While many of the biggest US foundations are dedicated to philanthropy across the country and around the world, the Lilly Endowment focuses its efforts exclusively in its home state of Indiana. Three members of the family that founded Lilly pharmaceuticals –– J. K. Lilly Sr. and sons J. K. Jr. and Eli –– created the endowment in 1937 with money from stocks in their company. Today, with just over $6 billion in assets, according to the Foundation Center, the endowment concentrates on two areas: community development and religion. Community foundations across the state are supported by grants in a process the endowment calls a “virtuous circle” –– that is, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, a condition in which a favorable circumstance or result gives rise to another that subsequently supports the first. And although the endowment has faced critical questions over the years because of its support of religion, the Lilly family has maintained that being a member of a congregation is an important part of a person’s life.
Mark Sappenfield
Dear Reader,
About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:
“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”
If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.
But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.
The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.
We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”
If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.
