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 Walter Haas, Jr. Fund — supported litigation, public education, ballot initiatives, and other activities focused on securing marriage equality for same-sex couples in the US. (Good Ventures — the foundation that originally incubated Open Philanthropy — also made a few small grants in this area.)
For a deep dive into the role philanthropists played in advancing marriage equality, read our literature review on the subject!
Deworming
Deworming uses drugs to remove helminth parasites, like tapeworms and roundworms, from the body. These parasites can cause anemia, malnutrition, and sometimes death.
Between 1910 and 1920, the Rockefeller Foundation nearly eradicated hookworm in the American South through data collection, treatment, and education. A 2007 study by Professor Hoyt Bleakley linked this campaign to notable improvements in school attendance and future earnings. Similarly, follow-up studies to Miguel and Kremer’s 2004 research also found that childhood deworming boosts lifetime income. Due in part to these findings, Open Philanthropy funds the mass distribution of deworming medicines to children in poor countries, targeting schistosomiasis, hookworm, and other parasites.
The long-term impact of these programs remains uncertain. Nevertheless, the logic behind deworming is compelling: even if long-run effects could potentially be close to zero, the possibility of high impact, combined with the low cost, make it a worthwhile intervention to consider.
Learn more about the ongoing “worm wars” here.
Cage-Free Eggs
“Cage-free” refers to a farm environment for egg-laying hens that is indoors but free of cages. Hens in these settings live significantly better lives than those in battery cages, which cram up to four hens into a space no larger than a microwave.
Before 2015, most major grocery stores and food chains relied on eggs from battery-caged hens. But corporate campaigns led by the Humane Society of the United States, the Humane League, and Mercy for Animals pressured many of the world’s largest food companies to commit to using only cage-free eggs by 2025. Funded primarily by Open Philanthropy, these campaigns secured pledges that will spare hundreds of millions of hens from battery cage confinement. As of 2024, 89% of cage-free egg commitments with deadlines of 2023 or earlier have been fulfilled.
More about the success of cage-free initiatives can be found on our website.
Executive summary: Open Philanthropy highlights seven major philanthropic successes that have inspired their work, demonstrating philanthropy’s potential to drive significant positive change across various domains.
Key points:
The Green Revolution, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, dramatically increased agricultural production and saved an estimated billion lives from starvation.
Philanthropic funding enabled the development of the birth control pill, revolutionizing women’s reproductive health.
Carnegie Corporation’s support led to the creation of Sesame Street, a highly successful educational TV program for children.
The Nunn-Lugar Act, supported by philanthropic research funding, facilitated the deactivation of thousands of nuclear weapons.
Strategic philanthropy played a crucial role in advancing marriage equality in the United States.
Deworming initiatives, historically and currently funded by philanthropy, have shown potential for significant long-term impact on health and economic outcomes.
Open Philanthropy-funded campaigns have successfully pushed for cage-free egg commitments from major food companies, improving the lives of millions of hens.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.
Thanks for sharing!
What is the source for the Green Revolution having saved 1 billion people from starvation? I guess it extrapolates exponential population growth too far, because fertility would become lower for a starving population.
As a side note, I think it would be even less realistic to attribute the impact of saving 1 billion people from starvation to Norman Borlaug, as some do. From his Wikipedia page:
Assuming Norman had a career of 50 years with a salary of 100 k$/year, it costed 5 M$. If so, Norman saved a life for 0.005 $ (= 5*10^6/10^9). GiveWell’s top charities save a life for around 5 k$. As a result, Norman would have been 1.00 M (= 5*10^3/0.005) times as cost-effective as GiveWell’s top charities.