Ploughshares Fund

Sally Lilienthal, founder and president of the Ploughshares Fund, died on October 24, 2006 at age 87 after an extended illness. Although she was a lifelong supporter of human rights, civil rights and the arts, she believed that the threat of nuclear war overshadowed everthing else, and started Ploughshares in 1981."I thought that if a lot of people felt the same way I did but didn't know what to do about it, we might get together and search for new ways to get rid of the nuclear weapons that were threatening us all,'' she told an interviewer in 1996. Sally envisioned the Ploughshares Fund as a way to get money quickly to people with practical ideas for stopping the buildup of nuclear weapons. Ploughshares was structured to respond and adapt to emerging threats to global security, and indeed, has been at the forefront of supporting innovative responses to unforseen challenges. Thanks to Sally's vision and persistence, Ploughshares Fund is now the largest grantmaking foundation in the U.S. focused exclusively on peace and security funding.