The Sapling Foundation is a private not-for-profit foundation established by Chris Anderson in 1996. It seeks to make a difference by tapping into the big amplifiers of human intention: education, technology, design, media, entrepreneurship, and ultimately the power of ideas.
Its main asset is the TED Conference, acquired in 2001. Since then TED's mission has been redefined as "ideas worth spreading" and TED talks have been released for free on the Internet (on ted.com) and viewed more than 350m times,. The TEDx program has allowed more than 1000 self-organized events around the world devoted to ideas worth spreading. The TED Prize has supported major projects tackling poverty, loss of species, the oceans crisis, religious intolerance, public health, collaborative design, and more.