Last week the Knight Foundation published initial findings into the emerging field of civic tech, which lives at the nexus of technology, civic innovation, open government and community engagement. This includes a directory of civic tech ventures and and platforms that might prove especially helpful to projects seeking to engage and informing communities at a local level.

Most of the philanthropic investment into civic tech funds the building of tools and platforms, rather than organizations and projects that might use those platforms (which is probably where most local info and engagement fit into the civic tech picture). Still, it's helpful for local engagement projects, and tool/platform builders, and their funders, to connect, so everyone can gain a broader understanding of what's possible with civic tech on a local level.

Knight's Civic Tech Directory is a spreadsheet containing information about hundreds of key projects and organizations in civic tech. Most of these can be helpful to almost any effort to inform, engage, or empower local communities anywhere; while some focus on just one community, city, or region. Resources are organized into "clusters," or areas of focus, identified in Knight's research.

Nine of these philanthropically supported innovation clusters offer resources that might be directly utilized by local projects, organizations and foundations:

1. Civic crowdfunding to enhance public services and spaces. Most of these directory listings are for national or global platforms such as Kiva, which can be used for local projects or campaigns. But some are home-grown local efforts which could be emulated in other communities -- such as Detroit SOUP, a microgranting dinner that provides funding for creative projects in Detroit. "For $5 you receive soup, salad, bread, and a vote." (Beyond what's listed in the Knight directory, there are also some specifically hyperlocal crowdfunding platforms.)

2. Community organizing often goes hand-in-hand with community engagement. Platforms like Bang the Table sell services to aid public participation through online town halls, budget allocation tools, and more. Also, free platforms like Change.org can help organize and amplify local issue-focused campaigns. These platforms might be applied at the community level not just by specific projects, but also by community foundations to help assess or build awareness of local issues and needs.

3. Information crowdsourcing empowers community members to expand the breadth, depth, and detail of our understanding of important local issues; or how local communities fit into a bigger picture. For instance, LocalData provides a variety of mobile-friendly tools and services to support local crowdsourced data-gathering efforts.

4. Neighborhood forum platforms, such as Front Porch Forum in Vermont, and Neighbortree, can support ongoing hyperlocal discussions via a variety of digital channels.

5. Peer-to-peer sharing of local goods and services. By far, this civic tech sector attracted the most philanthropic investment 2011-13, according to Knight. The biggest names in this cluster are mainstream commercial ventures such as AirBNB, but P2P projects help local people connect to share resources for everything from finding a parking space to organizing volunteers for local disaster response.

6. Public data access and transparency, such as municipal government data repositories in Philadelphia, San Francisco and other cities, can spur the development of tools as well as news coverage. These repositories sometimes yield collaborative projects to leverage public data, such as AxisPhilly and the Colorado Data Engine -- and they also are fodder for many local open government hackathons. In addition, projects such as FOIA Machine can help increase the flow of public information beyond what governments make readily available.

7. Data utility tools empower users to analyze and leverage government data to improve the delivery of public services -- such as BusChecker in New York City, or NearbyFYI which allows users to search local public documents in four states. If your city has a Code for America Brigade, that might be a great place to turn for help creating practical data-powered tools that community members can use.

8. Public decision making and feedback tools can enhance public input into local government processes. For instance, CiviNomics allows citizens to participate in drafting policy to help solve local problems. And Open Town Hall, a comment platform for local government, could help improve communication between local government and citizens.

9. Visualization and mapping tools can help make local data easier to understand. For instance, Datawrapper is an open source tool to quickly create simple, accurate and embeddable charts. And WalkIt maps out urban walking routes on your mobile phone.