Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay, and his wife, Pam, established Omidyar Network based on the belief that every person has the potential to make a difference. Since 2004, we have worked with our partners to create opportunities for people to tap that potential, enabling them to improve their lives and make powerful contributions to their communities.

Our Work

As a philanthropic investment firm, we make both investments and grants, identifying likeminded organizations that we support, help scale, and collaborate with to help realize their full potential. Our efforts are organized around two investment initiatives—Access to Capital, and Media, Markets and Transparency.

Through the first, Access to Capital, we work to create economic opportunity for people in emerging markets. By opening new doors to financial services and property rights, we're helping to foster entrepreneurial behavior, economic activity, and job creation.

Specifically, we focus on:

• Microfinance—extending access to high-quality, affordable financial services to the poor
• Small-to-medium enterprise (SME)—fueling growth in small-to-medium enterprises by supporting the financial services and other infrastructure that serve them
• Emerging market ventures—investing in high-growth entrepreneurs that provide low-cost products and services to underserved populations
• Property rights—promoting security, identity, and wealth by helping people establish and formalize property rights
  

The second initiative focuses on technology that promotes transparency, accountability, and trust across media, markets, and government.

Specifically, we focus on:

• Social media—encouraging people to express themselves, connect to others with shared interests, and take action on what matters to them
• Marketplaces—fostering greater choice, transparency and accountability, so that people can access products and services that improve their lives
• Government transparency—encouraging accountability and effectiveness in government by increasing people's access to credible information about government activities and money in politics
• Trust, reputation and identity—building robust reputation and identity systems to help people place their trust wisely online

Learn about our investments in these two initiatives on our Portfolio page.

Our Structure

We see philanthropy as more than a type of funding. In its truest sense, philanthropy is about improving the lives of others, independent of the mechanism. We are uniquely structured to work across the social, business, and government sectors, operating both a 501(c)(3) and a Limited Liability Company (LLC). 

Like a traditional foundation, we make grants through our 501(c)(3) entity. We post our Form 990-PFs: Return for a Private Foundation, to our Web site as they become available:

2006 990-PF
2005 990-PF
2004 990-PF

We invest in for-profit entities through our LLC. Inspired by the social impact of eBay, we believe that business can create extraordinary opportunity and value, and that market-based solutions can generate significant social returns.