Over the past six years, the Knight Community Information Challenge has supported over 100 projects to inform and engage local communities. This year, as the KCIC contest concludes, the Knight Foundation has refocused its efforts on high-impact projects by four innovative foundations -- all of which have benefited from adapting to disruption. A plenary panel at this year's Media Learning Seminar explored these lessons.

At MLS 2014, Knight announced grants to these community and place-based foundations, intended to help scale their projects:

• Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation: $2 million to continue developing the news ecosystem in New Jersey. They will help local news projects (such as NJ Spotlight) experiment with revenue models to build sustainability.
• Chicago Community Trust: $500,000 to expand its successful Smart Chicago Collaborative, which improves the lives of Chicago residents through better, more useful access to open government data. (See earlier article.)
• Silicon Valley Community Foundation: $500,000 for a project to better inform citizens about changes to California's core education standards -- expanding upon the Silicon Valley Common Core Initiative.
• Incourage Community Foundation of Wisconsin, $250,000 to continue support for hyperlocal news outlets, as well as their other efforts to leverage information to create a more active and engaged citizenry.

In his opening remarks for the panel, Knight President Alberto Imbargüen noted that partnering with community and place-based foundations has yielded many lessons, some of which were surprising. For instance: "We learned that the size of a foundation doesn't matter when it comes to an information project's effectiveness. Also, subject matter does not determine success."

Kelly Ryan, CEO of the Incourage Community Foundation, observed: "We cannot authentically address issues of access without articulating core values. Ours are equity, inclusion and opportunity."

She also noted the importance of developing the demand side of information, as well as the supply side. "Help people understand that all information is not equal. Good data can help frame and reframe issues to foster deeper dialogue and participation. Nurture a culture of inquiry. One of my favorite local issues to question is job creation. What do we mean by 'jobs?' What kind of jobs? These statistics are often used to dodge responsibility rather than assess community impact."

Compassion and empowerment are also crucial for engaging communities, said Ryan. "Residents are dealing with major disruption, too. What can support them to move forward in their lives -- but in small ways, so they are not overwhelmed by disruption? We must be compassionate as well as connected to place, so we can help recreate the threads that weave together community."

Engagement projects can help shift a community's culture toward empowerment. A year ago, Incourage purchased a former Gannett newspaper building in downtown Wisconsin Rapids, Wisc., and engaged the community in how to put that facility to use. "Originally people were skeptical. But over 400 residents have been involved in the past year. So far we've winnowed 400 ideas down to about five. This is about far more than the building; we're creating a movement."

In N.J., growing the local news ecosystem means not just supporting news organizations (including hyperlocal startups), but also helping news professionals create viable independent businesses. Chris Dagget, President and CEO of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, mentioned that one area they may explore is building a business out of a news beat.

"We're identifying gaps in coverage around the state. So if you're a former reporter who's lost your news organization job -- why not start a business writing about healthcare, or seniors? We could help support such businesses," he said.

According to Emmett Carson, CEO of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, a key insight that grew out of their partnership with Knight is the realization that information is power. "It's either a way to keep power, because you know things others don't; or to share power when you learn things from others, so that you can then act differently. We're incorporating this insight right from the start in every project we do."

For instance, SVCF partnered with Voto Latino to create an app (deployed nationally) to give Latino voters more power to find candidates and ballot measures which align with the issues they care about, and to also increase census participation.

Also, SVCF supported the development of the CitizenshipWorks website (currently expanding to national deployment), which steps immigrants through a series of question to determine whether they can apply for U.S. citizenship.

Also, a companion mobile app puts immigrants applying for naturalization into the queue for the Dept. of Immigration. "That process can take years -- and if you move around during that time, INS letters might not reach you," said Carson. "But this app allows you to get text messages to tell you that you're ready to move on to the next step in the INS process. And when you change phone numbers (which immigrants do frequently), the app assigns you a code that you can enter to resume contact with the INS process."

Reframing information as power, and thinking and speaking unambiguously about community power dynamics, hasn't always been easy or comfortable for SVCF -- both internally, or with their board and partners. According to Carson, framing information primarily in terms of civic engagement and democracy was not very effective in terms of engaging the parts of their community which most needed empowerment.In contrast, clearly framing projects and programs in terms of power sharing and expansion resonates strongly with people who have been marginalized.

Since residents care about empowerment, Carson noted that their challenge as a community foundation now is: "What role can information play in democratizing power and information?"