That was the case until several years ago. “I asked how much money do we have under management by minority- and women-owned money managers? I knew that we had just made a $7 million investment with a particular fund and the answer back was seven million dollars. I said no, no, no. I don’t mean just in that one. I mean how much altogether? The answer was seven million dollars,” he said.

Knight turned to Cambridge Associates to help itself diversify and now about $300 million is in the hands of minority-owned investment firms.

Knight also runs two in-house funds: the Knight Prototype Fund, which “helps media makers, technologists and tinkerers take ideas from concept to demo,” and the Knight Enterprise Fund, which provides early-stage, venture funding for media innovation.  

Ben Wirz, who runs the Enterprise Fund, says the fund’s investment philosophy is the same as the overarching foundation mission: “What we’re looking for is innovation around ways people traditionally engage, whether that is deepening interaction, or engaging better.” One example is GoPop, a mobile app that allows users to combine any two photos, gifs or short video clips to create a visual conversation. It’s a new and unique form of storytelling. There’s also Seene, which allows you to capture 3D images on your phone, and Change.org, an online petition platform.

Wirz is careful to specify that the fund limits investments to between 10% and 15% of any round, and it does not take board seats. “The market dictates terms,” Wirz adds. Still, over half the deals the fund has invested in come via foundation activities. It focuses on four areas: communications, events, networking and recruiting.

Planting Stakes
Look. Learn. Be inspired. Public space. Public life. Carol Coletta, the foundation’s vice president of community and national initiatives, describes the path to engagement. “Engagement is a tough thing to define,” she admits. Realizing that, Knight put some stakes in the ground. Showing, in other words, what engagement is rather than just talking about it.

The Market Street Prototyping Festival showcased ideas for improving San Francisco’s main thoroughfare. A jury of more than 50 “makers, artists, thought leaders and community stakeholders” reviewed hundreds of idea submissions to make Market Street “a more vibrant public space.” Winners got funding, workspace and mentorship.

“If you don’t have real, robust, authentic engagement of people in communities, the future is poorer for it and cities are poorer for it,” Colletta says.

Back across the country and through downtown Miami, all the way up to the 33rd floor of the glass high-rise building that is the Southeast Financial Center, all this activity is part of a grander plan for Knight and how it’s splintering from supporting journalism alone.

“It really is about funding opportunity,” says Ibargüen. “We began to see the value in working with a media lab [MIT’s], the value of basing a lot of our activity around a place that had 25-, 26-year-old graduate student geniuses who were driven by the media, who were driven by the programming, by the development of programming—not by telling the story, not by informing community.