Chance to get money for Drupal-related development

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation is seeking proposals for innovative ways to shape the future of news and community. "In 2007, we will award a total of $5 million to individuals, organizations or businesses that can show their ideas will transform community life." It's important to note that their focus is on projects that contribute to physical community-building in some way.

"In a democracy that is organized by geography, the fate of every village, town, suburb and metropolis depends on citizens being able to get the news they need to run their lives and their governments. The Knight Brothers 21st Century News Challenge hopes to recognize transformative ideas, pilot projects, leadership initiatives and investment opportunities that will help improve the flow of journalism, information and news in the public interest."

Here's the link to the guidelines and simple application: http://newschallenge.org/

My own agenda is working with others to create various parts of a universal, democratic communications network (neither unmoderated nor moderated, but with prominence decided by random juries of people in the network). It would serve as a de facto collaborative journalism enterprise, by putting news from all different sources together and allowing connections to be made over time so that there's as good a chance as any the truth will come out. The site would let people tie proposed ideas and actions to news articles, in a larger network of "People Who Give a Damn." The premise: if everyone who cared about something actually knew about everyone else who cared, people would be able to work together to change things for the better a lot more often. I can go into this concept in roughly infinite detail with anyone who would like to.

Mostly I hope people put in really strong applications to this foundation for any kind of Drupal project, as anything that benefits Drupal benefits all of us, and quite honestly benefits the goals of the Knight Brothers foundation too.

Off topic: While we're talking about media, money, and hinting at solidarity, I want to mention that there's an excellent independent new source on its last leg of a crash-course to reach reader-funded sustainability: the NewStandard - http://newstandardnews.net/

So, to recap: there's people giving away money for a good cause (with a leaning toward open source) that could absolutely benefit Drupal, the application is fairly easy (here's a proposal I put in for a Related Nodes module), and I'd love to collaborate with people to get more money to do better things for more projects!

You can reach me through my contact form or at my cell phone, 508 737 0582. Thanks! If people think it's a good idea, use this thread to track which applications have been put in, and what responses we get back.