The United Nations (UN) Foundation defines itself as an organization that “builds and implements public-private partnerships to address the world’s most pressing problems, and also works to broaden support for the UN through advocacy and public outreach.” The Foundation  was funded entirely by entrepreneur Ted Turner‘s historic $1 billion gift of 1997, earmarked for the support of UN causes and activities. As the Foundation’s Chairman of the Board, Turner called his contribution an “investment in the future of humanity,” and said he was “putting the rich on notice” to follow his philanthropic example. In March 1998, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan established the United Nations Fund for International Partnerships (UNFIP) to work closely with the UN Foundation and to determine how contributions from the latter should be spent.

Turner’s pledge was not a one-time $1 billion disbursement, but rather was stipulated to be an amount of up to $1 billion of Time-Warner stock to be donated to the United Nations in ten annual installments. Because contributions to the UN are not tax-deductible in the United States, Turner set up a system whereby he would funnel his money through his own tax-exempt Foundation. Once all the relevant tax benefits are factored into the equation, Turner’s billion-dollar gift could actually leave him wealthier than ever before. As USA Today reported, “Turner, or at least his heirs, could end up being $100 million richer because he’s giving a billion away.”

The UN Foundation’s current President is Timothy Wirth, who spent more than twenty years in the United States Congress, representing Colorado both in the House of Representatives and the Senate. A former official of Planned Parenthood in Colorado, Wirth is a disciple of the teachings Thomas Malthus, the eighteenth-century British economist who predicted that worldwide population increases would soon render the human race unable to adequately feed itself and would inevitably result in mass starvation. As Bill Clinton’s Assistant Secretary of State for Global Affairs, Wirth helped organize the 1994 international population summit in Cairo, Egypt, where he made a case for using abortion as a means of slowing population growth.

During its first year of operation, the Foundation disbursed more than half of its grant money to two UN agencies: the United Nations Population Fund, or UNFPA ($12.2 million) and the United Nations Children’s Fund, or UNICEF ($18.6 million). Both of these agencies are involved in controversial projects to promote government-funded abortion-on-demand. The United Nations Foundation currently has four program areas toward which its philanthropy is channeled. The first is the Children’s Health program. The second is the Environmental program, with an emphasis on “the loss of species and ecosystems” and the global warming threat (a high priority is getting the U.S. to sign the Kyoto accords). Third is the Peace, Security, and Human Rights program, which focuses on “the root causes” of international violence and terrorism. And the fourth is the Women and Population program.

To further these programs, the UN Foundation has formed “partnerships” with numerous businesses and organizations, some leftist in orientation, dedicated to similar ends. The UN Foundation’s partners include the David and Lucile Packard Foundation; the Department for International Development; the Ford Foundation; the Heinz Family Foundation; the J.M. Kaplan Fund; the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; the Open Society Institute; the Ploughshares Fund; the Rockefeller Brothers Fund; the Rockefeller Foundation; Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation; the US Fund for UNICEF; the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation; the World Resources Institute; and the World Wildlife Fund.

To view a list of additional noteworthy partners of the United Nations Foundation, click here.

The United Nations Foundation is a member organization of both the Peace and Security Funders Group and the International Human Rights Funders Group (IHRFG), a network of more than six-dozen grantmakers dedicated to funding leftist groups and causes. (For a complete list of IHRFG grantmakers, click here.)

(Information on grantees and monetary amounts courtesy of The Foundation Center, GuideStar, ActivistCash, the Capital Research Center and Undue Influence)