Out of Sight

This is a beautiful, five-minute animation from Asia that tells the story of a little girl who looses her guide dog has to rediscover her world on her own.  A stirring and charming short that imagines how a visually impaired child might see the world.  Enjoy!

Cancer and War

This is an election year and it gives us good reason to think a little about where our government spends its money.  In particular, what is the outcome of all that spending?  Today, we present to you a powerful chart from 2011 by Tony Piro who pens the comic Calamities of Nature.

Where would you prefer your money to go?

The Hidden Meaning of Charity

I thought this was pretty nice and very pertinent to the mission of Open Endowment.  In addition to her Indexed comic, which is very clever and typically very wise, Jessica Hagy has some cute "hidden meaning" word lists on her website.

Our 7 Billion Neightbors

A few months ago, our human population on Earth crossed 7,000,000,000.  This is really quite amazing.  Certainly, it's a tribute to the work of countless scientists, doctors, farmers, families, workers, and businesses to reach this milestone.  That is a lot of people to feed, shelter, heal, and nurture.

National Geographic, who we admire as one of the leading non-profit scientific and educational institutions in the world, has been doing a series on the 7 Billion over the last year in their magazines, websites, institutes, and television programs.

This video provides some thought provoking questions about what it means to be living now and how our world may be changing in the near future.

Enjoy!

We're Official! 501(c)(3) Status Approved!

Last month, we were given some very positive news by the US Internal Revenue Service.  After more than a year in the review process, our application for status as a tax-exempt public charity was approved!

Open Endowment NFP on the IRS Exempt Organizations List

Of course, we have been operating as an Illinois Not-For-Profit Corporation since we launched our service in November of 2010.  Fortunately, IRS rules allow contributions that have been made to a non-profit to be tax-deductible to donors retroactively (for a defined period) as long as that organization is deemed to be operating for the public good by the IRS at a later date.

We are VERY pleased to have obtained official recognition as a 501(c)(3) charitable organization from the IRS.  It is an important step in building our service and building our community of philanthropists.

Also, we would like to extend a VERY warm THANK YOU to our partners at Mayer Brown.  Our excellent team of attorneys has done a fantastic job as addressing all the questions and concerns, both from our own team  and the IRS.  Thank you so much!

And thanks to YOU for supporting us, and participating in the community here at Open Endowment.  This is an  important step in making it possible for small philanthropy to make a big impact.

Our Pale Blue Dot

A great animation featuring Carl Sagan's words from Pale Blue Dot. His words about our plant and our humanity are poignant. "That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you've ever heard of...lived out their lives." "For the moment, the earth is where we make our stand." Let's take care of it.

Enjoy the video!





Pale Blue Dot - Animation from Ehdubya on Vimeo.

Workshop at Vanderbilt University

Thank you so much to the Curb Center at Vanderbilt University for the invitation to speak in Nashville last week! The Curb Center for Art, Entrepreneurship, and Public Policy is an amazing center that focuses on bringing art and creativity to the forefront of education and public life. I think their mission is just fantastic and it was wonderful to learn more about it!

Certainly the world would be a better place if everyone was living a more creative and expressive life. It's great to see so many smart minds working on ways to make it so.

Thanks also to all the students that participated in the Open Endowment workshop! You brought up some very interesting concepts and possibilities. We certainly covered a lot of great ideas! I hope that the Open Endowment team is able to turn some of those ideas into real experiences in the coming months and years.

I hope that this was the first of many interactions between Open Endowment and the Curb Center for Art, Entrepreneurship, and Public Policy. I'm a big fan of their work and mission!

David