John S. and James L. Knight Foundation

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, also known as Knight Foundation, is an American non-profit foundation that provides grants in journalism, communities, and the arts.

"Knight Foundation" redirects here. For other uses, see Knight Foundation (disambiguation).
John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
FoundedDecember 1950 (1950-12)
FounderJohn S. Knight
James L. Knight
TypePrivate Independent Foundation
65-0464177
Location
Area served
United States
Key people
Alberto Ibargüen
President & CEO
Revenue
$140.2 million (2014)[1]
Endowment$2.4 billion (2014)
Websitewww.knightfoundation.org
Formerly called
Knight Memorial Education Fund

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation began as the Knight Memorial Education Fund in 1940. For its first decade, most contributions came from the Akron Beacon Journal and Miami Herald. It was incorporated as Knight Foundation in 1950 in Ohio, and reincorporated as the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation in Florida in 1993. Its first grant in the area of journalism was to the Inter American Press Association in Miami.

After Creed Black assumed the presidency in 1988, the foundation's national presence grew. In 1990 the board of trustees voted to relocate the foundation's headquarters from Akron, Ohio, to Miami, Florida.

History

From 1907 to 1933, Charles Landon Knight published the Akron Beacon Journal. One of his practices was helping out financially strapped college students with their tuition. Following their father's death, John S. and James L. Knight created the Knight Memorial Education Fund in 1940 to continue the mission of helping poor Akron college students pay for college. The Akron Beacon Journal also contributed some money to the education fund.

In December 1950, the Knight Foundation was created with $9,047 transferred from that education fund. Knight Foundation incorporated in the state of Ohio with the goal of carrying out the work of the education fund. At its start, the foundation funded education, social services, cultural organizations and some journalism-related causes.

In its first decade, the foundation's money came from contributions from the Akron Beacon Journal and the Miami Herald, as well as personal gifts by John and James Knight. Other Knight newspapers also contributed in the early 1960s; this led to a limited number of grants to those cities. Despite several family ties, the foundation was legally independent of Knight-owned newspapers.

Newspaper contributions to the foundation stopped five years later, when Clara I. Knight, the Knights' mother, who died 12 November 1965, left her inheritance of 180,000 shares of Knight stock, then valued at $5.2 million, to the foundation.

Two years later, in 1974, Knight Newspapers merged with Ridder Publications to create Knight-Ridder Inc., at the time the largest newspaper company in the country. Lee Hills, former president of Knight Newspapers, became Knight-Ridder chairman and CEO. Hills, a foundation trustee since 1960, was the first person outside the family to head Knight Newspapers.

In April 1975, John Knight signed his final will, leaving the bulk of his Knight-Ridder shares to Knight Foundation. The foundation opened its first office in Akron with two full-time employees: President Ben Maidenburg, former Akron Beacon Journal executive editor and his secretary, Shirley Follo. More than a year after taking the reins, Maidenburg fell ill.

The foundation's headquarters moved from Akron to Miami in 1990. At that time, the foundation's portfolio was valued at $522 million and staff had grown to 14 employees.

On 5 February 1991, James Knight died, leaving a bulk of his estate, $200 million, to the foundation. Hills succeeded as chairman of the board.

With the foundation besieged by requests in the early 1990s for emergency funding to "save our symphony," Penelope McPhee, director of the Arts Program, designed the Magic of Music initiative.[2]

In 1992, Knight launched the five-year initiative with $5.4 million in grants to build the connection between orchestras and their audiences. In 1999, the foundation approved a second phase, expanding the program to a total of $13 million over 12 years.

Knight-Ridder newspapers and the foundation held ties to 26 U.S. cities and in 1998, the foundation's board of trustees voted to permanently fund these 26 cities, independent from where Knight-Ridder bought or sold their newspaper business in the future.

Across the 26 cities, the foundation deployed program directors to oversee funding initiatives. Each city has a Knight Community Advisory Committee, a group made up of local residents, which offer funding suggestions for their city.

In 2005, to address the Internet's increasingly disruptive impact on the traditional media industry, Knight began a number of systemic changes in its approach to making grants. As one of his first actions as CEO, Alberto Ibargüen suspended the further creation of endowments of journalism programs at colleges and universities. The premise was that traditional journalism education had to change to meet the unique challenges of the digital age. Knight also began experimenting with non-traditional approaches to connecting with new grantees, such as contests that limited grantees to 150 words to describe ideas and were open to anybody. The first of these contests, the Knight News Challenge, sought ideas that used "digital technology to inform communities." In addition to Knight's pivot toward funding digital innovations, the foundation also doubled down on its support of the First Amendment, funding regular surveys that gauged high school students' awareness of it, and helping create organizations like the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University to "preserve and expand First Amendment rights in the digital age through research and education, and by supporting litigation in favor of protecting freedom of expression and the press." Under Ibargüen, Knight also expanded its support of the arts, through "Knight Arts Challenges" in a number of Knight Communities.

