OpenNews, a fiscally sponsored project of Community Partners, creates and supports a diverse community of peers working, learning, and solving problems in technology for local newsrooms to create the stronger, more representative ecosystem that journalism needs to thrive.

The purpose of this grant is to create a joint Legal Clinic Fund administered by the Miami Foundation to support and expand legal clinics that are housed at law schools and focus on the first amendment, media access, and transparency. This grant will help strengthen legal clinics as a backbone of legal support for local newsrooms. 

Gather supports community-minded journalists and other engagement professionals through an online platform that acts as a hub for critical tools, resources, and conversations for journalists.

The Democracy Collaborative (previously known as the Collaborative Communications Initiative) will continue to improve the communications capacity of the campaign finance reform community and allow groups to build collective messaging success in the field.

To provide support to Media Democracy Fund, a fiscally sponsored project of the New Venture Fund, to further the NetGain Partnership and to support engagement of organizations led by and serving communities of color in debates around platforms, power, and the public interest.

To support Convergence’s work to help Congress function more effectively through its work with the House Bipartisan Working Group (BPWG), which seeks to encourage members to engage in meaningful and consensus-driven dialogue on complex policy challenges with colleagues.

To support the 2020 Census Project, a fiscally sponsored project of the New Venture Fund. The 2020 Census Project’s Democracy Funders Collaborative Joint aims to ensure that the 2020 Census is implemented effectively, and produces a robust count of the population of the U.S.

To support the continued work and expansion of the NewsVoices project which organizes communities around local newsrooms to highlight underreported issues and build trust between journalists and the communities they serve. Ultimately, the project aims to improve journalistic practices, and coverage in the regions where they work, leaving behind a more active and engaged community which can continue to push for a healthier news ecosystem. 

To support the Center for Secure and Modern Elections (CSME), a fiscally sponsored project of New Venture Fund. CSME works across the country to increase the ease of registering to vote through pro-voter education and policy reform activities, including work on automatic voter registration. 

To provide continued support for the Aspen Institute’s Socrates Program, which provides a forum for emerging leaders from Capitol Hill and around the country to convene and explore contemporary issues through expert-moderated Socratic dialogue.

This grant will support “The Citizens Circle” project to develop a collaborative, scalable model to elevate constructive voices in local forums. 

This grant will provide three years of general operating support for the Maynard Institute as they execute their strategic plan. This funding will support Maynard in their mission to drive diversity, equity and inclusion in news media and academia through training, engagement and convenings with journalists, news leaders, storytellers, and entrepreneurs.

The Pew Charitable Trusts’s Bipartisan House Chiefs of Staff Initiative (“Safe Spaces Project”), run by Pew’s Government Relations Department, offers programming for chiefs of staff in the U.S. House of Representatives aimed at fostering relationships, sharing best practices, and strengthening the capacity of Congress.

The purpose of this grant is to help the League of Women Voters Education Fund (LWVEF) implement the Transformation Roadmap, with a focus on increasing LWVEF capacity at the state and national levels to help build a more engaged, diverse, and sophisticated network of 501(c)(3) members, volunteers, and activists. 
A portion of this grant will also support LWVEF’s consultations with legal counsel to ensure that its legal structure positions it well for its next phase of operations.

To support the Center for Effective Government at the University of Chicago, which will bring together a diverse array of political practitioners, scholars, journalists and others and will facilitate relationship building among these actors through engagement with political reforms that strengthen American democracy.

The News Measures Research Project (NMRP)’s local news performance assessment is a valuable tool to journalism researchers, funders, advocates, and practitioners for understanding how local news outlets are meeting the information needs of the communities they serve.

To support George Washington University’s The Monkey Cage in its efforts to make the political conversation more informed by timely, accessible, and sound research from a publicly oriented political science discipline and less dominated by evidence-free arguments. This is achieved by increasing the public engagement of political scientists and other academics and connecting academics with key audiences among journalists, policy analysts, and lay readers.

The purpose of this grant is to fund Project DATA at the University of Wisconsin, which involves research and analysis of online political advertisements. Through this research and analysis, the project will explore the extent of “dark money” online advertising campaigns. The project will seek to analyze online advertising data collected in 2016 to assess who is behind online political advertising, the information that is disseminated online, who is targeted, and the effects produced by the targeted campaigns. Potential outcomes are publication of the findings in peer-reviewed academic journals, as well as a white paper, and the project lead – Professor Young Mie Kim – engaging in public service activities to disseminate the findings.

This general operating grant will support the growth and expansion of the News Revenue Hub, which helps nonprofit newsrooms develop reader support models and build sustainable membership programs. Through this grant the News Revenue Hub will be able to build on its successful pilot year and further institutionalize the model they have developed, setting up a learning lab, brining on new clients and developing resources that serve the entire nonprofit journalism community. 

This grant is to provide flexible funding support to the Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic at Yale University Law School at Yale University, including support for the Media Freedom Information Access Clinic’s annual conference titled Access and Accountability 2018: A Conference for Transparency Advocates.