Mission:
To provide timely, relevant content and opportunities for interaction to people working in the affordable housing and community development industry.

Background:
The driving force behind KnowledgePlex was Fannie Mae Foundation president Stacey Stewart. On October 30, 2001, the foundation, in cooperation with nineteen other national organizations involved in affordable housing and community development issues, launched this knowledge portal, which provides free comprehensive information and a means for users to exchange ideas about industry issues. KnowledgePlex connects researchers, advocates, practitioners, educators, and policymakers and gives them access to the latest news, research, and ideas. It now has twenty-four content and strategy partners, among them, the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program, the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard, the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, the Enterprise Foundation, and the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Outstanding Feature:
KnowledgePlex has a state-of-the-art search engine and many areas of interest to explore within the realm of housing and community development. Central to the Web site is the knowledge library, which supplies electronic versions of articles, case studies, best practices, and journals either in their entirety or via a link. Industry news, supplied by LexisNexis, is accessible in several ways: via the top news ticker, a feed from many news sources that is updated each weekday (users can customize the look and size of the module and embed it on their own Web site); top news stories, which relays information about emerging issues in the industry; and the popular Week in Review newsletter, a roundup of housing and community development news, as well as announcements of application due dates, the publication of new studies, and more, sent to over 10,000 subscribers each week. The site also provides chats with experts, an interactive environment with a moderator that enables visitors to question industry leaders on a specific topic; the text of each chat becomes part of KnowledgePlex content. A list of KnowledgePlex partners is available, with links to their Web sites.