UPDATE: The NewsChallenge is open until 5 pm eastern on March 19th. Apply now!
Today, the Democracy Fund joined with the Knight Foundation, Hewlett Foundation, and Rita Allen Foundation to launch a $3-million challenge to identify how can we better inform voters and increase civic participation before, during, and after elections.
The Knight Foundation’s blog elaborates on this unique Knight News Challenge on elections: “We are looking for innovative ideas ranging from new ways that news media and others can inform voters, to making access to essential registration and polling information available, to making voting easy, efficient and fair, to converting election participation into longer-term civic engagement, on the local, state or national level.”
For the Democracy Fund, this partnership represents a unique opportunity to work with leading peer funders to support new and promising ideas from people across the media, technology, and election administration fields. We hope to see ideas and collaborations from civic technologists, state and local election officials, academics, students, startups, nonprofits, governments, and individuals.
The Democracy Fund has committed up to $250,000 to the competition, and we’re looking forward to working with our partners to inspire creativity, reach out to a wide array of potential applicants, and help ensure the success of the winning entrants.
The News Challenge will open on February 25, 2015. More information is available on the News Challenge’s web site.