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Knight Foundation's Portfolio Performed Well in 2006

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Knight Foundation's Portfolio Performed Well in 2006 W H AT W E D O 2 0 0 6 ANNUAL REPORT We are a national foundation with local roots. We choose, as the WHAT WE DO 2 Knight brothers chose, to focus on journalism and communities, LETTER FROM THE CHAIRMAN AND PRESIDENT 4 inspiring and Enabling them to reach their highest potential. ESSAY: THE ROLE OF LEADERSHIP IN TRANSFORMATION 6 STORIES OF TRANSFORMATION 8 And we ask, as we evaluate opportunities and grants, > When Leaders Gather, the Subject is Social Change 10 “Is this truly transformational?” > Knight News Challenge Winners Innovate With Digital Media 14 We embrace the responsibility to discover and support ideas that > Two Campuses Educate the 21st Century’s Leaders and Readers 18 can make the ideal real. > Arts and Culture Inspire the Soul, Serving as Economic Drivers 22 Because grant making requires a sound financial base, we > Newcomers Volunteer, Bonding a Carolina Community 28 preserve the Knight brothers’ gifts through prudent investment > Committed Leaders Collaborate, Leveraging Akron’s Assets 32 and careful management. PROGRAM UPDATES > Journalism 36 > Communities 40 > National 44 Transform. Lead. Go! GRANTS OVERVIEW 48 HOW TO APPLY 49 Would you like to see and hear TRUSTEES, OFFICERS, STAFF 50 our Stories of Transformation, told in multimedia? And would INVESTMENTS 52 you care to comment? ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 54 Then … Go! go.knightfoundation.org/annual right to left: W.GERALD AUSTEN, M.D. Chairman of the Board, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation ALBERTO IBARGÜEN President and CEO, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation L E T T E R F R O M THE CHAIRMAN AND PRESIDENT go.knightfoundation.org/letter to comment In the early 1970s, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger is The Knights sought actively and aggressively to reflect geography. It sounds simple, and we made it simpler, by goal of universal wireless access so that residents may said to have asked Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai for his the communities they served. In doing so, they helped eliminating most rules and qualifications in the Knight enjoy and participate in the new age, digital town square. assessment of the French Revolution. “Too soon to tell” build, define and even transform those communities. The News Challenge, our groundbreaking contest to create was Zhou’s reported response. brothers believed strong communities would be good an opportunity for the wisdom of a crowd to emerge. In This report on our activities during 2006 details our for their newspapers because newspapers, in effect, the first year of our five-year challenge, we received 1,650 excitement as we seek transformational change in journal- Perhaps it’s also too soon to tell the impact of changes represented the whole community. ideas from thinkers, activists, journalists and inventors ism and communities. The stories you’ll experience here that were taking place at the beginning of the 20th energized by our offer to spend $5 million each year. Some are found with additional pictures, sound and video on our century when Jack and Jim Knight began their careers. Instead of fearing or resisting change, they embraced of the winners are detailed in this report. web site, go.knightfoundation.org/annual. But those times of ever-faster change set the stage it. We see in them the instincts of today’s great Internet and the example for how we live today. Technology and social entrepreneurs. And we believe we honor their Social entrepreneurship – the application of entrepre- Of course, none of this would be possible without a solid progressed geometrically, and values were steadily memory, and their intent in creating Knight Foundation, neurial business thinking to social issues – is an asset base. A summary of our financial information is included more relative as the world became less parochial after by acting with vision and courage, and by taking risks in increasingly popular concept around the world. But it in this report. For our full audited financial statements, World War II. the areas of community advancement and journalism to isn’t a fad. It is a simple and logical way to set visionary please visit go.knightfoundation.org/financials. which they dedicated their working lives. goals, plan for sustainability and demand performance and accountability in social enterprises. We see it as part In 2006, three new trustees joined Knight Foundation’s Jack and Jim Knight In 2006, Knight Foundation continued fundamental shifts of our larger effort to identify transformational leadership board. They are Earl Powell, chairman of the private equity in its program practice, from print to digital in journalism, and opportunities. firm Trivest Partners; E. Roe Stamps IV, founding managing embraced their world and from charity to social investing in community. These partner of the private equity firm Summit Partners; and