Spot.us, a project to fund community news stories by donations from that audience, has started to raise money for its first brief – a feature on the supply of biofuels to California.

This is the first project submitted to Spot.us, which was set up by David Cohn in May with the help of a grant of $340,000 from the Knight News Challenge.

The brief is asking for a 1,500-2,000 word feature with photos and has been submitted by Alexis Madrigal, a staff writer at Wired.com.

So far $50 has been pledged out of a required $250 with two contributions (one anonymous and one from Cohn himself) of $25.

The site is not-for-profit so the donations will be used to fund the journalism and get articles wider distribution through local media outlets.