Omidyar Network
Encyclopedia
Omidyar Network is a philanthrocapitalist
Venture philanthropy
Venture philanthropy, also known as philanthrocapitalism, takes concepts and techniques from venture capital finance and high technology business management and applies them to achieving philanthropic goals.Venture philanthropy is characterized by:...

 investment firm
Investment company
An investment company is a company whose main business is holding securities of other companies purely for investment purposes. The investment company invests money on behalf of its shareholders who in turn share in the profits and losses....

 established in 2004 by eBay
EBay
eBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...

 founder Pierre Omidyar
Pierre Omidyar
Pierre Morad Omidyar is a French-Iranian American entrepreneur and philanthropist/economist, and the founder/chairman of the eBay auction site...

 and his wife Pam. To date, Omidyar Network has committed more than $290 million to for-profit companies
Business
A business is an organization engaged in the trade of goods, services, or both to consumers. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, where most of them are privately owned and administered to earn profit to increase the wealth of their owners. Businesses may also be not-for-profit...

 and nonprofit organization
Nonprofit organization
Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...

s that foster economic advancement and encourage individual participation across multiple investment areas, including microfinance
Microfinance
Microfinance is the provision of financial services to low-income clients or solidarity lending groups including consumers and the self-employed, who traditionally lack access to banking and related services....

, property rights, government transparency and social media
Social media
The term Social Media refers to the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into an interactive dialogue. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0,...

.

Structure

Composed of a 501(c)(3) and a Limited Liability Company
Limited liability company
A limited liability company is a flexible form of enterprise that blends elements of partnership and corporate structures. It is a legal form of company that provides limited liability to its owners in the vast majority of United States jurisdictions...

 (LLC), Omidyar Network is structured to work across the social, business, and government sectors. Like a traditional foundation, it makes grants
Grant (money)
Grants are funds disbursed by one party , often a Government Department, Corporation, Foundation or Trust, to a recipient, often a nonprofit entity, educational institution, business or an individual. In order to receive a grant, some form of "Grant Writing" often referred to as either a proposal...

 through its 501(c)(3) entity; through its LLC, it invests in for-profit entities.

People

Pierre Omidyar
Pierre Omidyar
Pierre Morad Omidyar is a French-Iranian American entrepreneur and philanthropist/economist, and the founder/chairman of the eBay auction site...

, the founder of eBay, and his wife, Pam, established Omidyar Network based on the belief that every person has the potential to make a difference.

The organization's headquarters are in Redwood City, CA. Omidyar Network also has employees in the UK, based in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, and in Mumbai, India, including Stephen King, the former head of the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 World Trust.

The managing partner of Omidyar Network is Matt Bannick, the former general manager of eBay International. Stephen King, ex-BBC World Trust, Sal Giambanco, formerly of Paypal
PayPal
PayPal is an American-based global e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. Online money transfers serve as electronic alternatives to paying with traditional paper methods, such as checks and money orders....

, and Jayant Sinha, formerly of McKinsey & Company, are also partners.

Partners

, Omidyar Network counts the following organizations as partners:

  • Ashoka
    Ashoka: Innovators for the Public
    Ashoka: Innovators for the Public is a nonprofit organization based in Arlington, VA, supporting the field of social entrepreneurship. Ashoka was founded by Bill Drayton in 1981 to identify and support leading social entrepreneurs through a Social Venture Capital approach with the goal of...

  • Comat Technologies
    Comat Technologies
    Comat is an Indian social enterprise specializing in the delivery of information based services to rural citizens in India. It was founded in 1996 and currently has over 800 rural centers from which it serves over 75,000 citizens each day. In June 2011, Comat was acquired by Glodyn Technoserve, an...

  • Creative Commons
    Creative Commons
    Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...

  • Digg
    Digg
    Digg is a social news website. Prior to Digg v4, its cornerstone function consisted of letting people vote stories up or down, called digging and burying, respectively. Digg's popularity prompted the creation of copycat social networking sites with story submission and voting systems...

  • DonorsChoose
    DonorsChoose
    DonorsChoose.org is a United States based nonprofit organization that provides a way for people to donate directly to specific projects at public schools ....

