Institution: Rockefeller Foundation

A massive program in nursing education extended to 53 schools across the globe. But it never became a top priority of the foundation that supported it.

The mid-20th century was an era influenced by mass communications, and a handful of philanthropic programs sought to tap into the possibilities of film and radio.

At midcentury, Rockefeller Foundation staffers hoped new technologies might find solutions to complex problems.

Programs designed to build public health infrastructure, eradicate disease, and increase access to healthcare have formed the core of more than a hundred years of one foundation’s strategy.

Convenings at Bellagio have tackled global challenges of every sort, from trade and finance to public health, agriculture, and food security.

Rockefeller Foundation agriculture programs begun in Mexico achieved global reach through four major research institutes. Building them was the result of partnership.

A foundation set on eradicating mosquito-born diseases had to accept that disease control was good enough.

Two decades of funding helped legitimize the study of psychiatry as a medical issue, not a problem of character.

As the scarcity of global resources became increasingly worrisome in the 20th century, these organizations more boldly approached work in population and family planning.

India was not the first country to take up the new seeds and methods developed by the Rockefeller Foundation, but the story of India’s adoption of them in the 1960s is dramatic.