each of the three prioryears, war with Iraq was looming, andbankruptcies and scandals littered thecorporate landscape. Given this uncer-tain investment environment, KnightFoundation decided to maintain theportfolio’s strategic, defensive allocationsthat had served it well in that period.Knight fully recognized, however, thatsuch a decision would dampen perform-ance should the equity markets post astrong recovery during the upcoming year.About halfway into the second quarter,the equity markets did begin to reboundas expectations for economic recovery

I N V E S T M E N T R E P O R T


T

TABLE 12003 2002

Change in Asset Values (dollars in millions)Investment Activity, net $ 226.6 $ (89.1)Grants Paid (90.4) (85.6)General and Administrative Expenses (10.1) (8.9)Taxes Refunded / (Paid) 1.0 (1.2)Contributions Received 0.2 2.0Other 0.4 0.2Total Change $ 127.7 $ (182.6)

Memo: Beginning Assets $ 1,718.2 $ 1,900.8Ending Assets $ 1,845.9 $ 1,718.2

TABLE 2Average Annual Compound Returns

Summary of Investment PerformanceBear Mkt. Bull Mkt. 7 Year 10 Year

2000- 1997- 1997- 1994-Period Ended Dec. 31 2003 2002 1999 2003 2003KF Portfolio 13.6% 0.8 % 26.0 % 12.8 % 12.4 %Portfolio Benchmarks:Policy Portfolio 12.3% -1.9 % 14.2 % 6.8 % NADomestic 60/30/10 Passive 19.5% -5.8 % 18.9 % 7.7 % 9.6 %Global 60/30/10 25.1% -8.5 % 14.5 % 5.3 % 6.9 %TIFF Multi-Asset Fund 26.7% -2.3 % 9.0 % 6.3 % NAVanguard LifeStrategy 28.5% -10.2 % 16.1 % 5.5 % NAGrowth FundCambridge Associates 22.6% -3.3 % 15.6 % 8.1 % 9.6 %Endowment Median

Private Securities 15%

and rental rate decreases. Also, theportfolio held relatively fewer apartmentsand retail properties, which were thebest performing sectors during the year.

The most significant of missed oppor-tunities was the low allocation of assetsto equity investments within the portfolio,which prevented full participation inthe strong equity market rally in 2003.While no one ever likes to leave moneyon the table, the defensive portfolio per-formed as designed. Catching each abruptturn in the markets fully is impossible.As many studies have shown, markettiming does not have a high success rate.Knight Foundation believes that a steadyreturn earned in both good and badmarkets is most desirable and morefinancially rewarding over the long term.

ASSET ALLOCATION

The chart below shows the asset classallocation targets that were in effect atyear-end.

IN SUMMARY

Generally, many investors seem high-ly confident that financial markets andthe economy will continue on course forat least the first six months of the year.Many are forecasting tougher times bythe second half of 2004, while otherstalk of a new tech revolution similar tothe industrial revolution of the late 1800sthat will translate into a lengthy periodof solid growth and rising stock prices.

No one, of course, knows which sce-nario is likeliest. Staying well diversified,employing the best managers possible,and looking for tactical opportunities toadd value will continue to be our path.

Treasury Inflation Protected Sercurities(TIPS) during much of the year alsobolstered Knight’s performance.

Commodities, which were introducedto the portfolio in the fourth quarter, alsowere a positive factor for performance.

STRATEGIES THAT LAGGED AND

SOME MISSED OPPORTUNITIES

Knight Foundation’s Domestic Equityasset class rose 22.6 percent for theyear, but trailed the Russell 3000/KRIBlend benchmark, which climbed 29.5percent. Losses from short positions infutures contracts, used for asset alloca-tion rebalancing, accounted for most ofthis underperformance, which occurredprimarily in the second quarter. Withinthe core indexed equity funds, tacticalallocations were made between growthand value-style stocks, and large andsmall cap stocks. These tactics detract-ed 46 basis points from performance.

Private equity investments, whichinclude venture capital, buyout, interna-tional and distressed partnerships, wereup 4.1 percent for the year, trailing thebenchmark by 1.4 percentage points.This year marked the first positivereturns posted since 2000. Distresseddebt and buyout funds earned double-digit gains for the year. Internationalprivate equity returned 5 percent, whilethe value of domestic venture capitalpositions declined 9.3 percent.

Private real estate gained 6.6 percentin 2003 but the benchmark rose 7.7percent. Most of the underperformancecan be attributed to overweight positionsin office properties, which performedpoorly due to increasing vacancy rates

I N V E S T M E N T R E P O R T

REPORT OF INDEPENDENT CERTIFIED

PUBLIC ACCOUNTANTS

TRUSTEES

JOHN S. AND JAMES L. KNIGHT FOUNDATION

We have audited the accompanying state-ments of financial position of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation (the founda-tion) as of Dec. 31, 2003 and 2002, and therelated statements of activities and cashflows for the years then ended. These finan-cial statements are the responsibility of thefoundation’s management. Our responsibilityis to express an opinion on these financialstatements based on our audits.

We conducted our audits in accordancewith auditing standards generally accepted inthe United States. Those standards requirethat we plan and perform the audit to obtainreasonable assurance about whether thefinancial statements are free of material misstatement. An audit includes examining,on a test basis, evidence supporting theamounts and disclosures in the financialstatements. An audit also includes assessingthe accounting principles used and significantestimates made by management, as well as evaluating the overall financial statementpresentation. We believe that our audits provide a reasonable basis for our opinion.

In our opinion, the financial statementsreferred to above present fairly, in all materialrespects, the financial position of the founda-tion at Dec. 31, 2003 and 2002, and its changesin unrestricted net assets and cash flows for the years then ended, in conformity withaccounting principles generally accepted inthe United States.

Feb. 20, 2004

A U D I T O R S ’ R E P O R T

Private Real Estate 6%

Offensive StrategiesDefensive Strategies

TIPS 7.5%

Domestic Equity 11.5%

International Equity 8.5%

Offensive Hedge Funds 20%

Fixed Income 17.5%

Cash 1.5%

Defensive Hedge Funds 12.5%

ASSET ALLOCATION TARGETS 2003

2 0 0 3 A N N U A L R E P O R T 4 9

F I N A N C I A L S T A T E M E N T S


STATEMENTS OF ACTIVITY

STATEMENTS OF FINANCIAL POSITION

Dec. 31 2003 2002

Assets Investments

Cash and cash equivalents $ 162,687,829 $ 74,411,763 Interest, dividends and other investment receivables 5,094,509 5,145,480U.S. government and agency obligations 252,770,682 279,577,319Corporate bonds and other obligations 85,427,021 165,194,597Common stock of Knight Ridder 59,975,831 63,261,512Other equity securities 911,552,289 796,897,330Alternative equity investments 263,166,541 231,955,192Real estate investments 104,391,562 100,673,551

Total investments 1,845,066,264 1,717,116,744Other assets 802,784 1,119,494Total assets $ 1,845,869,048 $ 1,718,236,238

Liabilities and unrestricted net assetsGrants payable $ 110,212,152 $ 71,084,571Other liabilities 558,289 274,667Total liabilities 110,770,441 71,359,238Unrestricted net assets 1,735,098,607 1,646,877,000Total liabilities and unrestricted net assets $ 1,845,869,048 $ 1,718,236,238

Year ended Dec. 312003 2002

Investment activityInterest $ 26,094,091 $ 31,527,830Dividends 13,268,775 10,643,401Net realized gain on sale of investments 50,314,176 39,584,794Net change in fair value of investments 143,039,539 (165,890,722)Less: investment expenses (6,069,448) (4,998,638)

Total investment activity 226,647,133 (89,133,335)Contributions received 198,168 2,028,923Total investment activity and other support 226,845,301 (87,104,412)

Grants approved and expensesCommunity Partners grants 79,754,840 33,032,960Journalism Initiatives grants 39,115,430 24,078,800National Venture Fund grants 9,254,000 14,280,000Sept. 11 grants – 8,306,000Other grants 595,200 1,251,482Grant forfeitures and other (3,853,728) (6,609,723)Direct charitable activities 4,058,149 4,096,264General and administrative expenses 10,135,667 8,935,211Federal excise and other taxes, net (435,864) 1,669,601

Total grants and expenses 138,623,694 89,040,595

Change in unrestricted net assets 88,221,607 (176,145,007)Unrestricted net assets at beginning of year 1,646,877,000 1,823,022,007Unrestricted net assets at end of year $ 1,735,098,607 $ 1,646,877,000See accompanying notes.

F I N A N C I A L S T A T E M E N T S

2 0 0 3 A N N U A L R E P O R T 5 1

STATEMENTS OF CASH FLOWS

Year ended Dec. 312003 2002

Cash flows from operating activitiesChange in unrestricted net assets $ 88,221,607 $ (176,145,007)Adjustments to reconcile change in unrestricted

net assets to net cash used in operating activities:Net realized gain on sale of investments (50,314,176) (39,584,794)Net change in fair value of investments (143,039,539) 165,890,722Changes in operating assets and liabilities:

Interest, dividends and other investment receivables 50,971 16,222,944Other assets 316,710 (1,119,494)Grants payable 39,127,581 (6,343,904)Other liabilities 283,622 (104,793)

Net cash used in operating activities (65,353,224) (41,184,326)

Cash flows from investing activitiesProceeds from sale of investments 1,325,401,706 1,676,291,445Purchases of investments (1,171,772,416) (1,637,605,999)Net cash provided by investing activities 153,629,290 38,685,446

Net change in cash and cash equivalents 88,276,066 (2,498,880)Cash and cash equivalents at beginning of year 74,411,763 76,910,643Cash and cash equivalents at end of year $ 162,687,829 $ 74,411,763See accompanying notes.

and investment and non-investment gradecorporate bonds for which active tradingmarkets exist. Such assets are valued atquoted closing prices at year end. Realizedgains and losses and increases and decreas-es in fair value on investments are reflectedin the Statements of Activities.

Approximately 20 percent and 19 percentof the foundation’s assets at Dec. 31, 2003and 2002, respectively, were invested withnumerous partnerships, in which the founda-tion is a limited partner, that specialize inmaking venture capital, buyout, distresseddebt, and equity-based real estate invest-ments. Such investments, typically invest-ments in private equity or debt securities ofcompanies or properties that are not publiclylisted or traded, are not liquid investments.The value of such investments is determinedby the partnerships’ general partners, whomust follow the valuation guidelines, suchas appraisals and comparable companytrade data, stipulated in the respective lim-ited partnership agreements. The Dec. 31valuations of the investments in limitedpartnerships are based upon the value deter-mined by the partnerships’ general partneras of Sept. 30, adjusted for capital contribu-tions and distributions that occur during thequarter ended Dec. 31. These amounts maydiffer from values that would be determinedif the investments in limited partnershipswere publicly traded or if the Dec. 31 valu-ation amount were currently available.Realized gains and losses and increases anddecreases in fair value on the investmentsin limited partnerships are reflected in theStatements of Activities. All limited partner-ships are audited annually by independentcertified public accounting firms. As of Dec.31, 2003, pursuant to its limited partnershipagreements, the foundation is committed tocontributing approximately $242,900,000 inadditional capital over the next 10 years tovarious partnerships. Unpaid commitments atDec. 31, 2002, were approximately$234,200,000.

At Dec. 31, 2003 and 2002, the foundationheld 775,182 and 1,000,182 shares, respec-tively, of Knight Ridder common stock, whichrepresented 3 percent and 4 percent of thefoundation’s assets, respectively.

period. Actual results could differ fromthose estimates.

RECLASSIFICATION

Certain amounts in the prior year’s finan-cial statements have been reclassified toconform with the current year’s presentation.

3. INVESTMENTS

The investment goal of the foundation isto invest its assets in a manner that willachieve a total rate of return sufficient toreplace the assets spent for grants andexpenses and to recoup any value lost dueto inflation. To achieve this goal, someinvestment risk must be taken. To minimizesuch risk, the foundation diversifies its invest-ments among various financial instrumentsand asset categories, and uses multipleinvestment strategies and investment man-agers. Key decisions in this regard are madeby the foundation’s investment committee,which has oversight responsibility for thefoundation’s investment program. The com-mittee identifies appropriate asset categoriesfor investments, determines the allocation of assets to each category and approves theinvestment strategies employed. The founda-tion’s chief investment officer is responsiblefor the effective execution of the investmentprogram, including the engagement ofinvestment managers, financial consultantsand legal advisers, as required. The majorityof the foundation’s financial assets are man-aged by external investment managementfirms selected by the chief investment officer.The foundation’s holdings in Knight Riddercommon stock, Treasury Inflation ProtectedSecurities (TIPS), commodities, derivativeoverlays, equities distributed by its limitedpartnership investments and strategic allo-cations to index funds are managed by thefoundation’s investment department. Allfinancial assets are held in custody for thefoundation in proprietary accounts by amajor commercial bank, except those assetsthat have been invested in limited partner-ships, hedge funds or in certain productswith multiple investors, such as index funds,all of which have separate custodial arrange-ments appropriate to their legal structure.

The majority of the foundation’s financialassets is invested in publicly traded securi-ties that are listed on national exchanges,treasury and agency bonds of the U.S. govern-ment, sovereign bonds of foreign governments

DEC. 31, 2003

1. THE ORGANIZATION

The John S. and James L. Knight Founda-tion (the foundation), a nonprofit corporation,promotes excellence in journalism world-wide and invests in the vitality of 26 U.S.communities.

2. SIGNIFICANT ACCOUNTING POLICIES

CASH AND CASH EQUIVALENTS

Cash and cash equivalents are composedof various operating accounts and highlyliquid investments with original maturitiesof 90 days or less.

PROPERTY, PLANT AND EQUIPMENT

The foundation records property, plantand equipment as an expense in the yearpurchased. Property, plant and equipmentpurchased for 2003 and 2002 was approxi-mately $1,900,000 and $475,000, respective-ly, of which approximately $1,454,000 and$365,000 were for charitable purposes andare reflected in “General and administrativeexpenses” in the Statement of Activities.

PROGRAM-RELATED INVESTMENTS (PRIS)In accordance with Section 4944 of the

Internal Revenue Code (the code), the foun-dation is permitted to make investments thatare related to its philanthropic programs.These investments are anticipated to have areturn lower than fair value. In the year ofthe investment, the foundation receives acredit toward its distribution requirement.These investments are treated as grants inthe year they are approved. To the extent theinvestment is recovered by the foundation,the recovery is recognized as a negative dis-tribution. Recoveries are reflected in “Grantforfeitures and other” in the Statements ofActivities.

USE OF ESTIMATES

The presentation of financial statementsin conformity with accounting principlesgenerally accepted in the United Statesrequires management to make estimates andassumptions that affect the reported amountof assets and liabilities and disclosure ofcontingent assets and liabilities at the dateof the financial statements. Estimates alsoaffect the reported amounts of investmentactivity and expenses during the reporting

N O T E S T O F I N A N C I A L S T A T E M E N T S


In the opinion of the foundation’s man-agement, the use of derivative financialinstruments in its investment program isappropriate and customary for the investmentstrategies employed. Using those instrumentsreduces certain investment risks and general-ly adds value to the portfolio. The instrumentsthemselves, however, do involve someinvestment and counter party risk not fullyreflected in the foundation’s financial state-ments. Management does not anticipate thatlosses, if any, from such instruments wouldmaterially affect the financial position of the foundation.