and the technology shifts, like any social enterprise, will take time to mature To that end, we funded the internationally acclaimed Paul Steiger, managing editor of The Wall Street Journal. and for results to be understood. As Zhou understood, Ashoka organization to identify and help develop a new They are exceptionally able and experienced leaders and that made possible cultural change is slow. But as Kissinger showed, when generation of social entrepreneurs in Knight communit- wonderful contributors to our board. the time is right and new technology becomes available, ies. We sponsored urbanist Richard Florida to work in their vision of a future you must seize the opportunity. Charlotte, Duluth and Tallahassee with groups of far greater than their first newspaper, the Akron Beacon “community catalysts” tasked with identifying and building We understand that Journal. Today, that concept is our beacon, our North And so we did. “the creative class.” Star. They had the courage to take risks, the know-how to transformation takes execute, and the tenacity to see their plans through. They We accelerated a shift in our journalism program from In Akron and Detroit, we increased our commitment to time, commitment used advances in printing, telephony and transportation traditional education and training programs to a search local leaders seeking alternative, entrepreneurial ways to to build what would become one of the great newspaper for new ways to do with digital technology what Jack transition from industrial to innovation economies. And in and risk. And we take seriously the rare companies in the world, at a time when newspapers and Jim Knight did with newspapers: share timely news those and other Knight communities like Milledgeville and privilege to invest this foundation’s assets to change our dominated media. and information that connects people within a defined Philadelphia, we’re working with local experts toward the world and our communities for the better. ANNUAL REPORT 2 0 0 6 4 5 ANNUAL REPORT 2 0 0 6 David Gergen addresses the participants at the 2007 Gathering of Leaders in Mohonk, N.Y. ESSAY: THE ROLE OF LEADERSHIP IN T R A N S F O R M AT I O N go.knightfoundation.org/essay to comment It’s impossible to imagine the creation of India without We rightly salute individual leaders for their achieve- For the individuals who must lead without a partner, the lowest levels to become leaders in their own right. Then Mohandas Gandhi’s leadership. Or the emergence of biracial ments, and since the days of ancient Athens, societies key is to create a great team. The historian Doris Kearns you unleash the true transformative power of the whole harmony in a free South Africa without Nelson Mandela. have sought better ways to prepare young people to Goodwin has shown us, for example, that Lincoln succeeded team. And that culture will survive and even flourish long Or the rallying of the British people to turn back the Nazi become leaders. In our own time, we have learned to to considerable degree because he chose such strong after an individual leader steps off the stage. threat without Winston Churchill. prize innovative and entrepreneurial leaders, whether Cabinet members to help him and willingly sought their they are building a business or starting a charter school. counsel. When Lou Gerstner went to the rescue of IBM, he Coming closer to home, we cannot think of the creation of Today, as in the past, the quality of leadership remains was wary at first of setting a vision; he put far more America today cries out our own republic without remembering George Washington, the “X factor” in organizations and societies – that extra emphasis upon assembling a strong team around him. for transformation. Even as we or its survival without remembering Abraham Lincoln. Nor dimension that is hard to measure but that can make all Jack Welch was famous at General Electric for forming have accumulated massive economic and military power, can we envision how so many hands would reach out to help the difference in whether a group succeeds in its mission. one of the strongest teams ever seen. As management we have squandered much of our respect in the eyes of residents of industrial cities without Jane Addams, or how scholar Jim Collins has written, one of the first tasks of a the world. Here at home, we have drifted badly, failing to the civil rights movement would have succeeded without Yet it would be a mistake to see a transformational leader leader these days is to get the right people on the bus in renew our public schools, allowing glaring inequalities to Martin Luther King Jr. as a singular, heroic figure atop a white horse, able to the right seats – and get the wrong people off the bus. emerge in our communities, permitting the health-care win the day all by himself. As Warren Bennis wrote some system to weaken, piling up financial IOUs to our younger years ago, the old vision of the lone individual bending Even a great team may fail, however, unless the leadership citizens, and recklessly spoiling the environment.
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