Do you know how CPR came to be? What about the 911 system? Ever wonder who developed the Pap smear? Or why school buses are all the same color?

All these were the results of work funded by some foundation.

When you see your doctor or dentist or nurse practitioner you are benefitting from foundation funding that established training standards for those fields.

If you grew up watching “Sesame Street™” or love your local library, you have enjoyed foundation-funded change.

If you benefitted from Head Start or the earned income tax credit or Pell grants you have some foundation to thank.

Foundation-supported change is all around us. Most of us don’t realize it — mostly because foundations generally don’t do a very good job telling the story of their impact. We’ve tended to focus on the work of our grantees, without saying much about our role. The result is that a lot of folks don’t know how they have benefitted from charitable foundations.

At a time when there are policy questions being raised about the role of charitable giving in general and foundations in particular, we need to do a better job explaining what we do and the difference it makes.

I think the best way to show people the difference foundations make is to give historical examples. So — I’ve been trying to do that. If you follow me on LinkedIn, you may have seen some of my related posts — and you may know the answer to the questions above. (For example, school buses are all “National School Bus Glossy Yellow” because of a $5,000 Rockefeller Foundation grant back in 1939 to improve school transportation.)

I find all the examples fascinating. I’ve long daydreamed about writing a book on the unknown philanthropic history of the United States. I think it could be a really entertaining book! Philanthropy, in some form, has been a factor in nearly all our big moments as a country but we don’t know the stories — from funding the Continental Army in the American Revolution to eradicating hookworm to supporting every major civil rights gain in our history.

Alas, I have neither the time nor the skills to write that book. But I can share some of the stories I know. I hope the stories are entertaining — and I hope they make the impact of charitable foundations more concrete.

The freedom to give is pretty abstract. But the benefits that come from having a strong and independent charitable sector are very real. You can see it all throughout your community if you are looking for it — in schools and churches, in sports programs for our youth and food programs for our elders. We all benefit from charitable giving, whether we know it or not. And the ability for each of us to support the causes we care about is a freedom that has been important for the entire history of our country. It is something worth protecting.