At Dec. 31, 2003, the foundation had acurrency forward contract valued at$32,135,000 with one correspondent bank.This represents a hedge against a portion ofthe foundation’s Euro-denominated capitalcommitments to its limited partnerships valued at $44,700,000. At Dec. 31, 2002,the foundation had combined buy and sellpositions in currency forward contracts valued at approximately $25,000,000 withfour correspondent banks which on a netbasis represented a hedge of approximately$1,400,000 against a portion of the founda-tion’s foreign equity portfolio valued atapproximately $35,000,000. All currencyforward contacts are up to six months induration and are typically renewed. At Dec.31, 2003 and 2002, the fair value of thesecurrency forward contracts, which is reflect-ed in the Statements of Financial Position,was approximately $447,000 and ($350,000),respectively.

During 2003, the foundation entered intovarious futures contracts. At Dec. 31, 2003,the foundation had opened positions withvarious futures contracts with a net aggregatenotional value of approximately $146,500,000.The futures contracts selected are exchange-listed, highly liquid contracts providingdaily settlements. Gains and losses wereprocessed daily through the NYSE third-party clearing broker and settled within anaccount at the foundation’s custodian bank.Net realized losses from futures contractstotaled approximately $6,100,000 for theyear ended Dec. 31, 2003 and are reflectedin the Statements of Activities.

4. DERIVATIVE FINANCIAL INSTRUMENTS

Some investment managers retained by thefoundation have been authorized to use cer-tain derivative financial instruments in amanner set forth by the foundation’s writteninvestment policy, specific manager guidelinesor partnership/fund agreement documents.Specifically, derivative financial instrumentsmay be used for the following purposes: (1)currency forward contracts and options maybe used to hedge nondollar exposure in for-eign investments; (2) covered call optionsmay be sold to enhance yield on major equity positions; (3) futures contracts maybe used to equitize excess cash positions,rebalance asset categories within the portfo-lio, adjust risk exposures within the portfolio,or to rapidly increase or decrease exposureto specific investment positions in anticipa-tion of subsequent cash trades; and (4)futures contracts and options may be usedby hedge fund managers to hedge or lever-age positions in portfolios in their respectivefunds. Authorization to use derivatives currently is restricted to 18 hedge fundmanagers, who manage investments totalingapproximately $550,000,000 and one cur-rency overlay manager, who at Dec. 31,2003 did not have any buy or sell positions.

The foundation’s chief investment officeralso is authorized to use derivatives to executecertain investment strategies. Derivativefinancial instruments are recorded at fairvalue in the Statements of Financial Positionwith changes in fair value reflected in theStatements of Activities.


2 0 0 3 A N N U A L R E P O R T 5 3

3. INVESTMENTS (CONTINUED)A detail of fair value and cost by investment class follows:

Dec. 31, 2003 Dec. 31, 2002Fair Value Cost Fair Value Cost

Cash and cash equivalents $ 162,687,829 $ 162,687,829 $ 74,411,763 $ 74,411,763Interest, dividends and other investment receivables 5,094,509 4,603,757 5,145,480 5,498,871U.S. government and agency obligations 252,770,682 233,436,179 279,577,319 253,783,594Corporate bonds and other obligations 85,427,021 82,411,615 165,194,597 162,234,790Common stock of Knight Ridder 59,975,831 21,608,198 63,261,512 27,880,073Other equity securities 911,552,289 693,776,149 796,897,330 732,366,174Alternative equity investments 263,166,541 380,802,663 231,955,192 345,584,445Real estate investments 104,391,562 90,042,671 100,673,551 82,699,370Total $ 1,845,066,264 $ 1,669,369,061 $ 1,717,116,744 $ 1,684,459,080

Highly liquid investments with original maturities of three months or less are reported as cash equivalents.

7. EMPLOYEE PENSION PLAN AND OTHER

POSTRETIREMENT BENEFIT PLANS

The foundation sponsors a pension planwith defined benefit and cash balance fea-tures for its eligible employees. The pensionbenefits for all employees hired prior to Jan.1, 2000, will be the greater of the benefitsas determined under the defined benefitfeature of the pension plan or the cash bal-ance feature of the pension plan. The pensionbenefits for all employees hired on or subse-quent to Jan. 1, 2000, will be determinedunder the cash balance feature of the pensionplan. The foundation also sponsors postretire-ment medical and life insurance benefit plans.

The table below sets forth the pension andother postretirement benefits plans’ fundedstatus and amounts recognized in the foun-dation’s Statements of Financial Position:

6. FEDERAL EXCISE TAXES

The foundation qualifies as a tax-exemptorganization under Section 501(c)(3) of thecode and, with the exception of unrelatedbusiness income from debt-financed, passiveinvestments, is not subject to federal orstate income tax. However, the foundation isclassified as a private foundation and issubject to a federal excise tax of 2 percent(or 1 percent under certain circumstances)on net investment income and net realizedgains, as defined by the code. The founda-tion expects to qualify for the 1 percent taxrate in 2003 and was subject to the 1 percenttax rate in 2002.

For the year ended Dec. 31, 2003 thefoundation received a net refund of approxi-mately $970,000 in excise and other taxes.Total excise and other taxes paid by thefoundation for the year ended Dec. 31, 2002,amounted to approximately $1,200,000.

5. GRANTS

The foundation records grants in full asexpenses when approved. Grants payable atDec. 31, 2003 and 2002 represents the pres-ent value of multiyear grants using a 4.00percent and 4.25 percent discount rate,respectively. The foundation made grantpayments of $90,400,477 and $85,617,981in 2003 and 2002, respectively.

As of Dec. 31, 2003, the foundation hadfuture grant commitments, which are sched-uled for payment in future years as follows:



2004 $ 56,933,0202005 36,487,9582006 19,754,0162007 4,304,2502008 600,000

118,079,244Discounted to present value (7,867,092)Grants payable $ 110,212,152

Pension Plan Other Postretirement Benefit PlansYear ended Dec. 31 Year ended Dec. 31

2003 2002 2003 2002Fair value of plan assets $ 6,577,343 $ 5,510,155 $ 225,840 $ –Benefit obligation (6,834,540) (5,916,760) (1,583,763) (1,299,898)Funded status of the plan $ (257,197) $ (406,605) $(1,357,923) $ (1,299,898)

Accrued benefit asset/(liability) recognized in the Statements of Financial Position $ 802,784 $ 1,119,494 $ (519,370) $ (543,680)

Benefit cost recognized in theStatements of Activities 466,710 499,617 241,301 221,031

Employer contributions 150,000 2,445,570 265,611 33,775Employee contributions – – 1,196 666Benefits paid 306,256 550,153 44,940 34,441

Actuarial assumptions Discount rate 6.25% 6.75% 6.25% 6.75%Expected return on plan assets 8.00 8.00 8.00 N/ARate of compensation increase 3.75 3.75 3.75 3.75

Health care cost trend rate assumptionsInitial trend rate N/A N/A 15.00% 15.00%Ultimate trend rate N/A N/A 5.25 5.25Year ultimate trend is reached N/A N/A 2014 2013

7. EMPLOYEE PENSION PLAN AND OTHER

POSTRETIREMENT BENEFIT PLANS (CONTINUED)In addition, the foundation sponsors a

defined contribution plan for its eligibleemployees for which it has no fixed liabilities.Effective Jan. 1, 2002, the foundation’sdefined contribution plan was amended toadd an employer matching contributioncomponent. During 2003 and 2002, thefoundation made contributions to the definedcontribution plan of approximately $149,000and $136,000, respectively.

8. LEASES

The foundation leases approximately 21,300square feet of office space in Miami, Fla.,which expires in 2013. The foundation alsohas various leases for equipment, which expirebetween 2004 and 2005. Rental expense foroffice and equipment leases for 2003 and2002 was approximately $924,000 and$822,000, respectively. Future minimumlease payments for office and equipmentleases are as follows:


2 0 0 3 A N N U A L R E P O R T 5 5

2004 $ 773,8892005 680,9992006 689,1022007 705,0662008 721,029Thereafter 3,503,156Total $ 7,073,241

s you might imagine, we receive many inquiries at Knight Foundation.Accordingly, correspondents who follow these guidelines are more likely to receive aprompt response.

Please submit a brief letter of inquiry. If we think your inquiry can be developedinto a full proposal, we will let you know. In no more than two pages, please tell us:

✔ Who you are and how to reach you

✔ The need(s) the proposed project will address

✔ The relationship of the project to the foundation’s funding interests or priorities foryour community

✔ The results you expect the project to accomplish and the way in which theseresults will benefit the people in need

✔ The special qualifications your organization brings to the project

✔ The project’s relation to your organization’s mission and programmatic goals

✔ The role of other organizations, if any, in planning the project and the nature oftheir participation in its implementation

Please be sure to include:

✔ The total amount of money you wish to request, over what time period

✔ Your organization’s total income and expenditures for its most recent year

✔ Verification that your organization is tax-exempt under IRS code Section501(c)(3), and not a private foundation as defined in Section 509(a) of that code

For further information on our programs, please see our web site (www.knightfdn.org).

L E T T E R O F I N Q U I R Y


A

2 0 0 3 A N N U A L R E P O R T 5 7

john a. powell, right, from the Kirwan Institute for Race & Ethnicity, talks about the trend toward the resegregationof public schools in the South with John Charles Boger, a professor from the University of North Carolina LawSchool. They joined national civil rights leaders in Charlotte, N.C., in July 2003 for a sweeping discussion of howto build support for public education, and how to assure an adequate education for all students, including those in high-poverty schools. The day-long conference was part of a UNCC Law School project funded by KnightFoundation. The Charlotte Community Advisory Committee has selected improving race relations as one of itsfunding priorities. Mr. powell prefers his name to have all lower-case letters.

Grants

G R A N T S O V E R V I E W


PROGRAMS NUMBER OF GRANTS AMOUNT

JOURNALISM INITIATIVES

Education and Training 19 $15,540,630

Electronic and New Media 4 3,053,800

News and Newsroom Diversity 7 8,219,000

News in the Public Interest 7 1,355,000

Press Freedom and Freedom of Information 18 10,947,000

Subtotal 55 $39,115,430

COMMUNITY PARTNERS

Community Foundations Initiative 11 $22,325,000

Civic Engagement and Positive Human Relations 15 1,775,240

Economic Development 29 7,729,025

Education 13 4,183,315

Housing and Community Development 27 8,278,850

Other Priorities 3 980,000

Vitality of Cultural Life 37 6,662,345

Well-being of Children and Families 95 27,821,065

Subtotal 230 $79,754,840

NATIONAL VENTURE FUND

Civic Engagement and Positive Human Relations 7 $4,393,000

Economic Development 1 396,000

Education 2 1,020,000

Housing and Community Development 4 1,148,000

Other Priorities 4 800,000

Vitality of Cultural Life 3 1,057,000

Well-being of Children and Families 2 440,000

Subtotal 23 $9,254,000

OTHER

Strengthening Philanthropy 12 $315,200

Special 29 280,000

Subtotal 41 $595,200

GRAND TOTAL 349 $128,719,470

Listed below are $128,719,470 in new grants approved during 2003 by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Some of these grants, aswell as those approved in past years, are disbursed over a period of several years. The net effect of these past and future commitments is thatduring 2003 the foundation actually disbursed $90,400,477.

Education and Training

University of Maryland $2,420,000(College Park, Md.) (over three years)To expand the reach of the Knight Center forSpecialized Journalism.

The Knight Center for Specialized Journal-ism trains journalists to cover complex subjects. Since 1988, it has offered short,intense seminars to more than 1,700 jour-nalists from 400 news organizations. Topicsin 2003 include “Paying for Health Care,”“Islam and America,” “Covering BusinessAfter Enron,” “Government Secrecy: Local,State and National,” and “Cities, Suburbsand Beyond.” This grant allows the KnightCenter to continue to offer three- to five-dayseminars six times a year on timely topics,reach an increasingly diverse group of jour-nalists, add seminar content to the center’sweb site, help an evaluator pinpoint howseminars change news content and calculate“shelf-life” of training.

Columbia University 2,000,000(New York, N.Y.) (over three years)To expand standard-setting seminars offered innewsrooms nationwide by the Committee ofConcerned Journalists.

This grant will allow the Committee of Con-cerned Journalists, run by veteran editorBill Kovach and Project for Excellence inJournalism director Tom Rosenstiel, toexpand its values-based training to additionalnewspaper and broadcast newsrooms. CCJwill reach at least 4,200 journalists the nextthree years, and an equal number throughits web site. CCJ tailors its training to individual newsrooms with the aim of raisingstandards and improving journalistic tech-nique. The committee worked with morethan 20 organizations and 1,400 journalistsin its one-year pilot phase. This grant ispart of the foundation’s Newsroom TrainingInitiative, which aims to increase midcareereducation of journalists and news industryinvestment in training.

Northwestern University 1,967,500 (Evanston, Ill.) (over four years)To launch the Newsroom Training Initiative.

In 2002, Knight Foundation’s NewsroomTraining: Where’s the Investment? a multi-media national study, found that eight in 10journalists say they need more professionaldevelopment, and nine in 10 news executives

agree. In response, a coalition of journalismgroups endorsed a “call to arms” to encour-age the news industry to invest more intraining. Northwestern University’s MedillSchool of Journalism won a $250,000 plan-ning grant to host the project. This grantfunds the four-year project under the direc-tion of Michele McLellan, a former editor at The Oregonian and author of a popularcredibility handbook for the AmericanSociety of Newspaper Editors. McLellan willconvene annual meetings of the industrytraining coalition, explore with industry CEOsways to increase investment in training,develop measurements that help news lead-ers determine what training they need andwhether they are providing it, and developmaterials explaining how training is used inother professions.

University of Southern California 1,855,000(Los Angeles, Calif.) (over three years)To expand the reach of the Western Knight Centerfor Specialized Journalism.

The center, in its fourth year, offers shortcourses on timely topics designed to givejournalists a better understanding of busi-ness, law, science and other fields thatintersect daily news. This grant will enablethe Western Knight Center to reach 150journalists a year through five seminars,with participants teaching what they havelearned to as many as 1,000 additional journalists. The center also will expand itsweb site and experiment with distancelearning. This grant is part of the foundation’songoing efforts to advance the midcareereducation of journalists.

American Press Institute 1,000,000(Reston, Va.) (over four years)To implement The Learning Newsroom conceptnationally.

In 2002, Knight gave the American Societyof Newspaper Editors Foundation a $52,000grant to produce The Learning Newsroom, a guide to newsroom training. A “learningnewsroom” is a place where training, educa-tion and personal development routinelyoccur. This is a training model that can workfor small newspapers, which often can’tspare people to fly to national programs. Thisproject, a partnership between API andASNE, will create 12 pilot newsrooms overa three-year period. A director and supportstaff will launch pilots in small, medium-sized and large newsrooms, each owned bydifferent companies. The newspapers mustagree to protect their training budgets from

cuts. Consultants will help newsroom staffdevelop self-teaching systems. Each newsroomwill identify its needs; design and attendworkshops to learn what it needs to learn;and put the new knowledge or skills intopractice.

American Society of Newspaper 1,000,000Editors Foundation (over three years)(Reston, Va.)To place college journalism teachers at daily news-papers.

Begun in 1995, the Institute for JournalismExcellence places college journalism teachersat daily newspapers for six weeks over thesummer so they can sharpen their skills andtake real experience back to thousands ofstudents. The program’s diversity hasincreased each year. By 2003, 30 percent ofthe teachers were people of color and 60percent were female. In all, some 200 edu-cators have participated, an average of 25 ayear. They say their classroom lessonsbecome more realistic, reflecting today’snewsrooms. As a new feature, teachers willbe matched increasingly with newspapers intheir own region, and the program will attractincreasing numbers of journalists of color.

Associated Press Managing Editors 1,000,000 (New York, N.Y.) (over four years)For general operating support, and to createNewsTrain, a national network of regional journal-ism training sites.

