TED’s Audacious Project to direct US$400M at transformative projects
TED Talks on Wednesday launched a joint-venture philanthropic initiative under the name “The Audacious Project” that certainly is audacious for the amount of money committed to it.
Some US$400 million from major foundations and donors has been raised through the project to help finance efforts of five organizations aimed at environmental protection, social justice and community involvement.
TED leader Chris Anderson said the venture replaces the TED organization’s annual US$1-million TED prize with a bigger, more ambitious venture to effect change.
“We are fundamentally a platform for ideas,” Anderson said in a media briefing, “but there has always been a desire in the community that ideas should turn into action and this is turning the biggest ideas into action.”
TED, headquartered in New York, has held its key annual conference in Vancouver since 2014 and chose the venue to unveil the project, which Anderson said the organization has been working on under the radar for a few years.
The idea is philanthropic matchmaking, finding and winnowing down change-making ideas with the potential to have big impacts and presenting them to would-be donors with deep pockets to fund them at scale.
“In some ways, we’re attempting to recreate what an (initial public offering) would be for the nonprofit world,” Anderson said. “We call it an APO, or audacious project offering.”
In its first round, five organizations made it through the offering process with US$250 million in multi-year commitments from major donors such as the Skoll Foundation, Virgin Unite, Dalio Foundation and The Bridgespan Group.
Anderson said follow-on donations brought that amount to US$400 million, before announcing the five change-making enterprises during an afternoon session at the conference.
The causes are:
The Bail Project, a revolving fund to help those who can’t afford to post bail after being arrested, interrupting a pattern of pre-trial custody that group Robin Steinberg characterized as a “key driver of mass incarceration,” in the U.S. The program, which started in the Bronx, New York, will be expanded to Queens, New York; St. Louis, Missouris and Tulsa, Oklahoma by the end of its first year.
The Environmental Defense Fund, with help from Audacious, plans to build and launch MethaneSAT, a low-cost satellite, capable of measuring oil and gas methane emissions from space as a way to help eliminate emissions of the climate-killing gas.
GirlTrek, a public-health initiative for African-American women.
Sightsavers, an organization that provides eye care to stop preventable blindness in the developing world.
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Anna Verghese, executive director of the Audacious Project, and formerly head of the TED Prize, said the initiative has partnered with The Bridgespan Group, consultants for non-profits, to work
with recipients as they roll out their projects.
“Change doesn’t happen overnight, so they’re really commitments over three to five years,” Verghese said.
Anderson added the hope is to “build a community of supporters (around initiatives) who will be there with them over the next years, cheering them on and learning along the way.”
TED also opened applications for its next edition of the Audacious Project, which Anderson said the hope is to winnow through ideas to come up with a short list of about 20 by the end of October.
Those ideas will be put to potential donors, Anderson said, to hopefully come up with a new round of recipients by TED Talks 2019.