Programs
Creed Black and W. Gerald Austen attending a board meeting of the Knight Foundation at the Douglass Theatre in downtown Macon, Georgia

The Foundation's website describes grant-making programs in journalism, communities, and the arts.[3] Communities which had Knight-Ridder Newspapers in 1991, at the time of the last founder James L. Knight's death, are considered to be among the 26 "Knight Communities" which are eligible for funding through the Foundation's community and arts programs.

Communities

Knight works in 26 communities in the United States. In eight communities, a local program director leads the work:

Another 18 communities have 'Knight Donor Advised Funds' guided by Knight Foundation via local community foundations. In those communities, the local community foundation is the first point of contact for funding:

Education and training

The foundation endows Knight Chairs who are journalists in tenured positions at universities across the United States.[4][5][6] Journalism-technology labs in various universities are also funded by Knight Foundation.[7]

Knight Foundation funds multimedia training in newsrooms such as National Public Radio and through programs like Knight-Mozilla OpenNews.[8][9]

Leadership
Alberto Ibargüen, President and CEO of Knight Foundation (2013)

Knight Foundation presidents have been: John S. Knight, James L. Knight, Lee Hills, Creed C. Black, Hodding Carter III (1997–2005) and Alberto Ibargüen (2005–present).

Grants

Any individual or U.S.-based organization may apply for a grant. (Before 2010, an organization had to be a registered section 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.) The process of asking for a grant begins with a letter of inquiry describing the project concept. In addition to the foundation's regular granting program, there are three contests (calls for entries): The Knight News Challenge,[10] the Knight Arts Challenge[11] and the Knight Community Information Challenge.[12] In 2011 the Foundation added a fourth contest, the Black Male Engagement Challenge.[13] In 2015 a grant agreement was reached with Wikimedia Foundation to build a search engine called Knowledge Engine.[14]

Assets and grant making
Year Assets (US$) New Grants Approved (US$) Paid (US$)
1999 1,888,543,168 311 69,541,641 53,142,772
2000 2,198,985,122 356 93,365,465 69,983,125
2001 1,900,829,942 319 86,433,075 84,970,064
2002 1,718,236,238 459 80,949,242 85,617,981
2003 1,845,869,048 349 128,719,470 90,400,477
2004 1,939,340,905 329 99,905,480 90,358,608
2005 2,071,507,291 286 78,224,147 92,577,162
2006 2,261,797,097 191 73,799,294 104,310,919
2007 2,618,700,006 290 165,310,078 121,267,122
2008 1,974,780,135 263 138,670,778 116,206,414
2009 2,189,663,052 276 141,813,088 105,887,097
2010 2,305,269,825 318 80,045,442 104,920,549
2011 2,192,836,756 380 79,284,121 112,604,594
2012 2,179,634,480 414 92,352,685 112,063,584
2013 2,395,608,862 434 80,483,204 120,694,865
2014 2,443,818,246 531 148,564,966 130,284,911
2015 2,301,502,477 599 150,688,190 126,796,384
2016 2,256,756,854 482 93,859,603 127,865,430
2017 2,473,340,121 500 88,528,014 117,929,820
2018 2,271,386,220 399 157,028,547 105,335,420

Source: John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Annual Reports[15]

Dedications
John S. and James L. Knight Concert Hall, Miami, Florida, 2008

References
  1. "Knight Foundation 2014 Audited Financial Statement" (PDF). 2015-06-15. Retrieved 2015-11-11.
  2. "Magic of Music Final Report: The Search for Shining Eyes". Archived from the original on 2015-10-13. Retrieved 2015-11-11.
  3. "What We Fund". Knight Foundation. Retrieved 16 August 2018.
  4. "Knight Foundation". knightfoundation.org. Retrieved 2016-09-28.
  5. "Rosental Alves | School of Journalism". journalism.utexas.edu. Retrieved 2016-09-28.
  6. "Penny Abernathy | UNC School of Media and Journalism". mj.unc.edu. Retrieved 2016-09-28.
  7. "History of the Lab". 2013-03-23. Archived from the original on 2015-09-05. Retrieved 2016-09-28.
  8. "Newsonomics: The new Knight-Lenfest initiative gives a kick in the pants to America's metro newspapers | NiemanLab". niemanlab.org. Retrieved 2017-08-03.
  9. "Knight-Mozilla OpenNews wants to fund code at lengths longer than a quick jog, shorter than a marathon". Retrieved 2016-09-28.
  10. "Knight News Challenge". Retrieved 2015-11-11.
  11. "Knight Arts Challenge". Archived from the original on 2015-07-06. Retrieved 2015-11-11.
  12. "Knight Community Information Challenge". Retrieved 2015-11-11.
  13. "Black Male Engagement Challenge". Archived from the original on 2015-10-31. Retrieved 2015-11-11.
  14. wmf:File:Knowledge engine grant agreement.pdf, 18 September 2015. Published 11 February 2016, retrieved 16 February 2016.
  15. "Financial Information - Assets and Grantmaking". Knight Foundation. Retrieved 2019-08-22.
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