Most U.S. journalists do not receive regularmidcareer training, but many of those whodo travel on their own to professional devel-opment programs within their regions. APMEwill conduct training each year at 15 sitesnationally, targeting 1,000 midlevel editorsat newspapers and news directors at broad-cast stations. NewsTrain events each will beat least two days, coordinated through theAssociated Press bureaus and APME chaptersin each state, in partnership with regionaland state press associations and city pressclubs, universities, host newspapers and TVstations. At least half of the teaching at eachNewsTrain session will be “on-demand,’’short courses specifically sought by theregion. Half will be “national circuit’’ mate-rial, including a freedom of informationmodule, a module on the value of trainingand a primer on available programs.

J O U R N A L I S M I N I T I A T I V E S

2 0 0 3 A N N U A L R E P O R T 5 9

JOURNALISM INITIATIVES

National Foundation for the Centers 1,000,000for Disease Control and Prevention(Atlanta, Ga.) (over three years)Partial challenge grant to expand the Knight PublicHealth Journalism Fellowships with traveling train-ing and web content.

In 1999, Knight Foundation and CDClaunched the Knight Public Health Journal-ism Fellowships. This grant will extend themidcareer fellowship program for three years.Each class will have at least six journalists.The fellowships last three months – one inthe classroom and two doing fieldwork withCDC researchers. Each year, the fellows will be joined by at least 15 journalists for a 10-day “boot camp.’’ Those trainees willtake short courses in epidemiology, statisticsand bioterrorism – prerequisites for goodhealth reporters – but will not go into thefield. CDC will develop training modules tobe offered to journalists at conferences, andwill create a web site with training basics.

Radio and Television News 900,000Directors Foundation (over three years)(Washington, D.C.)To place college journalism teachers in broadcastnewsrooms.

Since 1999, the Educator in the Newsroomprogram has placed college journalismteachers in broadcast newsrooms. Seventy-four teachers have participated. This projectplaces 15-20 teachers in newsrooms eachyear. After the four-week fellowship, teach-ers revamp their classes to add today’s tech-nology and news practices, helping their students prepare for their first industry jobs.Newsrooms benefit from the infusion ofethics and expertise brought by teachers.Teachers will write of their experiences forthe RTNDF web site. Increasingly, teacherswill be matched to newsrooms in their ownregion, and will be drawn from a diversepool of applicants.

Southern Newspaper Publishers 600,000Association Foundation (over four years)(Atlanta, Ga.)To extend the Southern Newspaper PublishersAssociation traveling training program while theorganization builds an endowment to sustain it.

Under a pilot grant, the Southern NewspaperPublishers Association had created aTraveling Campus program, which trained7,200 newspaper employees in one year,equal to the number SNPA had trained in its previous 34 years combined. This grant

will extend the program four years, ensuringvisits to at least 20 regions each year, witheach of the four-day sessions including asmany as 15 separate seminars. By 2007,SNPA will fully fund the program with anendowment being raised for that purpose.Endowment pledges stand at $8 million; the goal is $10 million. By offering regionaljournalists high-quality training usuallyavailable only at national centers, this grantsupports the foundation’s goals of increasingmidcareer education of journalists as well as news industry investment in training.

Harvard University 500,000(Cambridge, Mass.) (over three years)To create a Knight Center for Nieman journalismfellows.

The Nieman Fellowship Program, establishedin 1938 at Harvard, awards the best-knownjournalism fellowships in the United Statesand has been a model for similar programshere and abroad. Since 1985, KnightFoundation has helped support the program’sKnight Latin American fellows. This grantpartially funds construction of a wing at theWalter Lippmann House named the KnightCenter. The center includes a seminar roomfor conferences and workshops, and state-of-the-art audiovisual equipment. A libraryhouses a collection of books that eventuallywill total 6,000 volumes. In addition, therewill be a media technology laboratory forworkshops on computer-assisted reportingand video editing.

Northwestern University 250,000(Evanston, Ill.)To plan an outreach project to encourage newsindustry investment in training, midcareer educa-tion and professional development.

This grant will plan a three-year project toencourage more news industry investment intraining. (See Page 59.)

Columbia University 200,000(New York, N.Y.) (over two years)To improve arts journalism by experimenting witha fellowship program focusing on covering artsand communities, and completing a new nationalstudy.

Institutes for Journalism & 200,000Natural Resources (Missoula, Mont.)For a one-year extension of the field training pro-gram for journalists covering the environment.

The Southern Center for 168,630International Studies(Atlanta, Ga.)For a nationally televised roundtable of U.S. inter-national news editors that will become a trainingtool for journalists.

Harvard University 150,000(Cambridge, Mass.)To support narrative journalism training, a bookand web site.

Aspen Institute 140,500(Washington, D.C.)To gather media leaders to discuss journalismquality and freedom of information, and to publisha report and web site on the role of journalism insociety.

Association for Education in 134,000Journalism and Mass Communication(Columbia, S.C.) (over three years)To continue the Journalism Administrator and Teach-ers of the Year awards. This grant promotes jour-nalism excellence through training and education.

The University of Alabama 55,000(Tuscaloosa, Ala.)To design a master’s degree in community journal-ism at a “teaching newspaper.”

Electronic and New Media

Poynter Institute for $2,800,000Media Studies Inc. (over five years)(St. Petersburg, Fla.)To develop News University, including an e-learn-ing program for journalists.

The Poynter Institute’s web site, www.poynter.org, is the most popular trade site used byjournalists nationally. This grant will fundthe development of a portal called NewsUniversity, linking journalists to the growingamount of midcareer training content avail-able over the World Wide Web, includingthe teaching of the 17 current Knight Chairsin Journalism. Poynter also will develop a series of experimental e-learning courses,using cyberspace teaching to more thandouble its attendance, which is currently1,000 journalists a year visiting the nonprofitjournalism training institute in St. Peterburg,Fla. This grant is part of the foundation’sNewsroom Training Initiative, which aims toincrease both journalism education andnews industry investment in training.



Educational Broadcasting Corp. 150,000(Arlington, Va.)To add media literacy components to the NewsHourExtra web site.

By adding media literacy, NewsHour Extra(www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/) will help itsgrowing audience of teens better understandhow news works and doesn’t work in oursociety. In addition, the web site will encour-age students to start student media and referthem to the work of other foundationgrantees at www.highschooljournalism.org.

Online News Association 53,800(Arlington, Va.) (over two years)To create online training modules using the bestwork in digital journalism. This grant advances thestrategic goal of increasing journalism educationand training, as well as advancing journalistic usesof electronic and new media.

University of California, Berkeley 50,000(Berkeley, Calif.)To coordinate a network of top journalism schoolsto produce innovative broadcast news. This grantpromotes journalistic uses of electronic and newmedia.

News and Newsroom Diversity

American Society of Newspaper $5,000,000Editors Foundation (over three years)(Reston, Va.)To expand the High School Journalism Initiative torevitalize high school journalism.

Of the nation’s 17,000 public high schools,an estimated 40 percent have either inade-quate or nonexistent student media. That’s7,200 schools in need of help. The initiative’sgoal is to create 1,000 new student mediaoutlets within the next three years, especiallyin schools with a majority of students ofcolor. So far, the project has started 350 newstudent media outlets. From 2004 through2006, ASNE will conduct at least fourteacher-training workshops each year atuniversities. The workshops will instruct atotal of some 500 teachers, at least half fromthose who work in school districts that havea majority of students of color and at leasthalf from schools with no student media.ASNE also hosts student newspapers with-out charge via the web site, www.myhigh-schooljournalism.org.

Radio and Television News 2,500,000Directors Foundation (over three years)(Washington, D.C.) To improve electronic journalism education inAmerica’s high schools.

This grant will interest students, with anemphasis on students of color, in electronicjournalism by creating high school broad-cast news programs, partnerships betweenschools and radio and television stationsand a large cadre of students and teacherstrained in journalism excellence and FirstAmendment values. RTNDF will urge its2,000-member teacher network to use the web site run by the American Society of Newspaper Editors (www.highschool-journalism.org), already used by more than10,000 monthly visitors. The web site is a meeting place for grantees within KnightFoundation’s High School JournalismInitiative, which aims to revitalize journalismand First Amendment education in America’shigh schools, particularly at city schoolswith majority enrollment of students of color.

Ball State University 220,000(Muncie, Ind.) (over two years)To establish J-IDEAS, the Journalism Institute forDigital Education, Activities and Scholarship, an institute to research, coordinate and developmaterials for high school journalism programsnationwide.

The Conservation Company (TCC) 200,000(Philadelphia, Pa.) (over two years)To teach seven journalism organizations – theNational Association of Hispanic Journalists,National Association of Black Journalists, AsianAmerican Journalists Association, Native AmericanJournalists Association, National Lesbian and GayJournalists Association, the Unity organization and the Robert C. Maynard Institute for JournalismEducation – how to raise money from their members.

Native American Journalists 153,000Association (over two years)(Vermillion, S.D.) To develop journalism programs for Native Americanhigh schools.

National Association of 110,000Hispanic Journalists (over two years)(Washington, D.C.) To launch a pilot program to increase the numberof Hispanic journalists in underserved markets.

Florida Society of Newspaper Editors 36,000 (Jacksonville, Fla.) (over three years)For an experimental multicultural, multimediaintern program. This grant advances the strategicplan of diversifying programs, increasing coordina-tion among Knight grantees and increasing impactwith new media.

News in the Public Interest

Syracuse University $500,000(Syracuse, N.Y.) (over three years)To expand the media’s use of TRACFED, a clearing-house that uses the Freedom of Information Act toobtain data electronically and tracks the federalgovernment.

TRACFED is a government database usedby journalists nationwide to track federalspending, court decisions and agency actions.This grant will provide the project withadditional federal data and an easier-to-useinterface. The project has a goal of 1,000paid subscriptions to working journalists and100 site licenses to newsrooms. Journalistswho use TRACFED will have an improvedtool for providing citizens with news theycan use to judge how well the federal gov-ernment works. This grant supports thefoundation’s goal of increasing the use ofnew media to serve the public interest.

Educational Broadcasting Corp. 200,000(New York, N.Y.)For coverage of media issues on the PBS programNOW with Bill Moyers. (See Page 10.)

Public Broadcasting Service 200,000(Alexandria, Va.)To plan the creation of a new public broadcastingchannel focused on news in the public interest.This grant advances news in the public interestand increases impact with electronic and newmedia.

WGBH Educational Foundation 150,000(Boston, Mass.)To add a media reporting component to FrontlineWorld documentaries.

Fund for Investigative Journalism Inc. 130,000(Washington, D.C.) (over two years)To encourage investigative reporting projectsabout how journalism and news companies work.This grant advances news in the public interest.


2 0 0 3 A N N U A L R E P O R T 6 1

University of Maryland 125,000(College Park, Md.)To support the American Journalism Review.

Media Education Foundation 50,000(Northampton, Mass.)For general operating support and to analyze thepotential for a nonpartisan news consumer move-ment.

Press Freedom and Freedom of Information

Inter American Press Association $3,600,000Press Institute (over four years)(Miami, Fla.)For operating support, and to expand the ImpunityProject to protect journalists and promote pressfreedom in the Americas.

The Inter American Press Association’sImpunity Project has increased the arrestrate of the criminals who murder journalistsin the Americas. This grant expands theImpunity Project into a full campaign, withpublic awareness advertising, danger trainingfor journalists, increased Rapid Responseinvestigations and personal calls for actionwith heads of state in the most dangerouscountries. At least $2 million in space forthe advertising campaign will be donatedeach year by IAPA members. The campaignis expected to further increase the arrestrate of the murderers of journalists. IAPAalso will train 40 journalists per year for the next four years in special safety classesfor journalists covering news in dangerousplaces. This grant supports the foundation’sgoal of advancing press freedom worldwide.

Student Press Law Center 1,500,000(Arlington, Va.) (over three years)For operating support and to launch an endowmentcampaign.

The center, the nation’s top defender of student press rights, will use this grant tolaunch a campaign to raise a $3.75 millionendowment. SPLC, which now handles2,000 cases a year, also will increase itscaseload and its web site readership. Thecenter’s pro-bono attorneys give legal advice,write letters and go to court to protect stu-dent journalists and journalism teacherswhose free press rights are being wronglyrestricted by administrators. This three-yeargrant advances the foundation’s goal ofincreasing press freedom.

The Advertising Council 1,000,000 (New York, N.Y.) (over two years)To raise public appreciation of First Amendmentfreedoms through a sustained campaign of publicservice advertising.

In 1942, The Advertising Council createdits first public service advertising. Today, itis the nation’s leading producer of PSAs.The Ad Council marshals top professionalsto donate the ads and the space or time torun them. The council operates an averageof 40 campaigns a year that draw an estimat-ed $1.6 billion in donated ad space. Thischallenge grant will assure production of theCampaign for Freedom in 2004 and 2005,including PSAs on press freedom and free-dom of speech. The PSAs will be distributedto more than 28,000 media outlets in the topU.S. markets. The council also will promotenew media use of digital PSAs. All PSAswill direct viewers and readers to a web site– rememberfreedom.org – where they canlearn more about their fundamental rights.

National Security Archive Fund 1,000,000(Washington, D.C.) (over three years)For operating support, and to expand access togovernment documents by increasing use of theFreedom of Information Act.

The National Security Archive Fund is oneof the nation’s most prolific journalistic usersof the Freedom of Information Act. Thisthree-year grant expands center activities,including an investigation of new rulesreducing access to federal information, anannual report on the best and worst informa-tion practices and the formation of a pro-bonolegal network to pursue key test cases. Byattempting to open government documentsto public view, the National Security Archivepushes federal agencies to maintain standardsof openness. In addition, the archive willpost on its web site an increasing number ofrecords and documents released by the gov-ernment. This three-year grant advances thefoundation’s goal of increasing press freedom.

The Independent Journalism 900,000Foundation (over four years)(New York, N.Y.)To train and support independent media at regionalcenters in Central and Eastern Europe and South-east Asia.

Founded in 1991, IJF operates journalismtraining centers in Bucharest, Romania;Budapest, Hungary; and Phnom Penh,Cambodia. Each month, some 200 working

journalists, journalism students and man-agers of media organizations are trained inthe regional centers. During the next threeyears, this project will directly train some7,000 journalists and students. Year-roundactivities will be offered at all centers,including the Roma Mainstream MediaInternship, which generally runs from Aprilthrough January; train the trainer programs,which run four to five times a year; andbasic classes, which run on a 13-weeksemester basis.

Internews Network 750,000 (Arcata, Calif.) (over three years)For operating support, expansion of the GlobalInternet Policy Initiative and to establish a freepress initiative in the Middle East.

Internews is one of the nation’s largest non-profit organizations engaged in media workinternationally. With this grant, the groupwill help reform media law in the Islamicworld, where 45 of 46 countries have closedmedia systems. A web site, www.AMIN.org,will become a catalyst for these activities.In addition, Internews will expand its GlobalInternet Policy Initiative, pioneered under a pilot grant from Knight Foundation anddesigned to push for freer Internet systemsworldwide. Internews also will train Muslimjournalists at an American university.

Link Media 650,000(San Rafael, Calif.) (over two years)To improve and expand Mosaic, a satellite televisionprogram bringing Americans news and opinionfrom the Arabic world.

Mosaic, a daily broadcast on the publicaccess satellite channel run by World LinkTV, airs translated versions of the nightlynews seen in the Arabic world. Mosaic wascreated in 2002 under a pilot grant fromKnight Foundation. This grant will add aweekly analysis program, expand the Mosaicweb site and provide daily e-mail excerptsof Arabic news for journalists, academicsand the public. The expansion allows LinkMedia to add at least a million additionalAmerican viewers. The program is nowwatched by an estimated four million of the19 million households receiving satellitetelevision. By encouraging the free flow ofnews and opinion internationally, this grantadvances the foundation’s goal of increasingpress freedom worldwide.



