The Richard Lounsbery Foundation

The Lounsbery Foundation was founded in 1959, with a goal to enhance US national strengths in science and technology and foster strong French-American cooperation. To this day, the Foundation has stayed true to its roots while expanding to promote science among youth and to support components of US policy issues pertaining to science. The Foundation attained a place in donor history in 2004 by becoming the first philanthropic supporter of Wikipedia. It was also instrumental in providing initial support which enabled POGO to begin life without taxing its members. More recently, a 50K USD grant supported POGO’s efforts in biological observations, leading to the establishment of the Ocean Biomolecular Observing Network (OBON), a UN Ocean Decade-endorsed programme. Further grants have provided support for the OBON annual meetings. Lounsbery also provided funding for the COLLECT (Citizen Observation of Local Litter in Coastal ECosysTems) citizen science project.