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The Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy was a blue ribbon panel of seventeen media, policy and community leaders. Its purpose was to assess the information needs of communities, and recommend measures to help Americans better meet those needs. Its Report, Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age, was the first major commission on media since the Hutchins Commission in the 1940's and the Kerner and Carnegie Commissions of the 1960's.

We are a collegial, peer-driven community of foundation and nonprofit communications professionals who share ideas, evidence, and lessons about how smart communications improve lives. Through meetings and events, publications, social outreach, and an online community, we elevate the role of communications across the social sector. We help our members build relationships, skills, and confidence to navigate a shifting information landscape and to be a voice for change that benefits both individuals and society.

LocalData is a new digital toolkit designed to help community groups, professional planners and government agencies modernize community-led data collection of place-based information. THE NEED Across the country, community groups, planners and government agencies collect parcel-level information about communities. Typically, the process for collecting, transcribing and cleaning this data can be confusing, lengthy and disempowering. LocalData transforms this process with technology. LocalData began as a 2012 Code for America project with the City of Detroit. Three Code for America fellows (Matt, Alicia and Prashant) identified a need for local data in Detroit. Though community groups were actively surveying neighborhoods and using this data - neighborhood level surveys took a long time and further stressed the under-resourced technical assistance providers that were assisting this effort. Additionally, comprehensive city-wide surveys were taken infrequently, often involving multiple partners, with months of surveying and transcription.

Few Americans are aware of the steady build-up of innovative community wealth building strategies throughout the United States. Community-Wealth.org brings together, for the first time, information about the broad range of community wealth building activity.

E-Democracy.org builds online public space in the heart of real democracy and community. Our mission is to harness the power of online tools to support participation in public life, strengthen communities, and build democracy. Starting with the world's first election information website in 1994 in Minnesota, today we host over 50 local Issues Forums in 17 communities across three countries - New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In addition to these "online town halls" and our "community life" forums we promote civic engagement online around the world.

Foundations can help improve education, public safety, the environment and other areas only if people understand the issues and are engaged. Through the Knight Community Information Challenge, dozens of foundations have invested in such initiatives as local reporting and digital literacy to help communities thrive.

Mission, Goal, Vision and Values The Institute for Local Government promotes good government at the local level with practical, impartial and easy-to-use resources for California communities. Goal The Institute's goal is to be the leading provider of information that enables local officials and their communities to make good decisions. Vision The Institute envisions a future in California in which: People value their local public institutions. Local agencies effectively deliver public services. All segments of the community are appropriately engaged in key public decisions. Decision-makers make informed policy choices based on their best sense of the public's interest.

Democracy made Athens a dynamic, creative force 2500 years ago. Even then, however, democracy was fragile, sometimes stupid, and short-lived. Plato held it in low esteem and Aristotle likened it to "mob rule." Why, then, do we want to create 21st Century Agoras. What we want to create are communities energized by vibrant participative democracy. In our Information Age as old hierarchies prove dysfunctional, it is imperative that human communities have flexible ways to tap their wisdom and power. We do not believe that unstructured discussion on the Athenian model is adequate for dealing with the complexities of the Information Age. It was not adequate even for the simpler (by an order of magnitude as determined by a metric called Situational Complexity Index) situations of that bygone age. The Information Age challenges us to make participative democracy a liberating force in the world today. Research and proven methodology, aided by networked computing, has resolved at least one basic dilemma of democracy:   How can we hear perspectives of all the stakeholders, make collective sense of them, and reach decisions and act on pressing issues? The approach that overcomes this dilemma and multiple other hindrances to dialogic democracy is called the Structured Dialogic Design (SDD). The Agoras Institute convenes these dialogues as Co-Laboratories of Democracy. This process is a fusion of the theory of Generic Design Science and the consultative practice of Interactive Management, both developed over the last 30 years by Dr. John Warfield and our founder, Aleco Christakis.