The World Press Institute 405,000(St. Paul, Minn.) (over three years)For fellowships that bring young international jour-nalists to the United States.

Founded in 1961 at Macalester College inSt. Paul, Minn., the World Press Institute’smission is to promote and strengthen pressfreedom throughout the world. Each year, WPIbrings as many as 10 young journalists tothe United States for a four-month fellowshipin which they are immersed in a democracy.The journalists find out what it’s like to bereporters in a free country and are exposedto the best practices in journalism. To date,470 journalists from 93 countries have beenWPI fellows. Ninety percent of them stay in journalism after completing the fellowship.This grant also will enable WPI to revamp itsweb site; expand the web-centered alumnidirectory; and fund from six to nine interna-tional two-day training seminars teachinginvestigative techniques, business and economic reporting, post-election reportingand ethics.

The Advertising Council 200,000(New York, N.Y.)To raise public appreciation of First Amendmentfreedoms through a campaign of public serviceadvertising.

Harvard University 200,000(Cambridge, Mass.) (over two years)To train high school humanities teachers about therole of the news media.

CubaNet News Inc. 188,000(Coral Gables, Fla.) (over two years)To help news flow into and out of Cuba.

International Center for Journalists 150,000(Washington, D.C.) (over two years)To continue two exchange programs for journalists.

The Fund for Constitutional 100,000Government(Washington, D.C.)To create a broad-based freedom of information coalition.

Federation of American Scientists 80,000(Washington, D.C.) (over two years)To expand the reach of Secrecy News, whichexplains national secrecy policies. This grantadvances freedom of information, increases coor-dination among Knight grantees and increasesimpact with new media.

First Amendment Foundation 70,000(Tallahassee, Fla.) (over two years)To publish a comprehensive report on Florida’ssunshine laws to help other states fight for free-dom of information.

The Freedom of Information 64,000Foundation of Texas(Dallas, Texas)To start new freedom of information organizationsand support existing ones.

Reporters Committee for 50,000Freedom of the Press(Arlington, Va.)To coordinate the freedom of information activitiesof top journalism groups.

Reporters Committee for 40,000Freedom of the Press(Arlington, Va.)For a new edition of Homefront Confidential, whichdetails restrictions on freedom of information.

Subtotal: 55 grants $39,115,430


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Community Foundation of $3,750,000Silicon Valley (over three years)(San Jose, Calif.)

Dade Community Foundation 3,720,000(Miami, Fla.) (over three years)

The Philadelphia Foundation 3,450,000(Philadelphia, Pa.) (over three years)

Community Foundation of 2,000,000Central Georgia (Macon Fund)(Macon, Ga.) (over four years)

Community Foundation for 1,880,000Palm Beach and Martin Counties(West Palm Beach, Fla.) (over four years)

California Community Foundation 1,825,000(Los Angeles, Calif.) (over four years)

The St. Paul Foundation 1,800,000(St. Paul, Minn.) (over two years)

Fort Wayne Community Foundation 1,750,000(Fort Wayne, Ind.) (over two years)

Gulf Coast Community 1,000,000Foundation Inc. (over two years)(Gulfport, Miss.)

Community Foundation of 750,000Central Georgia (Milledgeville Fund)(Macon, Ga.)

Centre County Community Foundation 400,000(State College, Pa.)

Subtotal: 11 grants $22,325,000

quantity of business services to existingindustries. The organization will managerelationships with finance, real estate andworkforce partners to improve service delivery. (See Page 24.)

Akron Community Service Center 750,000& Urban League(Akron, Ohio)To expand the Transitions Program for nonviolentex-offenders.

The Urban League will provide 150 peoplea year with services that include case man-agement and skill development. The goal isto help clients get jobs and remain employed.The grant will help the organization increasethe number of businesses that are willing to hire people with criminal backgrounds,and ultimately enhance Summit County’sattractiveness to businesses.

Greater Akron Chamber 250,000(Akron, Ohio)To enhance Summit County’s One-Stop Employ-ment and Training Center by providing links amongemployers, employees and workforce develop-ment resources.

Education

The University of Akron $345,200(Akron, Ohio)To provide math- and science-based after-schooland summer enrichment programs to SimonPerkins Middle School students.

The University of Akron will offer two pro-grams designed to enhance the science andmath programs at Simon Perkins MiddleSchool and to teach students how to applyscience and math skills in field and lab-basedresearch settings. Students will be able toparticipate in a series of online, technology-enhanced and group activities and shadowfield and lab-based research teams at theuniversity and other Northeast Ohio sites.This after-school program emphasizes academics and aims to increase students’interest in school and improve their grades.

Project Grad Akron 300,000 (Akron, Ohio) (over three years)To create a college scholarship fund for eighth-grade students who attend Simon Perkins MiddleSchool and meet prescribed academic goals.

This grant will create a scholarship programbenefiting students in the eighth gradeattending Simon Perkins Middle School whograduate from Buchtel High School and

C O M M U N I T Y PA R T N E R S P R O G R A M


COMMUNITY PARTNERSCOMMUNITY FOUNDATIONS INITIATIVE

ABERDEEN, S.D.

Civic Engagement and Positive HumanRelations

Northern State University $10,000(Aberdeen, S.D.)For the student-initiated Volunteer Service Clearing-house, designed to centralize volunteer opportuni-ties, advance civic awareness, encourage citizensto engage in local service activities and provide adeeper understanding of civic engagement.

Vitality of Cultural Life

Granary Memorial Gallery $10,000(Groton, S.D.)For professional artists to work with high schoolstudents, including youth from the New BeginningCenter.

Well-being of Children and Families

Northeast Family Health Services $200,000(Aberdeen, S.D.)To increase access to primary health and dentalcare by funding the planning and start-up costs fora community health center and to temporarily sub-sidize care provided by local private dentists.

Safe Harbor 12,000(Aberdeen, S.D.)For furnishings and equipment to expand thecapacity of the Kids Konnection supervised visitand exchanges programs.

Aberdeen Area Career Planning Center 10,000(Aberdeen, S.D.)To support EVENSTART’s implementation of theDolly Parton Imagination Library program to makehigh quality children’s books available to youngchildren.

AKRON, OHIO

Economic Development

Northeast Ohio Regional Economic $1,500,000Development Foundation (over three years)(Akron, Ohio)To take Team Northeast Ohio (Team NEO) fromconcept to implementation phase.

The grant will help Team NEO increaseregional development efforts in NortheastOhio. It expects to increase the number andquality of job opportunities, the amount ofprivate investment, the number of businessinquiries in the region and the quality and

A s part of the 2000 Strategic Plan,the board of trustees approved a five-year commitment of $50 million forcommunity foundations in Knight’s 26communities. The plan includes enhanc-ing existing donor-advised funds andcreating new ones where none existed.

meet all the established requirements. Thisgrant will provide an incentive to eighth-grade students to remain engaged in theiracademics and graduate from high school. It also will assure that Project Grad willprovide scholarship assistance to SimonPerkins students who meet the scholarshiprequirements.

Akron Public Schools 250,000(Akron, Ohio)To increase the number of after-school activities available to Simon Perkins Middle School studentsby hiring a school-based project coordinator whowill plan, coordinate and monitor out-of-schoolprogramming provided to students.

Other Priorities

Center for Nonprofit Excellence $750,000(Akron, Ohio) (over three years)To support a comprehensive resource center that provides coordination, capacity building, leadershiptraining and financial management assistance to nonprofit organizations.

The Center for Nonprofit Excellence providesnonprofits and other organizations access toinformation, technical assistance and train-ing to solve problems and develop moreeffective organizations. Through the center,nonprofits will understand what is expectedof them in the areas of financial and pro-gram accountability and have access to thenecessary tools and skills to meet theseexpectations. Knight Foundation will workwith the center’s staff to create a system togauge the effectiveness of services providedto nonprofits.

Akron Community Foundation 200,000(Akron, Ohio)For an addition to the current building to provide adequate space for staff and for meeting space fornonprofit organizations.


A Cultural Exchange $250,000(Cleveland, Ohio)To improve access to academically enriched programming by implementing the “Read, Baby,Read!” literacy program with 270 students atSimon Perkins Middle School.

Family Services of Summit County 236,600(Akron, Ohio)To increase opportunities students have for out-of-school programs that support positive youthdevelopment by expanding a research-based, fam-ily-focused program designed to prevent dropouts, juvenile delinquency and substance abuse inSimon Perkins Middle School.

East Akron Community House 235,000(Akron, Ohio)For capital expansion and program consolidation.

National Inventor’s Hall of Fame 91,700(Akron, Ohio)To increase opportunities students have for out-of-school activities that support positive youthdevelopment by implementing science and tech-nology after-school and summer enrichment programs at Simon Perkins Middle School.

Akron Child Guidance Centers 54,900(Akron, Ohio)To increase positive coping skills, identify personalstrengths and long-term goals, effective problem-solving and decision-making skills to help studentsby implementing a Wellness Group for Girls atSimon Perkins Middle School.

Battered Women’s Shelter 53,000(Akron, Ohio)For the Family Abuse Prevention Program.

The First Tee of Akron 30,000(Akron, Ohio)To create positive outcomes for middle-school youthby implementing The First Tee of Akron Programfor students at Simon Perkins Middle School.

BILOXI, MISS.


United Way of South Mississippi $250,000(Gulfport, Miss.)To increase incomes for poor families by planning, marketing and implementing the South MississippiEarned Income Tax Credit (EITC) campaign.

Visions of Hope 150,000(Biloxi, Miss.)To increase family economic well-being through lit-eracy and savings programs to help families savefor the future and become home owners. Thisgrant expands the financial literacy and GED pro-grams, provides matching savings funds andincreased capacity to serve low-income families.

BOULDER, COLO.

Housing and Community Development

Boulder Shelter for the Homeless $10,000(Boulder, Colo.)For the Transition Program, which helps 50 home-less men and women find more permanent housing.


The Dairy Center for the Arts $10,000(Boulder, Colo.)To support the Art Happens program to providearts education for 6- to 17-year-olds.


Colorado Statewide Parent Coalition $486,500(Westminster, Colo.)To provide long-range, intensive training to Latino parents, early care and education staff membersand prospective family child-care providers in order to increase the school readiness of Hispanic children in Boulder County.

The Colorado Statewide Parent Coalition willhire a Boulder County-based program man-ager who will be responsible for recruitingparticipants and coordinating four early careactivities for Latino parents and caregivers.Programs include an annual workshop seriesthat helps parents get more involved in theirchildren’s education and social development,and training to help nonprofits effectivelyrelate to Latino families. This grant seeks toimprove the connection between low-incomeLatino families and high-quality early child-care and education programs.

Boulder Valley Schools-Boulder 245,000Valley Family Literacy (over two years)(Boulder, Colo.)To restore a family literacy program at SanchezElementary in Lafayette that will serve 20 Latinofamilies.

City of Boulder 21,570(Boulder, Colo.)To provide outreach and coaching to help 10Latino, Spanish-speaking individuals in Longmontand Lafayette obtain family child-care licenses.

YWCA of Boulder County 20,000(Boulder, Colo.)For the capital expansion project “Raising the Roof.”


2 0 0 3 A N N U A L R E P O R T 6 5

I Have a Dream Foundation 10,000of Boulder County(Boulder, Colo.)For intellectual development and academic successof 60 at-risk middle-school children.

BRADENTON, FLA.


Boys & Girls Clubs of Manatee County $150,000(Bradenton, Fla.)To provide year-round out-of-school programmingand program planning for students attending SaraScott Harllee Middle School.

Manatee County Family Young Men’s 82,500Christian Association(Bradenton, Fla.)To increase positive outcomes for youth at John-son and Harllee middle schools by providing programsupport and outreach, staff development and multiagency coordination.

Philliber Research Associates 65,000(Accord, N.Y.)For evaluation of after-school programs at Johnsonand Harllee middle schools, which will revealwhether our nonprofit partners are meeting theirgoals and moving forward on target outcomes forthe community.

CHARLOTTE, N.C.


University of North Carolina $225,000at Chapel Hill(Chapel Hill, N.C.)For a campaign documenting the trend towardSouthern school resegregation and offering work-able alternatives to Charlotte and North Carolinaschool boards and state policy-makers.


City of Charlotte $250,000(Charlotte, N.C.)For the capitalization of a public/private loan fund targeting small fledgling businesses in theCharlotte area, which are unable to secure tradi-tional financial assistance.


Catawba Land Conservancy $385,000(Charlotte, N.C.) (over three years)To create a comprehensive set of conservation planning tools and expand financial planningexpertise within six conservation organizationsworking with landowners and professional advis-ers in 25 counties in the Charlotte region.

This grant provides six land trusts serving25 Carolinas counties in and aroundCharlotte with full-time financial planningand legal professional services. This consult-ant will develop a “tool kit” of conservationoptions and will identify and train a regionalnetwork of professional advisers. The goal is for this network to continue the supportservices needed, so training specialists willno longer be needed after the grant periodends. All land trust partners will developconservation strategies for specific landown-er situations within their jurisdictions eachyear of the project. Also, a comprehensiveset of conservation planning tools will bedeveloped, and the financial specialist willtrain a network of regional financial andestate planning professionals in the use ofthose tools. The network will include profes-sionals in each county represented by theproject partners.

University of North Carolina 385,000at Charlotte(Charlotte, N.C.)To establish an urban open space leadershipdevelopment program for local government offi-cials in the Charlotte region.

Elected and appointed government officialsand community leaders from the 14-countyCharlotte region will be invited to participatein a series of discussions on urban openspace principles and strategies. The grantwill help elected and appointed officialsunderstand the value of urban open spaceand strategies for designating, financing anddeveloping urban open space within theircommunities.

Voices and Choices of 247,000the Central Carolinas (over two years)(Charlotte, N.C.)To develop an open space economic impact studyand educate regional leaders about the economicimportance of greenways and open space.

Catawba-Wateree 150,000Relicensing Coalition (over three years)(Charlotte, N.C.)To educate regional community leaders and stake-holders on the Catawba-Wateree relicensingprocess and increase citizen input into the reli-censing application.

Partners for Parks 80,000(Charlotte, N.C.)To educate opinion leaders about the value of preserving open space by hiring a community coordinator to build relationships with existing and potential project partners along the LittleSugar Creek Greenway.


Levine Museum of the New South $150,000(Charlotte, N.C.)For an exhibition commemorating the 50thanniversary of Brown v. Board of Education andrelated programming to increase civic dialoguearound race, social justice and education.

North Carolina Center 75,000for Educational Films(Charlotte, N.C.)For the production phase of “The PhotojournalistProject,” which will create a video history of selectimages and stories from Charlotte photojournalists of the last 75 years.


United Way of Central Carolinas $1,875,000(Charlotte, N.C.)To expand the Success by 6 school readiness ini-tiative to stabilize low-income at-risk families withyoung children in four Charlotte neighborhoods andhelp children enter school ready to learn.

This grant expands Success by 6 to foursocioeconomically disadvantaged NorthCharlotte neighborhoods. Parent educatorsand community social workers will workwith 120 at-risk families with young chil-dren by teaching them about child develop-ment and appropriate parenting. Speech and language therapists will work with children who need to improve their skills.Depending on a family’s needs, referralsalso will be made to health, mental healthand social services, with the goal of facili-tating families’ self-sufficiency. This projectis expected to increase the number of chil-dren receiving high quality child care. As aresult, fewer children will enter kindergartenwith untreated speech and language needs,and more children will be able to remain inregular classroom settings.



Foundation for the Carolinas 640,000(Charlotte, N.C.)To formalize the collaboration of four preschoolprograms by strengthening their parent educationservices and administrative management.

