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38 maconmagazine.com | October/November 2024 a foundation trustee from 1987 to 2023, lives in Macon and is highly active in the community. Charles Olson, her son and also a proud resident of Macon, joined the Knight Foundation board in 2023. MAP - P I N G O U T MAC O N ' S F U T U R E Knight Foundation's total investment in Macon since 1969 is nearly $75 million, according to Murphey, including the landmark $14 million investment during the bicentennial. "For the past 19 years, we have focused on supporting downtown revitalization efforts alongside local partners, ensuring a downtown for all to live, work and engage," Murphy noted. Why invest in Downtown Macon? Well, hopefully as a Macon Magazine reader, the case has been made: historic city centers have concentrated infrastructure – from transportation to plumbing to extant buildings. In a single city block, one can make a major difference, hosting hundreds of residents and dozens of businesses with a small footprint. This economic development can spur a major increase in the tax base for an entire municipality, li ing the quality of life for everyone – even far beyond city limits. Informed by Knight's success in nearby Beall's Hill and College Hill, the Macon Action Plan (MAP) was launched in 2014, with a follow up version of MAP 2.0 in 2019 and MAP XL this year. Most of Knight's current investments today are centered around the implementation of MAP. MAP is "a community-informed roadmap for guiding the development of Macon's urban core," Murphey explained, noting that Knight Foundation's 50/50 partnership newspaper companies in America. They built a profitable business that supported great journalism and were early and smart adapters of new technology," said Lynn Murphey, Knight Foundation's Macon director. "Knight newspapers thrived because they were committed to their communities and because they were committed to independent journalism, but they were always clear about its limitations. For them the work was never simply about journalism as a field or an industry, but how to meet the information needs of communities so that the people might 'determine their own true interests.'" In 1950 the Knight Memorial Education Fund turned into the Knight Foundation with a transfer of $9,047 in assets. That small seed has grown into a mighty tree, with a network of branches that reaches into the 26 cities where the Knight brothers once owned newspapers, including Macon and Milledgeville in Central Georgia, with hundreds of millions of dollars in philanthropy. They aim to stay committed to the Knight family's original values as social investors. "We support the development of engaged, inclusive and equitable communities toward a more effective democracy," Murphy explained. While the Knight network stretches across the country from the foundation's headquarters in Miami all the way to San Jose, California, there are a number of personal ties that make Macon and Georgia a special place for Knight Foundation. John Knight, Jack's son, lived in Columbus, where Knight Foundation funded a memorial in his honor. Beverly Knight Olson, one of Jim's four daughters and "We support the development of engaged, inclusive and equitable communities toward a more effective democracy." Macon representatives at the Knight Media Forum. Citizens weigh in to the Macon Action Plan. Photo by Leah Yetter courtesy of Knight Foundation.