The 50 State Solution was conceived in early 2016 by California Forward (CA Fwd) as a transpartisan effort to build supportive infrastructure--and a platform for sharing information and ideas--among those working on political reform at the state level. While CA Fwd has served as the initiator and early catalyst of the effort, the vision for 50 State Solution is that it becomes an ongoing effort with shared leadership from the political reform community. The goal of the effort is explicitly not to make sure every organization is doing the same work or working on the same issue. Instead, the goal is create a learning community where reformers can share stories of success and failure, find allies, create coalitions and build community.

Public spaces are an important part of Knight Foundation's work in cities and the communities where we invest. We believe that great public spaces have the power to transform cities. They are where neighbors can meet and residents can enjoy local arts and culture, take a jog or spend time with family. They help to advance civic engagement and the attachment people feel to their cities - both necessities for creating more informed and engaged communities. Recent research by the Center for Active Design shows that public spaces can help to facilitate community connection, trust and involvement.

The Resistance Manual is an open-source platform to harness the collective power of the people to resist the impact of a Trump presidency and to continue to make progress in our communities. The Resistance Manual is focused on presenting truthful and actionable information. All content is reviewed for accuracy and relevance before being posted. Already, thousands of pieces of content have been contributed to the site from people all over the country, helping to keep communities informed and ready for the work ahead.

"IDEO is currently coordinating with global response authorities who want to make sure people have actionable, relevant information around COVID-19. We'd like to share a range of experiences from around the world with them, showing how people are accessing information: What's working well to motivate behavior change, what isn't working, and what feels missing. "

Learn more about the system dynamics lab at Washington University in St. Louis. We are experts in developing simulation models of problems facing complex social systems. A resource for students, professionals, and researchers, we help build the capacity of those who want to learn and apply system dynamics in order to understand and address specific problems within an organization and community. Our Research Our research includes a focus on understanding the role of social determinants at the community level, identifying strategies for reducing disparities, and informing implementation, scale-up and sustainability of evidence based interventions. Application areas include community responses to intimate partner violence, mental health, natural resources, obesity, cancer, child and maternal health, financial inclusion, K-12 education, and juvenile/criminal justice. Community Engagement We are actively involved in advancing participatory group model building (GMB) methods in diverse communities including both international and domestic settings. Teaching We are invested in building capacity in system dynamics among the next generation of researchers, policy makers, and social innovators. The lab offers a sequence of graduate level courses that prepare students to tackle dynamic social problems with innovative, design-driven, transdisciplinary solutions.

The information in our study covers the city of Long Beach, Calif. In each community, the Knight Soul of the Community study identified factors that emotionally attach residents to where they live

The Sunlight Foundation is a non-profit, nonpartisan organization that uses the power of the Internet to catalyze greater government openness and transparency, and provides new tools and resources for media and citizens, alike. We are committed to improving access to government information by making it available online, indeed redefining "public" information as meaning "online," and by creating new tools and websites to enable individuals and communities to better access that information and put it to use.

The Global Development Research Center is an independent nonprofit think tank that carries out initiatives in education, research and practice, in the spheres of environment, urban, community and information, and at scales that are effective.

The American Library Association (ALA) is the oldest and largest library association in the world. Founded on October 6, 1876 during the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, the mission of ALA is "to provide leadership for the development, promotion and improvement of library and information services and the profession of librarianship in order to enhance learning and ensure access to information for all."

Healthy City is an information + action resource that unites community voices, rigorous research and innovative technologies to solve the root causes of social inequity.

I am a doctor and I work as an innovation consultant with a specific focus on the rapidly evolving information and technology landscape in health care. I'm also the Founder of the Creating Health Collaborative. Market 1.jpg At its heart, health care is an information business but gone are the days when a few medical journals passively influenced the delivery of care. Driven by technology and fuelled by greater societal expectations, health care is embracing information as an active player in improving care while reducing costs.