Each of the four preschools selected to par-ticipate will have parent educators usingbest-practices curricula, improving thequality of their interactions with parents and sharing information. Parents will learndevelopmentally appropriate parenting practices. Preschool staffs will learn cost-effective management practices and willdevelop program assessment tools that willensure on-going quality improvement. Thisgrant focuses on at-risk children from birth to age 3 and will affect some of thecommunity’s neediest families.

Foundation for the Carolinas 100,000(Charlotte, N.C.)To aid families and individuals affected by thePillowtex Corp. closing in Cabarrus and neighbor-ing counties.

Allegro Foundation 60,000(Charlotte, N.C.)To improve school readiness for at-risk children by implementing a weekly movement class for 3-year-olds with disabilities at the Double OaksPreschool readiness program.

Mecklenburg Partnership for Children 50,000(Charlotte, N.C.)To develop a plan for increasing underservedyoung children’s access to preventive dental careand lay the groundwork for implementation.

The Swann Fellowship 30,000(Charlotte, N.C.)To educate community leaders about the historyand impact of race in the community and its insti-tutions by broadening the reach of a Charlottepublic schools journal to targeted communitygroups and leaders.

COLUMBIA, S.C.


University of South Carolina $70,000Research Foundation(Columbia, S.C.)This project will help fine-tune evaluation for eachof the projects that are part of the Columbiainvestment portfolio by providing evaluation tech-nical assistance to after-school program serviceproviders and developing an evaluation for programsat Alcorn, Gibbes and Perry middle schools.


Central South Carolina Habitat $25,000for Humanity (Columbia, S.C.)To establish funding and volunteer resources tobuild a multi-faith house.

Midlands Area Consortium 20,000for the Homeless (Columbia, S.C.)For bridge support while the organization awaits adecision for a block grant from the U.S. Depart-ment of Housing and Urban Development.


South Carolina Humanities Council $20,000(Columbia, S.C.)To produce the print and electronic versions of theSouth Carolina Encyclopedia.


Richland County School District One $250,000(Columbia, S.C.)To strengthen after-school programs that producepositive outcomes for middle-school youth by hiring three coordinators who will help developquality programs for students attending Alcorn,Gibbes and Perry middle schools.

Richland County School District One 75,000(Columbia, S.C.)To strengthen after-school programs for middle-school youth by providing arts-related enrichmentactivities for students at Alcorn, Gibbes and Perrymiddle schools.

Boys and Girls Clubs of the Midlands 50,000(Columbia, S.C.)To strengthen after-school programs by providing acurriculum-based social and life skills enhancementprogram to approximately 200 Alcorn, Gibbes andPerry middle-school students.

Columbia Urban League 50,000(Columbia, S.C.)To strengthen after-school programs for middle-school youth by creating a career and leadershipdevelopment program designed to reduce disrup-tive behavior and help students plan for the future.

Columbia Museum of Art 40,000(Columbia, S.C.)To strengthen after-school programs for middle-school youth by providing museum-based enrich-ment and academic programs.

Trinity Church 30,000(Columbia, S.C.)To strengthen after-school programs for middle-school youth by augmenting an after-schoolenrichment program at W.A. Perry Middle Schooland developing a plan for replicating the program.

Reach Out and Read South Carolina 20,000(Columbia, S.C.)To start five new Reach Out and Read sites andstrengthen existing programs in Richland County.

COLUMBUS, GA.

Education

Columbus State University $375,000(Columbus, Ga.)To improve new-teacher retention among Colum-bus State graduates in Columbus area schools.

Columbus State will enhance a program thatprovides support to graduates of its teachereducation program. The Sustained TeacherEducation Advisement for the DefiningYears (STEADY) project will provide one-on-one mentoring from university facultyand associates to 110 new teachers (affect-ing approximately 4,000 schoolchildren).The university will establish a teacher hotline for confidential, immediate advice forfirst- and second-year teachers and developa corps of master teachers to provide train-ing at regular group sessions.

Muscogee County School District 245,000(Columbus, Ga.) (over three years)For a school-based coordinator to plan, coordinateand monitor after-school programming provided toMarshall Middle School students.


Pastoral Institute $115,000(Columbus, Ga.)To provide positive, safe, out-of-school activitiesfor Marshall Middle School students and build on the strengths of existing service providers bycoordinating an after-school program for 115 students and developing a multiyear plan for pro-gram expansion.


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United Way of the Chattahoochee Valley 85,000(Columbus, Ga.)To provide safe, enriching activities for at least150 Marshall Middle School students during thesummer and increase collaboration among youth-serving organizations in Columbus.

DETROIT, MICH.


Arab American and Chaldean Council $125,000(Lathrup Village, Mich.)To formalize and expand the H.E.L.P. (Heal, Educate,Lead, Prevent) Project.

Arab Community Center for 125,000Economic and Social Services(Dearborn, Mich.)To build the capacity of Arab-American community-based organizations in 11 cities from an organiza-tion located in Dearborn.


Vanguard Community Development $231,325Corp. (Detroit, Mich.)To implement the Northend Neighborhood JobInitiative.


Mexicantown Community $700,000Development Corp. (over two years)(Detroit, Mich.)To expand the business incubator program as partof the new Mexicantown International WelcomeCenter, Mercado and Public Plaza.

This grant funds a program designed toassist budding and established entrepreneursand provides limited capital support to theMercado (market) at Mexicantown. Thebusiness support center will include a train-ing program with courses developed by theState of Michigan Small Business Program.After three years, this project is expected to have created at least 80 new businesses,provided a flow of businesses for theMercado and created up to 190 new jobsstemming from these businesses. The grant helps create workforce developmentopportunities, increasing access to self-employment opportunities and increasingthe projects supported by community development corporations.

Focus: Hope 250,000(Detroit, Mich.)To create a five-year community developmentstrategic plan and prepare a facilities concept planfor the former Bell Building, an anchor neighbor-hood structure.

University Cultural Center Association 250,000(Detroit, Mich.)To increase the vitality of the neighborhoodthrough the enhancement and creation of positivecommunity assets for the Greenway andCommercial Corridor Improvement initiatives andpre-development activities related to mixed-usedevelopment on Woodward Avenue.

People’s Community Services 200,000of Metropolitan Detroit(Detroit, Mich.)To expand the facilities of the Delray NeighborhoodHouse by creating a new community asset thatwill increase the number of positive activitiesavailable to residents.

Southwest Detroit 200,000Business Association(Detroit, Mich.)To help implement the comprehensive neighbor-hood development program, “Business BuildingCommunity-Community Building Business.”

Detroit Community Initiative 154,600(Detroit, Mich.)To identify projects that intersect effectively withoverarching community development initiatives byproviding training on community mapping systemsand data collection by community development corporations in six Detroit neighborhoods.

Neighborhood Centers Inc. 150,000(Detroit, Mich.)To increase the vitality of the neighborhoodsthrough the enhancement of positive communityassets by renovating the All Saints NeighborhoodCenter and expanding the programs offered there.

Detroit 300 Conservancy 100,000(Detroit, Mich.)To help launch and provide for maintenance andevents programming of Campus Martius Park indowntown Detroit.


Mosaic Youth Theater of Detroit $800,000(Detroit, Mich.) (over three years)To enhance and expand youth programming andprovide funds for leasing a new performancevenue.

This grant will provide $600,000 for pro-gramming and $200,000 for leasing a newmain performance venue. Mosaic hasentered into a 10-year agreement with thenew University Preparatory High School forboth an office and performance/training site.The organization will also form a partnershipwith the Detroit Institute of Arts. These collaborations will enable Mosaic to providejoint program development and marketingefforts with the Detroit Institute of Arts.

The Arts League of Michigan 700,000(Detroit, Mich.) (over three years)To provide program support and limited capitalsupport to the Arts League of Michigan during theconstruction and implementation of its newCultural Arts Center.

The grant enables the Arts League of Michi-gan to expand and increase its programofferings through construction of The CulturalCenter. The center will provide performance,rehearsal, studio, classroom, gallery, retail,café and office space, with a connectedcourtyard theater seating 270, at an acquiredsite within the University Cultural Center ofDetroit. This project directly addresses theDetroit funding priority of increasing accessand diversity in arts and culture in SoutheastMichigan.

Music Hall Center for 400,000the Performing Arts (over three years)(Detroit, Mich.)To relocate and expand the annual Detroit Jazzand Musical Festival, increase audience and par-ticipant diversity and create economic impact indowntown Detroit.

Funds will be used to move the DetroitInternational Jazz Festival from Hart Plazato Detroit’s sports and entertainment dis-trict. Funds will be used for all aspects ofproduction and expansion of the festival.This grant supports the foundation’s effortsto assist arts and cultural organizations tobe more representative of the minority pop-ulations in Southeast Michigan.

Detroit Symphony Orchestra 250,000(Detroit, Mich.)To increase access and diversity within arts andcultural organizations for the Community ArtsPartnership Program.


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Sphinx Organization 250,000(Detroit, Mich.)To increase access and diversity within arts and cultural organizations for the annual Sphinx classi-cal strings competition and to create a strategicand implementation plan for a permanent SphinxSymphony Training Orchestra.


Arab American and Chaldean Council $800,000(Detroit, Mich.) (over two years)To help purchase, renovate, equip and operate aYouth Leadership Training and Recreation Centeras part of a comprehensive community develop-ment initiative in an Arab-Chaldean neighborhoodin Detroit.

This grant will be used to help purchase,renovate and equip the Youth LeadershipTraining and Recreation Center. The centerwill serve the residents of the 7 Mile/Woodward neighborhood as well as studentsfrom area public and private schools. Animportant dimension of the center’s activitiesis its approach to addressing issues of cultural misunderstanding. This grant aimsto increase the neighborhood amenitiesaccessible to residents of the 7-Mile/Wood-ward neighborhood.

DULUTH, MINN.


Area Partnership for Economic $190,000Expansion(Duluth, Minn.)To increase capacity for regional economic devel-opment and to launch and provide professionalassistance with executive hiring, strategic plandevelopment and evaluation.

The Northspan Group 110,000(Duluth, Minn.)To increase capacity for regional economic devel-opment, develop a comprehensive online sourceof regional economic data, and provide ongoingsupport for the Arrowhead Business Connectionprogram.

Northeast Entrepreneur Fund 85,000(Virginia, Minn.)To support existing businesses and the start-up of new businesses and to expand microenterpriseand small business development in Duluth andSuperior by providing increased tracking and coun-seling services.

Local Initiatives Support Corp. 61,000(New York, N.Y.)To increase capacity for regional economic devel-opment by enhancing existing businesses andincreasing the sense of place in key neighborhoodcommercial districts, as well as by providing capi-tal for the “At Home in Duluth” StorefrontEnhancement Pilot Program.

Greater Downtown Council 40,000(Duluth, Minn.)To improve the appeal of downtown Duluth andincrease the capacity for regional economic devel-opment by creating a special service district and assisting with programming and services until thenew district is created.

Cleveland State University 32,000(Cleveland, Ohio)To engage in a consensus-building process andcreate a working document to assist Duluth in establishing economic development priorities.

FORT WAYNE, IND.


Rainbow Community Organization Inc. $39,000(Fort Wayne, Ind.)To support the Home Ownership Made Easy pro-gram (H.O.M.E.)


Unity Performing Arts Foundation $75,000(Fort Wayne, Ind.)To increase youth participation in the arts by work-ing with a diverse youth population. This granthelps develop artistic and life skills by providingopportunities and creative platforms for youth andadding diversity and versatility to the arts commu-nity through the Voices of Unity Choral Program.

Fort Wayne Philharmonic Orchestra 30,000(Fort Wayne, Ind.)To expand the Philharmonic’s Preschool MusicProgram and increase youth participation in the arts.


Early Childhood Alliance $405,900(Fort Wayne, Ind.)To expand a quality child-care improvement initia-tive and home visitation program serving at-riskchildren and families in southeast Fort Wayne.

This grant will provide continuous supportto eight child care centers and expand aKnight initiative to improve the quality ofchild-care to include six new licensed butunaccredited centers or registered min-istries. The alliance will conduct on-siteconsultations, providing the centers withintensive and sustained staff training. Thealliance will provide technical assistance to unaccredited centers or registered min-istries, and expand its Parents as Teachersparent education program at the 14 selectedcenters. This project helps improve schoolreadiness by working to improve the qualityof child care and parent-child interactions.

Three Rivers Literacy Alliance 118,100(Fort Wayne, Ind.) (over three years)To improve school readiness by ensuring that parents have the skills they need to support theirchildren’s early development through the supportof English as a Second Language (ESL) and schoolreadiness outreach services for Allen County parents and their children.

Euell A. Wilson Center 100,000(Fort Wayne, Ind.)To increase youth participation in the arts byexpanding a cultural appreciation and educationprogram for at-risk youth between 10 and 18years of age during after-school hours.

Allen County Local Education Fund 90,000(Fort Wayne, Ind.)To improve school readiness with particular inter-est in parents and caregivers receiving training tohelp children succeed by expanding an emergentliteracy program that teaches the use of effectivehome literacy practices.

Whitington Homes and Services 45,200for Children and Families(Fort Wayne, Ind.)To upgrade computer/telephone systems, install a Computer Learning Lab and fund a ComputerResearch Trainer position.

Big Brothers Big Sisters 35,000of Northeast Indiana (Fort Wayne, Ind.)To increase the number of southeast Fort Wayneyouth in cultural programs, activities and eventsby matching 50 children with mentors, eachattending two arts events each month.

Boys & Girls Clubs of Fort Wayne 35,000(Fort Wayne, Ind.)To increase the participation of southeast FortWayne youth in arts and cultural programs, activi-ties and events by providing access to the ArtMatters after-school program for youth.

GARY, IND.


Gary Citywide Development Corp. $210,000(Gary, Ind.)To create a housing development market in Garyby subsidizing construction costs of a 10-homeresidential development project in the HoraceMann neighborhood and developing a model forbuilding affordable housing.


Images of Hope $600,000(Gary, Ind.)To develop a family-oriented employment trainingand child development center by renovating adonated school and providing expansion costs foron-site early care and education, parenting, out-of-school and individual and family support programs.

Images of Hope will relocate and expand itschild-care facility, and develop a technologycenter to enhance current job training activ-ities. The expansion enables the organizationto increase the quality and quantity of itsjob training programming. This grant seeksto help low-income families achieve financialstability and access support services closeto their homes.

Indiana University Northwest 210,000(Gary, Ind.)To support parents’ care of their children by pro-viding quality services that promote positive devel-opment through the creation and expansion oftraining and by providing materials for parents,centers and caregivers involved with the Children’sLiteracy Initiative.

GRAND FORKS, N.D.


Center for Innovation & Business $195,000Development Foundation (over three years)(Grand Forks, N.D.)To increase participation in formal entrepreneurialnetworks by establishing the Entrepreneur Forum.


United Way of Grand Forks, $18,000East Grand Forks and Area (over two years)(Grand Forks, N.D.)To develop a business plan for a CommunityResources Center, a multitenant nonprofit center.


The University of North Dakota $460,000(Grand Forks, N.D.) (over four years)To establish the Marketing Services Partnership(MSP), an arts marketing collaborative designed toincrease community awareness of arts and cultur-al organizations and their activities by increasingthe quality and effectiveness of their marketing.

The University of North Dakota 40,000A second grant that launches the search for theexecutive director for the arts marketing partnership.

The creation of this partnership will increasecommunity awareness of arts and culturalorganizations and their activities by enhanc-ing the quality and effectiveness of theirmarketing. The three primary goals of theprogram are to enhance the marketingknowledge of cultural organizations, providemarketing resources, and pursue new initia-tives to sustain marketing efforts within thepartnership and participating arts and cultur-al organizations. Activities will include staffand board training, assistance with strategicmarketing planning and development of amembership database for market research.

LEXINGTON, KY.


