Literacy is a commodity of measurable value to those who acquire it. This proposition is easy to accept if the many benefits of acquiring literacy are considered: better jobs, more productive use of leisure time, greater self-sufficiency, increased ability to help one's children with school work and hobbies. The Gannett Foundation first became involved with special literacy funding in 1985. Perhaps its most successful venture in literacy education has been The Literacy Challenge, a state-level competition in cooperation with the newspaper "USA Today." The foundation has also received proposals from about 150 local organizations in more than 80 communities. The foundation's philosophy in awarding grants has been that grants should contribute to action improving life for beneficiaries and that specific action should be defined at the level of responsibility for those actions and where benefits are to be received. The chief goal of adult literacy programs should be to see that more people learn how to read, write, and do arithmetic effectively and that more volunteers are involved in helping achieve that goal. Other tenets of the foundation are that literacy help should be provided in the neighborhood or at work, that adult learners themselves are one of the most important resources of a literacy program, and that most workplace literacy programs result in bottom-line benefits for employers. (MN)