The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has announced grants totaling more than $3.3 million in support of community information projects.

Part of a larger Knight initiative to find and fund solutions to growing gaps in community news and information, the grants to four community and place-based foundations will be used to help scale local news and information projects. Recipients include the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, which was awarded $2 million to help local news startups in New Jersey experiment with revenue models; the Chicago Community Trust, which will receive $500,000 for its Smart Chicago project; the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, which was awarded $500,000 in support of a project aimed at helping ethnic and public media better inform the citizenry of changes to state education standards; and the Incourage Community Foundation of Wisconsin, which will receive $250,000 for its efforts to support hyperlocal news outlets and leverage information to create a more active and engaged citizenry.

"Today, there are hundreds of community and place-based foundations thinking about the information needs of their communities like never before," said Knight Foundation president Alberto Ibargüen. "And not just thinking but acting to meet those needs in ways through programs that are innovative, creative, and tailored to the specific needs of their constituencies."