United Way of the Bluegrass $133,000(Lexington, Ky.) (over three years)To implement the Get on Board Initiative, a three-step approach to training potential nonprofit boardmembers and increasing diversity within the non-profit sector.

Education

One Community, One Voice $125,000(Lexington, Ky.)To reduce the equity gap in public education bydeveloping an accountability structure to monitorparent/family involvement and early childhoodstrategies. (See Page 20.)

Fayette County Public Schools 24,500(Lexington, Ky.)To reduce the equity gap in Fayette County PublicSchools by planning the implementation of a cen-trally located, full-day preschool serving 4-year-oldchildren.

Other Priorities

Central Kentucky Blood Center $30,000(Lexington, Ky.)To purchase a new bloodmobile for Fayette County.


Lexington Public Library Foundation $20,000(Lexington, Ky.)To establish a basic collection of high-qualitySpanish books and videos.


Success by 6 $167,000(Lexington, Ky.)To reduce the equity gap in public education byaddressing many of the issues that result in childrenentering school unprepared to learn through theexpansion of a successful home-visitation programto include low-income families with children ages3 to 5, and by providing more intensive public andmental health outreach services.

Prichard Committee for 76,400Academic Excellence(Lexington, Ky.)To reduce the equity gap in public education throughthe development of a literacy-focused training program for early care and education providers andfor parents of preschool kids. The grant also fundsa literacy training initiative for parents of childrenin kindergarten through third grade.

Boys & Girls Club of Madison County 71,600(Berea, Ky.) (over two years)To implement the POWER Hour educationalenhancement program for 6- to 12-year-olds.

LONG BEACH, CALIF.


Centro Community Hispanic $25,000Association(Long Beach, Calif.)To help strengthen the agency’s organizationalstructure, build governance capacity and financialquality control systems.




Long Beach Community $130,000College District(Long Beach, Calif.)To support school readiness efforts by extendingand expanding the Good Beginnings Never Endproject, a home visitation program focused onincreasing the quality of 20 family child-careproviders in the 90806 and 90755 ZIP codes.

Long Beach BLAST – Better Learning 25,000After School Today(Long Beach, Calif.)To prepare 400 college-age and adult volunteersfor mentoring children.

Mentoring: A Touch From Above 25,000(Long Beach, Calif.)For mentoring activities for 20 youth returning toLong Beach from the California Youth Authority,and to provide the agency with consulting/coach-ing services.

MACON, GA.


Medcen Foundation Inc. $1,215,000(Macon, Ga.) (over three years)To duplicate the Olds Nurse-Family Partnershipprogram and provide regular home visits toapproximately 100 first-time mothers in Macon.

The Olds Nurse-Family Partnership Programwill focus on pregnant teens, primarily those entering Macon’s Teen Parent Center,a separate school created within the publicschool system. Experienced nurses will provide regular in-home visits with teenmothers and their friends and family. Thevisits will continue until the children reachage 2. Nurses will work with the youngmothers to change risky health practices,such as smoking, drinking and poor nutri-tion and to recognize signs of pregnancycomplications. Nurses also support mothersin continuing their education and help linkthem with other health and human services.

Bibb County Department of Family 85,000and Children Services(Macon, Ga.)To reduce the teen pregnancy rate by decreasingthe number of subsequent births among the stu-dents at the Teen Parent Center, and by continuingthe Teen POWER program.

MIAMI, FLA.


Dade Community Foundation $400,000(Miami, Fla.) (over two years)For the third class of the Miami Fellows Initiative.

The Dade Community Foundation will select16 men and women to participate in anintensive leadership program focused ontraining the next generation of leaders forMiami-Dade County. These fellows willdesign a personal leadership developmentplan, participate in six laboratories to buildtheir knowledge and skills; attend betweenfive and six skills-building seminars aroundsubjects such as leadership approaches and public speaking; and participate inmonthly evening or lunch programs withcommunity leaders who are able to provideinsight into community issues.

The Abriendo Puertas Governing 192,240Board of East Little Havana(Miami, Fla.)To increase organizational capacity to expand serv-ices in East Little Havana by increasing the numberof people with higher-paying jobs and improvingcoordination and access to programs and services.

Greater Miami Progress Foundation 30,000(Miami, Fla.) (over two years)To involve 50 young Haitian professionals in theChamber of Commerce of Greater Miami.


Urban League of Broward County $675,000(Fort Lauderdale, Fla.) (over three years)For job training and home ownership educationprograms.

The Urban League of Broward County willinitiate a new employment skill-buildingprogram targeting low-income, hard-to-employ residents in central Broward County.The Urban League will offer life-skill work-shops to ex-offenders, noncustodial fathersand individuals with little to no work experience. The Urban League will also pro-vide families in Central Broward Countywith resources and assistance to help themovercome barriers to home ownership. Thisgrant works toward increasing the number of higher-paying jobs and increasing homeownership in South Florida.

Miami-Dade Affordable Housing 400,000Foundation Inc.(Miami, Fla.)To assist 20 low-income families with purchasinghomes in the Villages of St. Agnes in Overtownand to create a revolving loan fund at the HousingFoundation.

This grant will enable 20 low-income fami-lies to purchase new, single-family homes in Miami’s Overtown neighborhood and,through education and counseling, keepthem from defaulting. It will also create arevolving loan fund at the Miami-DadeAffordable Housing Foundation which willcontinue to assist low-income families inpurchasing homes in the future.

Human Services Coalition of 247,000Dade County(Miami, Fla.)This grant expands the Greater Miami ProsperityCampaign improving coordination and access to programs and services, specifically financial. It is part of a larger effort pursued by KnightFoundation and other partners, including the Cityof Miami, to improve the lives of low-income residents.

Positive Images of Broward County Inc. 233,700(Oakland Park, Fla.) (over three years)To increase the number of people with higher pay-ing jobs by offering a job readiness and life skillsmanagement program aimed at young women living in the 33311 ZIP code of Broward County.

Partners for Self-Employment 225,000(Miami, Fla.) (over three years)To increase home ownership and to improve coor-dination and access to programs and services,specifically financial services, by enrolling andmonitoring 100 Overtown residents in a matchedsavings fund program.

Sant La Haitian Neighborhood Center 150,000(Miami, Fla.) (over three years)To establish a comprehensive financial literacy andasset development program to help the low-incomeHaitian immigrant community.

Suited for Success 150,000(Miami, Fla.)To help adults gain access to employment byoffering a job readiness program in Overtown andEast Little Havana.


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Alliance for Human Services 100,000(Miami, Fla.)To improve coordination and access to programsand services by developing a web-based informa-tion and referral system and providing technicalassistance to social service organizations.

Small Business Opportunity Center Inc. 75,000(Miami, Fla.)To increase the number of community-friendlybusinesses in East Little Havana by making store-front improvements and helping businesses complywith local codes.

Miami Museum of Science 70,000(Miami, Fla.)For 48 part-time internships for low-income andminority high school and college students.

Education

B.A.M.E. Community Development $200,000Corp. (over three years)(Miami, Fla.)To increase the number of residents with higher-paying jobs and boost access to services andimproved neighborhood safety in the Overtowncommunity by providing training and workforcedevelopment programming at two Overtown tech-nology centers.

Adopt-a-Classroom 100,000(Miami, Fla.) (over two years)To provide monetary support to elementary teach-ers in Overtown and East Little Havana to buy supplemental instructional materials.


Greater Miami Neighborhoods $2,500,000(Miami, Fla.) (over two years)For the education and creation of a Homeowner-ship Development Program and enhancement of financial literacy programs for the East LittleHavana community.

Greater Miami Neighborhoods will initiatethe East Little Havana HomeownershipDevelopment Program through the creationof a $2.4 million semi-revolving capitalfund to be used for land acquisition, initialdesign, financial work, environmentalappraisals, predevelopment financing andgap financing for the development of at least250 affordable homes in East Little Havanaover the next five years. This grant aims to increase home ownership in East LittleHavana and have a significant impact onaffordable housing there.

Habitat for Humanity of 1,400,000Greater Miami (over three years)(Miami, Fla.)To build 34 homes in the northeast quadrant ofOvertown and form a home owners association towork on neighborhood issues.

Habitat for Humanity will build 34 newhomes in the northeast section of Overtown– Miami’s historically black downtown.Eighteen three-bedroom, single-story homesare planned as well as eight four-bedroom,single-story and eight three-bedroom, two-story homes. The homes will be sold to low-income residents who are able to affordmortgage payments of $400. Habitat willalso assist in establishing a home-ownersassociation to monitor the aesthetics of theneighborhood and become more involved in the surrounding community.

Roots in the City 194,250(Miami, Fla.)To make the community more livable for the currentresidents and more attractive to potential residentsby beautifying five properties in Overtown withmurals and gardens.

Carrfour Corp. 150,000(Miami, Fla.)For construction of transitional housing and achild-care center in East Little Havana for hard-to-house families receiving substance abuse andmental health treatment.

Community Foundation of Broward 100,000(Fort Lauderdale, Fla.)For a small-grants program for community organi-zations in central Broward County that helpsincrease civic engagement and community partici-pation, improves the capacity of local organizationsto engage residents in meaningful communityimprovement activities, and improves leadershipdevelopment.


Dr. Rafael A. Peñalver Clinic $109,000(Miami, Fla.)To improve coordination and access to programsand services and to increase community participa-tion by funding three community arts and servicefairs in East Little Havana.

Tigertail Productions 105,000(Miami, Fla.) (over two years)For an arts-focused summer camp for youth inEast Little Havana.

Miami Children’s Museum 60,000(Miami, Fla.)For programs targeting children and families fromMiami’s underserved and low-income communities,specifically Overtown and East Little Havana.


Communities in Schools of Miami $247,500(Miami, Fla.) (over three years)To implement the Leadership, Empowerment andAcademic Development (LEAD) program at theMiami Rescue Mission in Overtown. This grant increases the safety of neighborhood residents(particularly through the support of after-schoolprograms for youth that keep them engaged from3 to 7 p.m.), leadership development, communityparticipation and the number of residents withhigh paying jobs.

Overtown Youth Center Inc. 200,000(Miami, Fla.)To increase the safety of neighborhood residentsfor out-of-school programs for youth in Overtown.

Jack & Jill Children’s Center 124,800(Fort Lauderdale, Fla.)To provide one year of tuition assistance to 40children of low-income, working families in a tar-geted area of Broward County.

Women of Tomorrow Mentor & 100,000Scholarship Program (over two years)(Miramar, Fla.) To expand and augment a mentoring program.

Museum of Discovery and Science 96,000(Fort Lauderdale, Fla.) (over two years)To provide stipends for 10 interns for the YATSEE(Youth Achievement Through Science Enrichmentand Employment) program.

KidVentures 90,000(Coral Gables, Fla.) (over three years)To provide residents of Overtown and East LittleHavana with tools and information for self-sufficiencyby offering a hands-on entrepreneurship educationprogram for middle and high school students.

Greater Miami Tennis Foundation 75,000(Coral Gables, Fla.) (over three years)To support a tennis program for the youth ofOvertown and East Little Havana.

Dr. Bruce Heiken Memorial Fund 55,000(Miami, Fla.)To purchase a new van for mobile, comprehensiveeye exams.



MILLEDGEVILLE, GA.


The Flannery O’Connor-Andalusia $30,000Foundation Inc.(Milledgeville, Ga.)For a needs and cost analysis for restoringAndalusia, the dairy farm where Flannery O’Connorlived and wrote.

Georgia’s Antebellum Capitol Society 15,000(Milledgeville, Ga.)To complete a permanent exhibit at Georgia’sAntebellum Capitol Museum.


Georgia College & State University $1,255,000(Milledgeville, Ga.) (over five years)To introduce the Carrera/Children’s Aid Societyteen pregnancy prevention program, a long-termholistic intervention, to 30 youth in Milledgeville.

This grant will launch the Carrera teenpregnancy program, which is based on thebelief that success in school, access tohealth services and positive interactionswith caring adults have positive effects onteens. Dr. Michael Carrera will help hireand train staff to serve 30 students selectedto participate in the six-day-a-week year-round program that starts in the sixth gradeand continues through high school. The program includes parent participation; educational support; career awareness; self-expression in the arts; medical and dentalservices; and family life and sex education.

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C.


Coastal Carolina University $175,000(Conway, S.C.) (over two years)To develop a communitywide infrastructure tocoordinate volunteer activities and help build thecapacity of nonprofits to engage volunteersthrough the replication of the CityCares model ofvolunteer management. (See Page 28.)

Boys & Girls Club of the Grand Strand 75,000(Myrtle Beach, S.C.) (over two years)To increase this local organization’s capacity toengage volunteers in community projects by hiringa volunteer coordinator, strengthen its volunteerprogram and for staff and board professionaldevelopment.

Habitat for Humanity of Horry County 75,000(Myrtle Beach, S.C.) (over two years)To increase this local organization’s capacity toengage volunteers by hiring a volunteer coordina-tor to strengthen its volunteer program and forgeneral operating support.

S.O.S. Healthcare 75,000(Myrtle Beach, S.C.) (over two years)To increase this local organization’s capacity toengage volunteers by hiring a volunteer coordina-tor to strengthen its volunteer program and forgeneral operating support.

PALM BEACH COUNTY, FLA.


Center for Creative Education $385,000(West Palm Beach, Fla.)To create an arts-based after-school program for middle-school children in the city of Riviera Beachand the northwest section of West Palm Beach.

The Center for Creative Education will expandthe Creative Arts Designed to ReinforceEducation (CADRE) after-school program to middle-school children in Riviera Beachand northwest West Palm Beach. Classeswill be offered at schools, nonprofits andcommunity centers. The grant will providestudents with adult mentors. It also supportsexisting community-based programs that pro-vide direct services to middle-school youth.

The City of Riviera Beach 156,000(Riviera Beach, Fla.) To provide a summer camp for middle-school students.

The Children’s Services Council 150,920of Palm Beach County(Boca Raton, Fla.)For an outreach initiative to help mentoring pro-grams in Riviera Beach and the northwest sectionof West Palm Beach recruit mentors of color. Thisgrant builds organizational and program capacityof youth service providers and increases theopportunities for middle-school children to havequality relationships with caring adults.

Junior Achievement of 82,000the Palm Beaches(West Palm Beach, Fla.)To expand a program teaching basic economicsand personal finance skills to 50 classrooms ineight Palm Beach County middle schools.

PRIME TIME Palm Beach County 50,000(West Palm Beach, Fla.)To improve the capacity of youth-serving organiza-tions by identifying their needs and by helping theorganizations create plans to address those needsby conducting a resource assessment of community-based youth service providers in Riviera Beach andnorthwest West Palm Beach.

The Palm Beach County 30,000Literacy Coalition (Delray Beach, Fla.)For the Read Together Palm Beach County campaign.

The Farmworker Children’s Council 20,000(Ocean Ridge, Fla.) (over two years)To support summer and after-school programsfocusing on academics, recreation and culture forchildren of farm, nursery and equestrian laborers

PHILADELPHIA, PA.


The Greater Philadelphia $94,000Urban Affairs Coalition(Philadelphia, Pa.)To increase income to low-wage workers inPhiladelphia by increasing their access to theEarned Income Tax Credit (EITC).

Education

LEAP/Center for Strategic Urban $1,200,000Community Leadership (over two years)(Camden, N.J.)To implement an early literacy education programin child-care centers contracted with the CamdenSchool District.

This initiative will increase the verbal, written and language skills of more than1,000 students attending child-care centersin Camden. Part of the program seeks toengage parents with the early childhoodcenter, help them become knowledgeableabout child development and understandthe importance of reading aloud to theirchildren. Ninety-two teachers will learn anduse literacy techniques in the classroomthat foster literacy in children. Leadershipteams at each center will be part of estab-lishing a literacy culture at the school andensure high standards are maintained atthe end of the training period.

