For battling climate change, online sex abuse and more, TED raises $280M to assist nonprofits

In the second year of The Audacious Project, TED  is unveiling the eight participants for a program intended to help the nonprofits follow their most ambitious goals.

Talking about the development, TED’s Chris Anderson told reporters that this is an attempt to solve one of the most annoying things about the nonprofit world.

The nonprofits are asked by the Audacious Project (which TED runs with support from social impact advisor. The Bridgespan Group) to lay out their “biggest dream” on the TED stage.

While comparing this to an IPO, Anderson said this is an “Audacious Project Offering designed to attract — not investment to make money out of shares, but investment to make change.”  He also contrasted this approach with traditional philanthropy, which has been criticized with the question, “Why should rich people get to decide what to do about the world?”

“You can argue about that topic all day, but The Audacious Project has been specifically designed from the ground up to avoid that criticism,” he said. “This is a scenario where anyone in the world can apply” to participate, with the winners selected based on “what actually has a chance of working” and “how effective are the leaders.”

The eight recipients were chosen from more than 1,500 applications, as per TED. The Audacious Project helped them raise $280 million in funding, even before taking the stage.

After the nonprofits take the stage, Anderson doesn’t expect the funding to increase massively.  But in terms of the number of people engaged, it will increase a lot, possibly translating into more fundraising down the road.

Here are this year’s recipients:

• The Center for Policing Equity plans to use data-capture technology to bring measurable behavior change to police departments.
• In a bid to persuade parents and elders in remote Indian communities to register girls who are out of school, Educate Girls is partnering with 35,000 volunteers.
• To create new medicines and materials, The Institute for Protein Design is trying to design new proteins.
• The Salk Institute for Biological Studies is working to make plants more effective at capturing and storing carbon in their roots.
• The END Fund plans to bring treatment for parasitic worms to 100 million people and provide access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene education.
• In exchange for government commitments to protect their marine areas. The Nature Conservancy aims to buy up the debt of 20 island and coastal nations to protect 4 million square kilometers of the ocean.
• Thorn is building tech products to fight child sexual abuse online.
• By providing proactive family coaching and personalized learning, Waterford UPSTART aims to help 250,000 children prepare for kindergarten.