8 Bridges Workshop is supporting the launch of this new independent foundation that will serve the Greater Philadelphia region. IPMF was formed with the proceeds from the FCC’s spectrum auction, whereby WYBE Channel 35 successfully raised $131 million. The new foundation will support the independent media, community expression, and the ecosystem of media makers in the region.

In 2018 the Wyncote Foundation published our report, Investing in Local Journalism, Public Media and Storytelling: Examples from Place-Based Foundations. The report profiles eight foundations whose distinctive media funding reflects local communities’ concerns and priorities. The report is part of an ongoing initiative at Wyncote to encourage media funding among place-based foundations.

8 Bridges worked with the McKnight Foundation’s communications staff and program directors team to understand how program areas approach media and strategic communications and to identify and propose a learning agenda for the team, in part based on similar work among comparable place-based foundations in the U.S.

In 2016, we worked with the foundation’s Detroit Program to conduct a formative evaluation of the Kresge Artists In Detroit program at its 10-year point. The evaluation encompassed the Kresge Artist Fellowships program, Creative Many’s professional practices program, and ArtX: Detroit, a festival featuring Kresge Fellows’ work. We wrote the final report detailing our findings.

We prepared a background paper suggesting approaches and offering examples as background for a board discussion about whether and how the foundation might add operating support grants to its portfolio.

Wyncote commissioned our research into digital innovation in legacy cultural institutions. We created Like, Link, Share: How cultural institutions are embracing digital technology, featuring 40 legacy cultural institutions that were nominated by peers as innovative leaders in technology. The report and its accompanying website summarize key themes and lessons learned, profile eight organizations in depth and provide background on 32 others.