When the Fund helped launch the North Carolina Local News Workshop in 2020, the goal wasn’t just to launch a new initiative—it was to create lasting, accessible support for the field. Now known as NC Local, the organization plays a critical capacity-building role by cultivating connection and shared learning across North Carolina’s news and information ecosystem.

NC Local convenes an annual summit that brings together hundreds of journalists and trusted communicators to build community and share insights, co-hosted with the NC Open Government Coalition. The organization’s community listening sessions surface local information needs that often go unrecognized. Through a widely read weekly newsletter, NC Local keeps the field informed on timely happenings and resources. Each of these offerings strengthens access to local news and the ability of local news providers to operate more strategically, collaboratively, and sustainably.

With shrinking newsroom budgets, covering state legislatures is increasingly difficult. Since 2022, the Fund has supported Code the Dream to develop, scale, and maintain a free version of UpState, a real-time tracking tool of North Carolina’s legislative process. By providing searchable transcripts and recordings of legislative sessions, the tool saves time, reduces costs, and improves access to critical information.

UpState serves as a powerful capacity-building resource, expanding how newsrooms, civic organizations, and other trusted communicators can access and make sense of public business, even at a distance from Raleigh. It equips communicators to deliver timely, relevant policy updates to their communities—informing and engaging more residents and equipping them to hold decision-makers accountable. By reducing technical and financial barriers, UpState strengthens the capacity of the entire field to respond to fast-moving policy developments and better serve the public.

Investing in regional capacity generates meaningful local collaboration, a core priority of the Fund’s ecosystem approach. In Charlotte, for example, the Charlotte Journalism Collaborative fuels community-led journalism—such as its recent COVID-19 retrospective and its bilingual, in-depth affordable housing reporting. Through convenings like the CJC Summit, co-hosted with fellow grant partner WFAE, the Collaborative centers local voices in setting news agendas and uncovering solutions to move Charlotte forward, including on issues like affordable housing. These projects foster deeper collaboration across the city and show how local news advances a thriving community. These efforts have long engaged a range of local funders, including in the recent launch of Press Forward Charlotte.

In Western North Carolina, WNC Health Network plays a different but equally vital, collaborative role. The WNC Health Communicators Collaborative brings together a wide ranging network of public health communicators from Local Health Departments, Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), hospitals, community-based organizations, and academic institutions—spanning the 18 westernmost counties of North Carolina + the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. This coalition works hand-in-hand with leaders across rural areas to strengthen regional communication capacity, elevate professional expertise, and respond to emergent crises and public health issues. Their rapid response communications tools about wildfires — six months after Hurricane Helene — bolstered the capacity of trusted communicators and ensured communities had the information they needed about the threat.

In a state where voting laws frequently change, You Can Vote helps communities stay informed and engaged by delivering clear, accurate, nonpartisan election information. You Can Vote monitors policy changes and translates complex updates into plain language. 

You Can Vote’s resources and trainings are free, regularly updated, and designed for easy use by communicators, educators, and other organizations. This timely guidance empowers a statewide network of trusted communicators to share critical voting information with their communities—including those most impacted by barriers to the ballot box. You Can Vote strengthens the field’s collective ability to inform, engage, and mobilize voters across the state.