The School District of Philadelphia 730,000(Philadelphia, Pa.) (over three years)To provide intensive summer school programs toprekindergarten and kindergarten children at risk ofnot meeting literacy standards.


2 0 0 3 A N N U A L R E P O R T 7 3

Over a six-week summer session the SchoolDistrict of Philadelphia will provide servicesto develop literacy for approximately 1,600prekindergarten and kindergarten childrenin 80 classrooms in the north and westregions of Philadelphia. The prekindergartenprogram will help children become fluentreaders and writers and prevent the need forremedial assistance in the first grade. Thisgrant seeks to improve the reading skills ofyoung children, and it also addresses thestrategy for improved training opportunitiesfor early childhood teachers.

St. Joseph’s Pro-Cathedral 50,000(Camden, N.J.)To provide arts and music education at St. Joseph’sschool and after-school program.


Temple University $332,000(Philadelphia, Pa.)For the North Philadelphia Community Arts andLiteracy Network to develop integrated arts andliteracy programming in North Philadelphia schools.

The Community Arts and Literacy Networkwill establish two arts and literacy projects.The first project will train community-basedartists at Temple University New City Writingso they will be able to integrate their workinto a reading program at a local elementaryschool. The second project will bring theresearch strategies of a community-basedoral history project into the new high schoolsocial studies curriculum at WanamakerMiddle and High Schools. This grant seeksto increase cultural participation amongunderserved populations.

The New Freedom Theatre 250,000(Philadelphia, Pa.) (over four years)For expansion of its marketing capabilities toincrease the base audience’s exposure to the arts.

Freedom Theatre plans to increase its audi-ence base by identifying new market segmentsand to increase its subscribers by 35 percentin a span of one year. The theater companywill tap into the patrons and subscribers of other cultural institutions and vice versa. To expand its neighborhood ticket programthat has traditionally targeted youth, Freedomwill allow parents from North Philadelphiato attend performances with their children at no cost or at a reduced price. Freedom willcollaborate with area community organiza-tions to attract the Ethiopian and Liberiancommunities in the adjoining areas.

Arden Theatre Company 225,000(Philadelphia, Pa.) (over three years) For children’s programming in North Philadelphiaand Camden.

The Philadelphia Foundation 222,000(Philadelphia, Pa.)To provide incentives from $5,000 to $15,000 toup to 20 arts organizations participating in TCCaudience development planning year.

Trustees of the University 220,000of Pennsylvania (over two years)(Philadelphia, Pa.)To track the nature and frequency of arts and cul-tural participation.

Point Breeze Performing Arts Center 200,000(Philadelphia, Pa.) (over two years)To provide underserved children in a NorthPhiladelphia satellite program with arts classesand educational enhancements.

The Free Library of Philadelphia 193,500(Philadelphia, Pa.) (over three years)To increase arts and cultural participation byexpanding arts programming in 10 libraries inNorth Philadelphia.

The Conservation Company (TCC) 172,625(Philadelphia, Pa.)To provide technical assistance to enable neighbor-hood arts organizations to develop cultural partici-pation action plans.

Opera Company of Philadelphia 150,000(Philadelphia, Pa.) (over two years)For the company’s education program Sounds ofLearning.

Academy of Community Music 80,000(Fort Washington, Pa.) (over two years)To introduce the Crescendo Music Program in twoadditional Head Start centers. This grant meetsboth the early literacy and arts priorities.


United Way of $2,500,000Southeastern Pennsylvania (over five years)(Philadelphia, Pa.)To implement a literacy curriculum in 15 child-caresites in North and West Philadelphia, improving literacy teaching skills and providing family literacysupport for parents.

This grant will support Early to Read, thereading component of the United Way’sEarly to Learn initiative in 15 centers in

North and West Philadelphia. The Early toRead initiative is designed to encourageearly care and education professionals topursue higher education course work;improve classroom practices; coordinatehome reading practices; and create a posi-tive reading environment in preschool classrooms and at home. This initiativeseeks to increase early literacy skills among3- and 4-year-olds.

Nonprofit Finance Fund 1,000,000(New York, N.Y.) (over three years)To establish a child-care facility fund to providetechnical assistance, grants and loans to child-careproviders in the Philadelphia region who show acommitment to achieving quality standards.

The Child Care Facilities Fund will providegrants and loans for building improvements,repairs and new equipment; an awarenesseffort focused on the role facilities play inchild-care quality and foster best businesspractices in support of child-care centers’growth; and technical assistance to providersas they plan and implement their facilitiesprojects. If successful, the initiative willlead to an increased number of child-carefacilities providing basic quality care.

Communities in Schools of 650,000New Jersey (over three years)(Camden, N.J.)To implement an early intervention after-schoolprogram at two elementary schools in Camden.

Communities in Schools of New Jersey proposes to implement an early interventionafter-school program for children in prekinder-garten through third grade. The programwill place an emphasis on literacy and thearts. A family strengthening program will be offered to parents whose children areparticipating in the program. This programwill be implemented in two elementaryschools and will complement a planned 21st

Century Community Learning Center pro-gram, which offers students at low-perform-ing schools educational assistance.

New Jersey Professional Development 344,400Center for Early Care and Education(Union, N.J.)To open a satellite office of the New JerseyProfessional Development Center for Early Careand Education at Rutgers-Camden and providedevelopment and higher education scholarships to early childhood professionals in Camden.



The new office will provide directors ofchild-care programs with training andopportunities for networking. It will alsoprovide accreditation support to Camdenearly care and education programs;strengthen agreements that permit collegesand universities to accept early childhoodeducation credits obtained from community colleges in their teacher certification programs; and provide scholarships for professional development to Camden-basedearly care and education professionals who pursue Child Development Associatecourse work at the center. This programhelps increase professional developmentand training in Camden for early child-careprofessionals.

Rutgers University Foundation 330,000(New Brunswick, N.J.) (over two years)To provide professional development course work,mentoring and technical assistance to child-careprofessionals and outreach to parents in privateCamden child-care centers.

Rutgers University Center for Children andChildhood Studies will target early care andeducation professionals working in privatecenters in Camden and provide them withthe professional development needed toobtain Child Development Associate (CDA)certification. Classroom mentors will helpstudents with their work. Monthly seminarswill also be offered to parents on topics crit-ical to children’s development. This programis another component of Knight’s work toimprove the quality of early care and educa-tion in Camden.

Children’s Literacy Initiative 241,000(Philadelphia, Pa.) (over two years)To provide literacy support to Head Start and earlyelementary classrooms by funding the 100 BookChallenge in five schools in lower grades and HeadStart classrooms of designated schools.

After School Activities Partnership 75,000(Philadelphia, Pa.) (over three years)To increase the number of after-school recreation-al programs in North Philadelphia.

Junior Achievement of 75,000Delaware Valley Inc. (over two years)(Philadelphia, Pa.)To support the newspaper shop in Exchange City.

SAN JOSE, CALIF.


Mexican Heritage Corporation $40,000(San Jose, Calif.)For development of strategic and fund-developmentplans.


Lenders for Community Development $900,000(San Jose, Calif.) (over five years)To expand its Individual Development Account program to include 150 low-income families withyoung children in our geographical target area andassist them in saving for their own or their chil-dren’s college education.

This grant will promote the Assets for AllAlliance, one of the largest and most effectiveIndivdual Development Accounts (IDA) programs in the country. The program expectsto enroll 450 IDA investors in a matchedsavings fund program. Knight Foundation’sfunding will focus on families with childrenup to age 5 living in the communities ofMayfair, Seven Trees/Solari and Gilroy. Fundscan be used for children’s or parents’ collegeeducation only. This grant supports Knight’sefforts to improve school readiness in SanJose by helping low-income families withyoung children become financially stable.


Arts Council of Silicon Valley $750,000(San Jose, Calif.) (over three years)To support the work of small to midsized culturalorganizations and professional artists throughtechnical assistance and operating grants and fel-lowships.

This grant establishes the Arts CouncilSilicon Valley/Knight Stabilization GrantsProgram and expands the existing PART-NERS grants program to community artsorganizations. It will also increase the number of Artist Fellowship grants from six to eight along with an awards increasefrom $3,000 to $4,000. This grant focuseson supporting arts and cultural organizations,especially those that are ethnically and/orneighborhood-based.

Arts Council Silicon Valley 66,000(San Jose, Calif.)For marketing and production activities of the Per-forming Arts Series, a program that provides tech-nical assistance for developing arts organizations.

Young at Heart Project 60,000(Santa Cruz, Calif.) (over two years)For live musical performances at senior citizen,convalescent, long-term care and residential facili-ties in Santa Clara County.

San Jose Repertory Theatre 50,000(San Jose, Calif.)To sustain its social and educational outreach pro-grams.

Firebird Youth Chinese Orchestra 30,000(San Jose, Calif.)To continue the free Chinese Music Education forYouth program to students ages 7 to 13.

Oriki Theatre 30,000(Mountain View, Calif.)To expand the agency’s flagship program, SharingAfrica, to five new schools in Silicon Valley.


Franklin-McKinley Education $2,100,000Foundation (over five years)(San Jose, Calif.)To create a centralized hub for school readinessactivities in the Solari/Seven Trees neighborhoodby conducting outreach to 600 Latino and Viet-namese immigrant families annually, providingeducation to families and child-care providers andcoordinating Knight Foundation’s school readinesswork with other public and private initiatives.

This project will ensure that area child-careproviders as well as families with childrenfrom birth to age 5 living in the SevenTrees/Solari neighborhood receive compre-hensive services that will help their childrenenter school ready to learn. The foundationwill conduct a community needs assessment,outlining gaps in school readiness servicesand developing plans to sustain existingschool readiness programs. A case manage-ment staff will conduct outreach with familiesand connect them to Knight Foundation andother school readiness initiatives. This granthelps needy populations, linking them toimportant school readiness programs andresources, including those the foundation isfunding.

The Health Trust 1,950,000(San Jose, Calif.) (over five years)To provide oral health education and preventive,restorative and dental services to 7,500 medicallyunderserverd children and families in three SanJose neighborhoods.


2 0 0 3 A N N U A L R E P O R T 7 5

The Children’s Dental Initiative will focuson providing children and their families in three neighborhoods (Mayfair, SevenTrees/Solari and Gilroy) with a range of dental care. Specific project activities willinclude home visits to educate familiesabout the importance of oral health; trans-portation assistance; language translation(primarily Spanish and Vietnamese); andinsurance enrollment. This grant helps pro-vide low-income families with the servicesneeded to improve school readiness.

Go Kids Inc. 40,500(Gilroy, Calif.)To improve families’ economic stability by devel-oping a plan for providing unduplicated and collab-orative services that would increase low-incomeGilroy families’ access to high-quality child care.

STATE COLLEGE, PA.


Private Industry Council of $26,000Centre County(State College, Pa.)To assist individuals affected by the Corning plantshut down to find jobs.


Home Nursing Agency $670,000(Altoona, Pa.) (over five years)To replicate the Olds Nurse-Family Partnership Program in Centre County and provide regular homevisits to approximately 50 expectant families eachyear.

Fifty families will receive intensive homevisiting services from a registered nurse,beginning in the first trimester of pregnancyand continuing through the child’s secondbirthday. This program provides low-incomefamilies in Centre County with services that will ensure the healthy development oftheir children.

Cen-Clear Child Services 160,875(Philipsburg, Pa.) (over three years)To provide maternal and pediatric dental screening,oral health education and oral surgery services touninsured and underinsured children and families.

Centre County United Way 15,000(State College, Pa.)To enhance the development of young children byincreasing the awareness of early childhood mentalhealth issues and building capacity across profes-sions that intersect with the lives of young children.

The Second Mile 10,000(State College, Pa.)To expand the Friend Fitness Program, a mentoringprogram that currently serves adolescents inCentre County.

ST. PAUL, MINN.


Local Initiatives Support Corp. $220,000(New York, N.Y.)To increase affordable housing along a commercialcorridor by increasing the capacity of communitydevelopment corporations working in the Payne/Arcade area in partnership with the Twin CitiesPilot Cities Initiative.

The Saint Paul Foundation 75,000(St. Paul, Minn.)To increase access to affordable housing along thePayne/Phalen commercial corridor by creating aloan guarantee pool in the Opportunity HousingInvestment Fund.

Dayton’s Bluff Neighborhood 55,000Housing Services(St. Paul, Minn.)To improve access to affordable housing along acommercial corridor targeting the Payne/Phalenneighborhood by providing a financial assistanceprogram for first-time home buyers and for prede-velopment planning in the neighborhood.

East Side Neighborhood 50,000Development Co.(St. Paul, Minn.)To increase access to affordable housing along acommercial corridor by supporting a revolving pre-development fund for the development of thePayne/Phalen neighborhood.


Joint St. Paul and North Suburban $180,000Ramsey Interagency Early Intervention Committee(Roseville, Minn.)To improve young children’s access to mentalhealth services by funding Project KEEP (KeepEarly Experiences Positive), an initiative designedto provide prevention and intervention services foryoung children with behavioral and mental healthchallenges.

Greater Twin Cities United Way 100,000(Minneapolis, Minn.)To improve children’s oral health by making dentalcare more accessible to low-income families byproviding culturally competent outreach, education,dental screening and treatment services for Latinoand Hmong children from birth to age 5.

Amherst H. Wilder Foundation 85,000(St. Paul, Minn.)To improve the health and development of youngchildren by training early care and educationproviders in a nationally recognized program topromote social competence and prevent, reduce,and treat aggression and related mental healthissues in young children.

Resources for Child Caring 82,000(St. Paul, Minn.)To improve young children’s mental health bydeveloping and delivering outreach and caregivertraining strategies for East African refugee andimmigrant family child-care providers.

Lifetrack Resources 70,000(St. Paul, Minn.)To improve the early mental health of young childrenby expanding the home visiting component of theFamilies Together program and provide domesticviolence training to home visitors and child-careproviders.

Suburban Ramsey Family Collaborative 53,000(Roseville, Minn.)To improve access to mental health and oralhealth for young children by providing familiesearly childhood screening and by hiring a dentalhealth broker.

TALLAHASSEE, FLA.


Florida State University $1,000,000(Tallahassee, Fla.) (over four years)To improve the quality of 10 child-care centers inSouthside Tallahassee.

Ten child-care centers in two neighborhoodswill provide children with improved care.Center directors and staff will receiveenhanced training, acquiring new skills andabilities to help children make develop-mental gains that will better prepare them to enter school. A team of evaluators fromFlorida State University will monitor theprogram to ensure that improvements andstaff training and mentoring occur on schedule.



Capital Area Healthy Start Coalition 890,600(Tallahassee, Fla.) (over four years)To provide parenting, child development and nutrition education to low-income families throughSmart Start, a new home-visitation program.

Healthy Start will launch Smart Start, an in-home parent education service. The project aims to improve families’ knowledgeabout child development and the use ofappropriate parenting practices. Weeklyhome visits with the families will be com-prised of learning activities about childdevelopment, guidance about child andfamily health, a family literacy activity anda family safety lesson. The home visitor will monitor on-going family risks and makereferrals for social services the family mayneed. A nutrition educator will visit with thefamily twice per month to discuss menuplanning and budgeting. A literacy motiva-tor will guide families through activities thatpromote reading and help families use localresources, such as community libraries.

WICHITA, KAN.


Greater Wichita Economic $250,000Development Coalition (over five years)(Wichita, Kan.)To launch and support the Greater Wichita EconomicDevelopment Coalition, Wichita’s new regionaleconomic development engine.


Exploration Place $22,220(Wichita, Kan.)For a creative learning opportunity for at-risk chil-dren ages 2-4.