  • Endeavor
    Endeavor (non-profit)
    Endeavor is a non-profit organization that pioneered the concept of High-Impact Entrepreneurship in emerging markets. Its mission is to “lead the global movement to catalyze long-term economic growth by selecting, mentoring, and accelerating the best High-Impact Entrepreneurs around the...

  • Federated Media Publishing
  • GlobalGiving
    GlobalGiving
    GlobalGiving is an online marketplace that connects donors with grassroots projects in the developing world. Potential donors can browse and select from a wide offering of projects, organized by geography or by themes such as health care, the environment, and education...

  • Goodmail
  • GuideStar
    GuideStar
    GuideStar USA, Inc. is an information service specializing in reporting on U.S. nonprofit companies. In 2010, their database contained over 5 million IRS Forms 990 filings on 1.9 million organizations.....

  • Linden Lab
    Linden Lab
    Linden Research, Inc., d/b/a Linden Lab, is a privately held American Internet company that is best known as the creator of Second Life....

     (developer of Second Life
    Second Life
    Second Life is an online virtual world developed by Linden Lab. It was launched on June 23, 2003. A number of free client programs, or Viewers, enable Second Life users, called Residents, to interact with each other through avatars...

     global virtual community)
  • Meetup
  • Metaweb
    Metaweb
    Metaweb Technologies, Inc. was a United States company based in San Francisco that developed Freebase, described as an "open, shared database of the world's knowledge". The company was founded by Danny Hillis in July, 2005, and operated in stealth mode until 2007. Metaweb was acquired by Google in...


  • Opportunity International
    Opportunity International
    Opportunity International is an organization that provides small business loans, savings, insurance and training to more than two million people working their way out of poverty in the developing world...

  • PRBC
    Prbc
    PRBC is a consumer credit reporting agency, more commonly referred to as a credit bureau in the United States. It is similar to the other four U.S. credit bureaus in that it is an FCRA compliant national data repository. However, PRBC differs in a few distinct ways...

  • Prosper
    Prosper (web site)
    Prosper Loans Marketplace, Inc. is a San Francisco, California-based company in the emerging peer-to-peer lending industry. The company operates Prosper.com, a website where individuals can buy loans and request to borrow money...

  • RDI
    RDI
    RDI can refer to:* Real Disposable Income, the amount of national income left over after taxes and inflation* Reference Daily Intake , a quantity of recommended nutrient intake...

  • SeaChange
    SeaChange
    SeaChange was a popular Australian television show that ran for 39 episodes from 1998 to 2001 on the ABC. It was created by Andrew Knight and Deborah Cox and starred Sigrid Thornton, David Wenham, William McInnes, John Howard, Tom Long and Kerry Armstrong...

  • Seesmic
    Seesmic
    Seesmic is a suite of freeware web, mobile, and desktop applications which allow users to simultaneously manage user accounts for multiple social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter....

  • Socialtext
    Socialtext
    Socialtext Incorporated is a company based in Palo Alto, California that produces enterprise social software, comprising an integrated suite of web-based social software applications including microblogging, user profile, directories, groups, personal dashboards using OpenSocial widgets, and shared...

  • Sunlight Foundation
    Sunlight Foundation
    The Sunlight Foundation is a 501 educational organization founded in April 2006 with the goal of increasing transparency and accountability in the United States government....

  • Virgin Money
    Virgin Money
    Virgin Money is a UK-based financial services company owned by the Virgin Group and founded by Sir Richard Branson in March 1995. It was originally known as Virgin Direct, and pioneered index tracking by launching a value Personal Equity Plan into the market. In the 2000s Virgin Money expanded its...

  • Wikia
    Wikia
    Wikia is a free web hosting service for wikis . It is normally free of charge for readers and editors, deriving most of its income from advertising, and publishes all user-provided text under copyleft licenses. Wikia hosts several hundred thousand wikis using the open-source wiki software MediaWiki...

  • World of Good
    World of good
    World of Good Inc. is a U.S. based importer and reseller that brings handcrafted products from cooperatives, NGOs and nonprofits in developing countries to the US market with the aim of promoting fair trade...

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