Soul of the Community (SOTC) is a three-year study conducted by Gallup of the 26 Knight Foundation communities across the United States focusing on the emotional side of the connection between residents and their communities.

In its first year, the study compared residents’ engagement level to the GDP growth in the 26 communities over the past five years. The findings (overall report, reports by community) show a significant correlation between community-citizen engagement and the economic growth.

10 domains that were found to have varying levels of impact in driving community-citizen engagement:

* Basic services – infrastructure supports (highways, housing and healthcare)
* Economy
* Safety
* Leadership and elected officials
* Aesthetics – physical beauty and green spaces
* Education
* Social offerings - opportunities for social interaction and citizen caring
* Openness/welcomeness – how welcoming the community is to different people
* Civic involvement - residents’ commitment to their community through voting or voluntarism
* Social capital – social networks between residents

Social offerings is the most important driver of community-citizen engagement overall. Aesthetics and openness/welcomeness to others also have major influence on community-citizen engagement.

Over the coming years, the researchers will analyze the trends of both community-citizen engagement and economic growth and definitively show whether community engagement drives economic growth or the other way around.

Within a smaller microcosm, such as a company, Gallup has been able to show that increasing employee engagement will indeed lead to improved financial performance.

Gallup and Knight Foundation will conduct the second wave of the survey in spring of 2009. The additional data will help show the impact of the economic crisis on emotional community-citizen engagement.

What parts of this study would you like more information about?

Today, Knight is launching a new community site called Knight Pulse, a place to discuss the future of information.

Updated: Here’s a video introducing the site:

Despite the current explosion of information, we are less informed. And in a world defined by information exchange, we need new ways to give, share, find, and receive information in our communities.

The goal of the Pulse site is to start conversations with a video post and listen as you debate ideas in the comments (and in other places, linking back). The site gives you a chance to develop collaborative projects about information that Knight Foundation may consider funding.

On the site, you’ll find information projects that the Knight Foundation is funding, events that foundation staff and Pulse users are attending, opportunities to volunteer, and blog posts about information needs from feeds across the Web.

And you’ll find profiles of people like you, who are also interested in improving information delivery–from details about local restaurant inspections (Everyblock) to discovering perspectives from bloggers around the world (Rising Voices).

Join the conversation and let us know what you think of the site–we’re using Get Satisfaction and UserVoice for feedback, both on the Pulse ‘Widgets‘ page, or leave a comment below–

The site is built in Drupal, and we are very pleased with the team at Development Seed and their great work on this project.

Until 5 PST this afternoon, you can watch the live webcast of the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy Community Forum at Google.

Archived video will live on the Knight Commission site, and smaller clips are in a Flickr set and below, some highlights from the media panel that just finished a few minutes ago:

Linda O’Bryon, Chief Content Officer, KQED Public Television talks about QUEST content collaboration:

Knight Commissioner Andrew Mooney asked about journalism business models:

And Jim Bettinger, director of the Knight Stanford Fellows answered:

Knight Commissioner Michael K. Powell brought up “information snacking”:

And Raj Jayadev, Founder, Silicon Valley De-Bug talked about the internet as a gateway:

Posts on the speakers are on the new Knight Commission blog.

What do you think about journalism business models and information snacking based on the videos above?

Today is the Knight Commission Community Forum at Google, the third meeting of the Knight Commission, a group of “luminaries assembled to recommend both public and private measures that would help American communities better meet their information needs.”

The day is just beginning here:

To follow along, the discussion is being webcast live here and the proceedings are being blogged by Kristie Wells of Social Media Club and Josh Wilson.

The Knight Twitter account will also have updates throughout the day; ask questions in the comments below and on Twitter.

Leonard Witt posted an interview today with Knight Foundation consultant Mike Maidenberg on the new Knight Community Information Challenge.

Here’s an excerpt:

Leonard Witt: Tell me a little about the Knight Community Information Challenge, why is Knight involved and for what end?

Mike Maidenberg: Knight Foundation is deeply interested in how information flows in physical communities. We know the power of the web in specialized fields. What we are trying to understand and experiment with is how the web can be used to tie local communities together, with the newspaper a model from the past.

Read the entire article on PJNet, and find out more about the challenge on the official site.

What other questions do you have for Mike about the Community Information Challenge?

Nathaniel Whittemore of the Do Good Well blog on the new Knight Community Information Challenge:

“…the implication for the Knight grant might be that smart community foundations find ways to help their communities tap into existing citizen-led or socially concerned news networks and become human filters and hubs for the information most relevant for their daily lives.”

The rest of the post offers distinctions between communities, networks, depth, and breadth.

Do you think community foundations should tap into existing networks or develop new ones?

In a recent speech, Knight CEO and president Alberto Ibargüen announced a new media innovation strategy and four projects that are part of this strategy.

You can read the entire speech here; abbreviated descriptions of the four projects (they share similar names) are below.

Knight News Challenge (newschallenge.org)

The Knight News Challenge funds ideas that use digital media to deliver news and information to geographically defined communities.

This is a yearly contest about the future of local news delivery (and includes projects in a range of media areas such as mobile, video, and microfunding).

Knight Commission on Information Needs (knightcomm.org)

The Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy, in partnership with the Aspen Institute, will propose public policy that will facilitate meeting those needs.

This is a new group with fifteen members that will make recommendations in 2009 about core community information needs.

Knight Center of Digital Excellence (knightcenter.info)

The Knight Center of Digital Excellence is a not-for-profit consultancy to help communities across the United States ensure digital access to every citizen.

This is sometimes called “universal access,” and the goal is to accelerate digital access projects across the U.S.

Knight Community Information Challenge (informationneeds.org)

Community Foundation initiatives to meet the information needs of their communities are matched by funds from Knight Foundation.

This is to help community foundations use media and technology to deliver information to their communities.

Questions? Leave a comment below.

Youth digital culture scholar danah boyd is one of the fifteen members of the new Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy.

Today, she is at the Newseum for the Commission’s first meeting; below, she talks about her work and the information lifestyle she hopes to voice for the group:

Video by V.P. of Communications Marc Fest

You can watch the Commission’s live webcast until 5 pm ET today here.

What questions do you have for danah and the other members of the Commission?

Today, the fifteen members of the Knight Commission on Information Needs of a Community in a Democracy meet for the first time at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. to discuss democracy, economics, human behavior, and technology.

A joint project of Knight Foundation and the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program, the meeting will be webcast live from 10 am to 5 pm ET from the Commission Web site. Go to the webcast >

Yesterday, Michelle P B Ferrier of MyTopiaCafe wrote a post for Poynter Online’s E-Media Tidbits about social capital and research she hopes the Commission will build on:

I hope that this commission examines the groundwork already done by the Saguaro Seminar folks, as well as research by the Saguaro short-form survey instruments could be adapted to be deployed on hyperlocal online communities and blogs to test whether the content, functions, design, architecture and personalities create a rich exchange — and growth — of social capital.

What do you think the Commission should discuss today on the topics of democracy, economics, human behavior, and technology?

(The next meeting, August 9th, will focus on journalism.)

Today, Knight Foundation announced at $24 million initiative for community foundations to use media and technology to better inform their communities.

To apply for the grant-making challenge, submit a project idea in no more than 200 words between June 30th and September 15th on the initiative site, InformationNeeds.org (you can sign up to be reminded when the application process opens).

The FAQ is here.

What core community information needs do you think should be addressed first?