While many charitable organizations devote time and money to health initiatives, only the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation can say it is the largest nonprofit dedicated solely to “improv[ing] the health and health care of all Americans.” Robert W. Johnson II, son of Johnson & Johnson co-founder Robert W. Johnson, established the Johnson New Brunswick Foundation in 1936 to aid New Jerseyans most affected by the Great Depression. The foundation was renamed to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in 1952, and 20 years later, it officially broadened its reach beyond the borders of the Garden State. With almost $9 billion in assets, according to the Foundation Center, the foundation covers a full spectrum of health-related issues; it works in the four “priority topics” of health policy, prevention, cost and value, and leadership. Specific projects include efforts to reverse childhood obesity and ensure coverage for the uninsured, in addition to grantmaking across the board.
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.
