Markle Foundation

The Markle Foundation is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charitable organization concerned with technology, health care, and national security.

Emerging communications media and information technology create unprecedented opportunity to improve people's lives. The Markle Foundation works to realize this potential and promotes the use of information and information technology that address public needs. The foundation tends to collaborate with innovators and thought leaders from the public and private sectors whose expertise lies in the areas of information technology, privacy, civil liberties, health, and national security. This has enabled the Foundation to offer comprehensive recommendations to the highest levels of government, many of which have passed into law through acts of Congress and by executive order.

Formally incorporated on April 26, 1927, as the John and Mary R. Markle Foundation, the organization began by funding traditional social welfare programs as well as projects that focused on medicine and medical research. In 1969, Lloyd Morrisett, the Markle Foundation's president at that time, shifted the foundation's focus to mass communications in a democratic society. In 1998, when Zoë Baird became president, she shifted the foundation's focus to accelerating the use of information and information technology to address critical public problems, particularly in the areas of health and national security. For fiscal year 2008, Ms Baird's compensation from this tax exempt charitable organization was recorded as $505,750.00, in the Form 990-PF filed by Markle.