EA - Seven Philanthropic Wins: The Stories That Inspired Open Phil's Offices by Open Philanthropy

The Nonlinear Library

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Seven Philanthropic Wins: The Stories That Inspired Open Phil's Offices, published by Open Philanthropy on July 3, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Since our early days, we've studied the history of philanthropy to understand what great giving looks like. The lessons we learned made us more ambitious and broadened our view of philanthropy's potential. The rooms in our San Francisco office pay tribute to this legacy. Seven of them are named after philanthropic "wins" - remarkable feats made possible by philanthropic funders. In this post, we'll share the story behind each win. Green Revolution During the second half of the twentieth century, the Green Revolution dramatically increased agricultural production in developing countries like Mexico and India. At a time of rapid population growth, this boost in production reduced hunger, helped to avert famine, and stimulated national economies. The Rockefeller Foundation played a key role by supporting early research by Norman Borlaug and others to enhance agricultural productivity. Applications of this research - developed in collaboration with governments, private companies, and the Ford Foundation - sparked the Green Revolution, which is estimated to have saved a billion people from starvation. Read more about the Rockefeller Foundation's role in the Green Revolution in Political Geography. The Pill In 1960, the FDA approved "the pill", an oral contraceptive that revolutionized women's reproductive health by providing a user-controlled family planning option. This groundbreaking development was largely funded by Katharine McCormick, a women's rights advocate and one of MIT's first female graduates. In the early 1950s, McCormick collaborated with Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, to finance critical early-stage research that led to the creation of the pill. Today, the birth control pill stands as one of the most common and convenient methods of contraception, empowering generations of women to decide when to start a family. For a comprehensive history of the pill, try Jonathan Eig's The Birth of the Pill. Sesame Street In 1967, the Carnegie Corporation funded a feasibility study on educational TV programming for children, which led to the creation of the Children's Television Workshop and Sesame Street. Sesame Street became one of the most successful television ventures ever, broadcast in more than 150 countries and the winner of more than 200 Emmy awards. Research monitoring the learning progress of Sesame Street viewers has demonstrated significant advances in early literacy. A deeper look into how philanthropy helped to launch Sesame Street is available here. Nunn-Lugar The Nunn-Lugar Act (1991), also known as the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, was enacted in response to the collapse of the USSR and the dangers posed by dispersed weapons of mass destruction. US Senators Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar led the initiative, focusing on the disarmament and securing of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons from former Soviet states. In the course of this work, thousands of nuclear weapons were deactivated or destroyed. The act's inception and success were largely aided by the strategic philanthropy of the Carnegie Corporation and the MacArthur Foundation, which funded research at Brookings on the "cooperative security" approach to nuclear disarmament and de-escalation. Learn more about the Nunn-Lugar Act and its connection to philanthropy in this paper. Marriage Equality The Supreme Court's landmark ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges granted same-sex couples the right to marry, marking the culmination of decades of advocacy and a sizable cultural shift toward acceptance. Philanthropic funders - including the Gill Foundation and Freedom to Marry, an organization initially funded by the Evelyn and Wa...