EBay Founder's Philanthropic Firm to Donate More

The billionaire founder of eBay, Pierre Omidyar, is expanding his philanthropic investment firm, as some of the biggest private foundations continue to weather the growing economic turmoil. Omidyar Network, during the next year will increase its total investments and donations. The group also will add two new areas of investment and create six new management positions, filling them with executives from companies such as eBay, Hewlett-Packard, J.P. Morgan Chase and a philanthropic arm of the British Broadcasting Corp. Under its plans for the next year, the Omidyar organization plans to boost outlays and retool around two broad areas: one providing "access to capital" that includes investments into financial services for the poor, and another it calls "media, markets and transparency," which will invest in technologies that can help improve transparency in government, the media and other areas. Omidyar will also increase to between $5 million and $7 million the amount of money it donates or invests in each organization. That is an increase from an average of $1 million each in 2006 and is part of a strategy to make fewer but bigger bets, Omidyar officials said. Examples of Omidyar investments include Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit that invests in ways to use the Internet to improve government transparency, and Endeavor, a nonprofit that helps entrepreneurs in developing countries. Future investments might include online services for rating the effectiveness of nonprofit organizations, said Matt Halprin, an Omidyar Network partner recently hired from eBay, where he was a vice president.