Foundations awarded nearly $2 billion in grants to the media from 2009 to 2011, part of a growing trend of philanthropy support for journalism and telecommunications, a new report found.

Grants to media-related projects, in fact, jumped 21 percent during those two years, compared to 6 percent for other domestic causes, according to a report by the Washington, D.C.-based Foundation Center.

"We can now confirm that philanthropy is responding to the disruption of traditional media organizations in the digital age," said Eric Newton, senior adviser to the president at the Miami-based Knight Foundation, one of the other sponsors of the study.

More than 1,000 foundations made 12,040 media-related grants that totaled $1.86 billion during the two-year period, according to the report, billed as the most comprehensive analysis of media grant making in the nation.

The grants data was culled from the nation's 1,000 largest foundations. It found:

• Investment in new media, such as Web-based and mobile, was four times greater than traditional media such as newspaper, TV and radio. Grant making to new media jumped 116 percent during the two years, compared to 29 percent for traditional media.

• Foundations are supporting media-related work across many areas, such as journalism, broadband infrastructure and media access issues.

• The top three funders were the Freedom Forum Inc. ($128 million); the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation ($127 million); and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation ($105 million). The report notes that 95 percent of the Freedom Forum funds went to the Newseum in Washington, D.C.

• The top five recipients were the Newseum in Washington, D.C., and projects of the University of Southern California, THIRTEEN (New York Public Media), National Public Radio and WGBH Educational Foundation in Boston.

Go to knightfoundation.org.

Jean Hopfensperger 612 673-4511