site logo

Twelve groups promoting peace. All competed in the Peace Primary to win $100,000 to amplify their messages in the 2008 election. Thanks to everyone who participated and to everyone who is continuing to work to make peace a priority!

page header for About the Peace Primary

About the Peace Primary

Visit Ploughshares Fund's website for more information about current initiatives funded by the Ploughshares Fund.

The Peace Primary is a special initiative by the Ploughshares Fund to celebrate twenty-five years of high-impact grantmaking. Ploughshares Fund is a public foundation that enables the smartest people with the best ideas for building a safer, more peaceful world to implement their ideas and achieve results. Ploughshares Fund pools contributions from individuals, families and foundations and directs those funds to programs aimed at preventing the spread and use of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and other weapons of war, and preventing conflicts that could lead to the use of weapons of mass destruction.

In the twenty-five years since Ploughshares Fund was founded by philanthropist and peace activist Sally Lilienthal, we have made grants totaling over $50 million to become the largest grantmaking foundation in the U.S. focusing exclusively on peace and security funding.

Among the people and initiatives that have benefited from early funding from Ploughshares Fund are:

  • The International Campaign to Ban Landmines, whose efforts led to a global treaty to abolish anti-personnel landmines in record time, and the Nobel Peace Prize;
  • Entrepreneurial programs to prevent nuclear terrorism by locking down and removing vulnerable nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union and elsewhere;
  • Public campaigns to compel governments to oppose the development of a new generation of "usable" nuclear weapons and to take their nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert;
  • Programs to reorient Russian nuclear weapons facilities and scientists to productive, economically viable endeavors, including the establishment of non-proliferation centers at former nuclear weapons labs;
  • A network of civil society organizations that are monitoring governments' adherence to the biological weapons treaty, in the absence of any official verification regime;
  • Unprecedented collaborations between Muslim, Jewish and Christian leaders to address nuclear weapons and other security threats.

Ploughshares Fund has proven time and again that money given to the right people at the right time can yield profound results. And in an election year, support for people who can keep global peace and security, the most important issues our country faces, at the forefront of the public debate, is absolutely essential.