On March 15th we asked for your support for Shareable's entry into the Knight News Challenge for a $300,000 grant to redo our site using an open design process and create Shareable 2.0. The competition was intense, with over 1,000 entries received during a one-month period.
Our community stepped up and gave Shareable's project over 450 likes and comments, making the proposal one of the most popular in the entire Knight News Challenge. And it made a difference—we found out late yesterday that Shareable's entry made it past the first round of screening!
Right now, as I write this blog post, a panel of 19 reviewers is meeting in Miami, Florida to read and vote on the 52 projects that made it past the first round. The panel includes journalists, academics, and thinkers from such institutions as the Gates Foundation, IDEO, LinkTV, MIT Media Lab, Mozilla, National Public Radio, and The New York Times. This panel will narrow the pool of 52 down to just 10-15 proposals that will be explored more deeply by the Knight Foundation.
Thank you to everyone who supported Shareable's Knight News Challenge proposal! With this grant we would be able to advance Shareable from an online magazine to a platform for the sharing movement co-created by its community.
We'll find out next week whether our project has advanced from the top 5% to the top 1%. But even if the proposal doesn't make it to the next round, Shareable has still pulled together as a community to take action, made valuable connections with potential funders, and gotten more exposure for the vision of creating a more shareable world.
Thank you!
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