Claim your book "Our Founding Story"
The Atlantic Institute is offering all Atlantic Fellows and program staff a free copy of "Our Founding Story", a beautiful book full of photographs that tells the story of the Atlantic Fellows community. The book of more than 100 pages charts the community's history through the eyes, visions and values of our founders. It has been authored by Mary Byrne McDonnell, MBM Learning and Evaluation Strategies, who has interviewed the key people behind the formation of each of the seven Atlantic programs.
To receive your FREE copy to be mailed to you, please fill in this Google form BEFORE Monday, July 5.
As Mary emphasizes in the book’s Foreword: "The idea for what ultimately became 'Our Founding Story' originated in discussions among Atlantic Philanthropies board members in the early years of Chris Oechsli’s tenure as CEO. They recognized that implementing the final stage of Chuck Feeney’s Giving While Living philosophy would precipitate a rare event in the philanthropic world as one of the largest foundations of our time intentionally wound down operations, while ramping up its final big-bet grants. Board member Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot urged Atlantic to systematically capture the unfolding of that final stage.
"My task was to journey alongside the foundation and the fledgling Atlantic Fellows programs to listen, watch, chronicle, collect materials and ultimately synthesize and make sense of this process. The heart of the project, though, is in the 37 oral historical interviews I was privileged to conduct in Atlantic’s last months. This narrative draws on a fraction of the knowledge contained in those interviews that are housed in the Atlantic Philanthropies Archives at Cornell University — to be mined by others.
"We offer 'Our Founding Story' as a gift to the Atlantic Fellows community in the hope that knowing where you have come from will challenge and inspire your common efforts to act in community to realize a healthier, fairer, more inclusive world."