Wichita Public Schools $1,380,000(Wichita, Kan.) (over five years)To implement Wichita CARES, a collaborative pro-gram that will provide families with young childrenwith coordinated home-visitation services; expandparent education programming; provide youngchildren with health screenings and referrals; andimplement a research-based curriculum at twoearly childhood centers.

The Wichita CARES project will providecoordinated and intensive health and educa-tional services to families prior to and duringtheir children’s enrollment in the 4-year-oldpreschool program at Little Early ChildhoodEducation Center and Midtown Early Child-hood Education Center. This collaborativeprogram will expand and coordinate existingearly childhood and home-visiting servicesto provide more seamless, high-quality and comprehensive services to children andfamilies living in the northeast and northcentral area of Wichita. The grant aims toprovide families with appropriate servicesearlier in children’s lives and offer high-quality child-care programs.

The Opportunity Project 326,500Learning Center (over four years)(Wichita, Kan.)To provide home visitation services, parenting edu-cation, play groups, other family support servicesand full-day, full-year early care and education forup to 60 families in the Planeview neigborhood ofWichita.

This project will ensure that over threeyears 60 children from birth to age 3 in thePlaneview neighborhood receive a full rangeof services that culminates in their enrollmentin a high-quality early care and educationprogram. The families will receive homevisits twice a month from family educators.Parents will learn about child developmentand the use of developmentally appropriateparenting skills. The families will have the opportunity to enroll their children inThe Opportunity Project’s full-day, full-yearearly care and education program. Thisgrant provides early education services thatwill ensure children are ready for school inthe Planeview neighborhood.

Child Care Association of Wichita/ 184,000Sedgwick County (over two years)(Wichita, Kan.)To increase the quality of family child-care providersserving the Evergreen neighborhood’s Hispanicpopulation by providing parenting training and linksto community resources to 50 low-income, Latinofamilies with young children.

Healthy Options for Planeview 169,000 (Wichita, Kan.) (over three years)To improve school readiness by improving children’shealth through proper dental treatment and educa-tion to 50 families participating in the Moms &Mentors program.

Junior League of Wichita 64,000(Wichita, Kan.) (over three years)To enhance the comprehensive neighborhood-basedschool readiness initiative by instituting the Readyto Learn Literacy Project, a volunteer reading pro-gram for 1,650 at-risk pre-kindergarten children.

Subtotal: 230 grants $79,754,840*


2 0 0 3 A N N U A L R E P O R T 7 7

* Subtotal includes a $238,615 grant which was subsequentlyforfeited and is therefore not listed.


New Profit Inc. $2,000,000(Cambridge, Mass.) (over four years)To provide long-term capacity-building assistanceand direct financial support to Kids Voting USA,enabling Kids Voting to build a sustainable andeffective organization of scale.

New Profit will provide Kids Voting USA witha variety of services to help the organizationbecome self-sufficient. The services includestrategy consulting, a growth plan, a publicpolicy approach, leadership development forits staff and board, and managerial support.A direct financial contribution to Kids Votingwill support the implementation of the group’sstrategic plan developed through this process.This project will build the capacity andscale of an effective organization working inKnight communities to promote civic engage-ment and voting.

City Year 1,000,000(Boston, Mass.) (over four years)For a capacity-building initiative that will develop acomprehensive strategy for launching new com-munity service sites, including sites in Knight com-munities.

City Year plans to establish at least threenew program sites by 2007, and to researchand select additional communities for fur-ther expansion. This project will develop astandard business model for current andprospective City Year sites. Existing trainingand technical assistance will be improved;national training capacity will be enhanced;state offices will have more capacity to handle training and technical assistanceneeds in their states.

Massachusetts Institute 643,000of Technology (over three years)(Cambridge, Mass.) To design new voting technologies, assess securitysystems and share results with election officials.

The Voting Technology Project will createnew technologies to create accessible andsecure voting systems. The focus will be ontwo key initiatives – voter system security,concentrating on Internet voting, and thecreation of software that can be loaded ontocomputers in schools or other public pollingplaces, negating the need for expensiveelectronic hardware. This project will informthe national discussion on voting security,

especially around Internet voting and willpropose new technology options for industryand election officials as they choose themost effective ways to conduct legal andproper elections. (See Page 34.)

Public Interest Projects 250,000(New York, N.Y.)For a funding collaborative that will promote immi-grant civic engagement.

This collaboration promotes civic engagementby encouraging new Americans to partici-pate effectively in the democratic process,thereby strengthening the fabric of civilsociety. Grant funds will support local civicparticipation projects in Knight communi-ties with large immigrant populations. (SeePage 38.)

Joint Center for Political and 200,000Economic Studies(Washington, D.C.) To provide the center, a resource for journalists,community leaders and legislators, with operatingand capacity-building support through a CEO leader-ship transition.

Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights 200,000Under Law (over two years)(Washington, D.C.) For a research and public education initiative toanalyze the impact of the Voting Rights Act, lead-ing up to the law’s reauthorization by Congress in2007.

Project Vote Smart 100,000(Phillipsburg, Mont.)To collaborate with newspapers nationally toencourage political candidates to provide moreissue-stance information. (See Page 30.)


Center for Economic Progress $396,000(Chicago, Ill.) For financial counseling and tax preparation servic-es that help low-income families access publicbenefits in Chicago as part of the Pilot Cities pro-gram, and for technical assistance to similar Knight-funded programs in Akron, San Jose, Miami andBiloxi.

As part of the Pilot Cities program for LivingCities, the center will prepare 12,500 federal tax returns in Chicago, generatingan estimated $16 million in income taxrefunds. In four Knight communities, theorganization will design and deliver technicalassistance according to the self-identifiedneeds and stage of development of the local

programs. Through attendance at the nation-al conference, local organizations will belinked to a national network of organizationsthat are also running family asset-buildingprograms across the country. The projectsupports Knight’s investment in the LivingCities initiative and directly strengthens thefoundation’s local commitments to economicopportunity and security for families andchildren in Knight communities.

Education

Communities in Schools $970,000 (Alexandria, Va.) (over three years)To strengthen the national organization infrastruc-ture and to provide targeted technical assistanceto selected local affiliates in Knight communities.

This initiative will engage Communities inSchools’ leadership, staff and a hired strate-gic planning group in re-examining the network’s structure, processes and productsto plan for sustainable growth. Communitiesin Schools will work with foundation staffand local affiliates to identify specific technical assistance. Up to $15,000 a yearwill be allocated for each of six local pro-grams to develop and launch a customizedtraining and technical assistance plan. The foundation is currently funding localaffiliates in Philadelphia, Wichita, Columbia,and Myrtle Beach.

United Negro College Fund 50,000(Fairfax, Va.)To support student achievement at 39 historicallyblack colleges and universities. This grant advancesthe foundation’s priority to increase access to educational opportunities. More than 4,000 stu-dents are enrolled in UNCF member colleges anduniversities in Knight communities.


The Brookings Institution Center $500,000on Urban and Metropolitan Policy (Washington, D.C.)To launch the Neighborhood Markets Project thatwill collect data on local markets and revenueflows to be used to drive commercial investmentin urban neighborhoods.

The Neighborhood Markets Project is anoutreach program to assist urban redevelop-ment and business leaders in Living Citiescommunities (including Philadelphia, Detroit,St. Paul, Miami and the San Francisco Bayarea). The project aims to provide investorswith information about urban neighborhoodsthat helps them decide whether to invest in

N A T I O N A L V E N T U R E F U N D


NATIONAL VENTURE FUND

these areas. The information will includecurrent federal investments in neighborhoods,economic development activity and housingmarket conditions.

PolicyLink 240,500(Oakland, Calif.)For communications support and to explore oppor-tunities to advance equitable development inKnight communities.

Funder’s Network for Smart Growth 207,500and Livable Communities(Coral Gables, Fla.)To develop a communication guide and design animplementation strategy to effectively raise thevisibility of the smart growth and livable communi-ties movement.

Manpower Demonstration 200,000Research Corp. (over two years)(New York, N.Y.)For research leading to a report that assessesneighborhood risks and monitors the progress ofwelfare reform among Philadelphia’s low-incomefamilies and neighborhoods over the past decade.

Other Priorities

The Urban Institute $300,000(Washington, D.C.)To facilitate electronic filing (e-filings) of IRS Form 990 by nonprofit organizations in Knightcommunities.

This grant allows the National Center forCharitable Statistics to create e-filing andannual e-registration systems for states thatinclude Knight communities and guaranteesthat center staff will work with state charityofficials to develop consistent standards fordata collection. The project will ensure thatthe transition to e-filing will proceed smooth-ly and result in a cost savings, provide formore efficient systems for charities that regulate them in Knight states, and ensureaccurate and accessible data for all users.

Utility Customers Charitable Trust 250,000(Charlotte, N.C.)To provide start-up funding for a new charitablepartnership between utility companies and com-munity foundations.

This project increases the capacity and funddistribution of community foundations inKnight communities. This program will belaunched in the Charlotte/Mecklenburg area,providing a new philanthropic tool for residentsand charitable organizations in the Carolinas.

Alliance for Justice 150,000(Washington, D.C.) (over two years)To increase foundations‘ awareness and acceptanceof supporting nonprofits’ work in advocacy andpublic policy.

National Committee for 100,000Responsive Philanthropy(Washington, D.C.)To publish and distribute reports, newsletters andother publications documenting philanthropictrends and issues.


Leveraging Investments in Creativity $800,000(Brooklyn, N.Y.) (over four years)To help create a national network of innovators inthe area of artist-driven economic and communitydevelopment and conduct a limited pilot project inPhiladelphia.

Leveraging Creativity in the Arts will createa national network of innovators in the areaof artist-driven economic and communitydevelopment. The project will provide information to help guide communities intheir efforts to retain artists in diverseneighborhoods and promote revitalizationstrategies including investment in artists’live-work spaces, arts incubators and artsdistricts. In North Philadelphia and Camden,N.J., neighborhoods artists will bolster cultur-al participation projects and will contributeto a broader understanding of how to bestutilize artists to build new audiences.

Kansas City Symphony 132,000(Kansas City, Mo.)To test the Concert Companion, an innovativewireless handheld digital device providing classicalmusic information for audiences at symphonyorchestra concerts.

Georgia Department of 125,000Natural Resources (Warm Springs, Ga.)To produce a film about President Franklin D.Roosevelt to be shown at the new museumplanned at the Little White House State HistoricSite.


National Association for $250,000the Education of Young Children (Washington, D.C.)To provide professional development and opportu-nities for cross-community learning for Knightgrant recipients in communities that have identifiedschool readiness and other early childhood issuesas funding priorities.

NAEYC will help early childhood profession-als in Knight communities strengthen theirskills and knowledge of critical issuesaffecting young children and improve theknowledge base of early childhood profes-sionals working in Knight-funded programs.NAEYC expects that this enhanced profes-sional development effort will lead todemonstrable changes in early childhoodprograms being implemented in Knightcommunities. NAEYC’s strategic plan forfuture school readiness resources will contribute to a broader, more sustained professional development base that can beused by Knight grantees and other earlychildhood professionals.

Common Sense Media 190,000(San Francisco, Calif.)To create a comprehensive media guide for fami-lies, educators, children and others who careabout the media’s impact on children.

Subtotal: 23 grants $ 9,254,000

N A T I O N A L V E N T U R E F U N D

2 0 0 3 A N N U A L R E P O R T 7 9

Strengthening Philanthropy

The Foundation Center $90,000(New York, N.Y.)For 2003-2005 general operating support.

Council on Foundations 44,600(Washington, D.C.)For general operating support.

Independent Sector 36,600(Washington, D.C.)For 2003-2005 general operating support.

Grantmakers in the Arts 22,200(Seattle, Wash.)For 2003-2005 general operating support.

Donors Forum of South Florida 21,750(Miami, Fla.)For general operating support.

Hispanics in Philanthropy 21,750(San Francisco, Calif.)For 2003-2005 general operating support.

Grantmakers for Education 21,000(Portland, Ore.)For 2003-2005 general operating support.

Association of Black 14,700Foundation Executives(New York, N.Y.)For 2003-2005 general operating support.

Delaware Valley Grantmakers 14,250(Philadelphia, Pa.)For 2003-2005 general operating support.

Grantmakers Forum on Community 14,100and National Service (Berkeley, Calif.)For 2003-2005 general operating support.

Greater Miami Progress Foundation 9,550(Miami, Fla.)For general operating support.

Southeastern Council of Foundations 4,700(Atlanta, Ga.)For general operating support.

Subtotal: 12 grants $315,200

Special Grants

29 Trustee-Recommended Grants $280,000

Subtotal: 41 grants $595,200

GRAND TOTAL: 349 grants $128,719,470

O T H E R


Text: John S. and James L. Knight Foundation

W. Gerald Austen, M.D., chairman, board of trusteesHodding Carter III, president and CEOMichael Maidenberg, vice president and chief program officerLarry Meyer, vice president of communications and secretaryEric Newton, director of Journalism InitiativesDenise Tom, Journalism program officerJoe Ervin, director of Community Partners ProgramLinda Fitzgerald, deputy director, Community Partners ProgramLisa Versaci, director, National Venture FundMaurice G. Perry, director of investmentsRobertson Adams, communications associate/webmasterPatricia Maldonado, communications associate/program liaisonSusan Perry-Smith, communications assistantCaroline Wingate, editorial consultant

Special thanks to Wired magazine’s Adam Rogers, philanthropy consultant Craig McGarvey and Kristen Wolf of Spitfire Strategies.

Design: Jacques Auger Design Associates Inc., Miami Beach, Fla.

Printing: Southeastern Printing, Stuart, Fla.

Photography:Cover Rusty Kennedy for Knight Foundation

Melvin Epps for Knight Foundation (child)1 Rusty Kennedy for Knight Foundation2, 3 Andrew Itkoff for Knight Foundation

Harvey Bilt for Knight Foundation4 Andrew Itkoff for Knight Foundation5 Rusty Kennedy for Knight Foundation6–9 Rusty Kennedy for Knight Foundation

Melvin Epps for Knight Foundation (bronze men)10 Robin Holland for Public Affairs Television12 Steven B. Thornton for Knight Foundation13 Photo by Shannon York, courtesy of Internews 15 Mark Dolan for Newhouse School at Syracuse University 17 Mark McDonald for Knight Foundation 19 Karl Idsvoog for International Center for Journalists21 Raymond Au for Knight Foundation22 Vada Snider for Knight Foundation 23 Amanda Odeski for Knight Foundation 24 Bruce Zake for Knight Foundation 26 Chuck Fong for Knight Foundation 27 Mike Culpepper for Knight Foundation29, 30 Mark Adams for Knight Foundation 33 Photo by Rohanna Mertens for ACCION International35 Pam Berry for Knight Foundation 36 Skip Dickstein for Knight Foundation 37 Candace DiCarlo for Knight Foundation 38 Harvey Bilt for Knight Foundation 42 Battle Vaughan/The Miami Herald for Knight Foundation 43 Lisa Helfert for Knight Foundaton 44 Eileen Escarda for Knight Foundation 45 Scott Frederickson for Knight Foundation 47 Steve Brown for Wichita Symphony Orchestra 57 John Daughtry/LOF Productions

The name “Magic of Music” is used (Page 33, 36, 45, 47) with permission of The Magicof Music Inc., which creates special moments through music for thousands of critically/terminally ill and handicapped children and adults throughout the United States.

Sources for data on pp. 6-9: Federal Election Commission; Knight Community Indicatorsproject surveys and profiles; Listening & Learning 2004; First Amendment Foundation;Freedom Forum First Amendment Center; Newspaper Association of America; Associationof Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges; Death Penalty Information Center; TheCivil Rights Project at Harvard University and The Urban Institute; Greater MiamiProsperity Campaign; ASNE High School Journalism Initiative.

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

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Economy & Finance

2003 KF Annual Report