Seven Philanthropic Wins: The Stories That Inspired Open Phil’s Offices

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.