Ayn Rand Institute Marks Fiscal Year-End with Unprecedented Successes
Irvine, Calif., October 1, 2010—The Ayn Rand Institute’s fiscal year 2010, which ended September 30, saw revenues soar to an all-time record of nearly $12.7 million; witnessed major achievements in both new and existing programs; and, as a result, enjoyed unprecedented success in its mission to promote the ideas of Ayn Rand.
“This has been a year of unprecedented achievement for ARI across the entire spectrum of our activity,” notes Yaron Brook, the Institute’s president and executive director. “These accomplishments include a near-record year for the Institute’s Free Books to Teachers program, continued strong participation in our essay contests, continued growth of our presence in the nation’s colleges and universities, and our best year ever for media activities and public outreach.”
Highlights for the year just ended include the following:
More than 315,000 copies of Anthem, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged were donated to classrooms across North America (bringing the total number of books placed in schools to more than 1.8 million copies since 2003). More than four million students have been introduced to Ayn Rand’s novels as a result of this program.
More than 26,000 students competed in ARI’s annual high school essay contests—bringing the total number of participants to more than a quarter of a million since the contests’ inception.
On university and college campuses, Ayn Rand’s ideas have achieved an unprecedented visibility. Through ARI, the Anthem Foundation and programs supported by the BB&T Foundation, more than seventy institutions of higher learning now have programs for the teaching of Ayn Rand’s corpus and philosophy.
The Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, in just its second year of existence, has made an enormous impact on the political debate in this country—at a time in our nation’s history when the Center’s message has never been more urgently needed. ARC and our media division achieved many notable accomplishments this year, ranging from the distribution of tens of thousands of books, pamphlets and essays at dozens of Tea Party events to the new twice-monthly Forbes.com column, “The Objectivist,” co-authored by Yaron Brook and Don Watkins.
And finally, this year ARI announced the creation of Ayn Rand Campus—a multi-year, $5 million initiative that will establish a virtual educational program that will, when completed, provide interactive, multimedia education about Ayn Rand and her ideas to a worldwide audience.
These accomplishments were made possible through the unprecedented responsiveness and generosity of the Institute’s donors. ARI’s FY2010 preliminary (pre-audited) revenues total nearly $12.7 million (a figure which includes the Ayn Rand Campus funding commitment). Even excluding the future pledge portion of the Ayn Rand Campus funding, ARI revenues totaled $8,225,000—a 10 percent increase over last year.
“While we are very pleased with our results for the year just ended,” Brook observes, “there is a great deal more to be accomplished in the years ahead. With the continued support of the thousands of individuals, corporations and foundations who share our conviction that Ayn Rand’s philosophy is needed now more than ever before in our history, we are confident that the Institute’s programmatic successes will only continue to grow in 2011—and beyond.”
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