The Templeton Plan

As a pioneer in both financial investments and philanthropy, Sir John Templeton spent a lifetime encouraging open-mindedness. Templeton started his Wall Street career in 1937 and went on to create some of the world’s largest and most successful international investment funds, eventually earning the label of “arguably the greatest global stock picker of the century” from Money magazine. In 1972, he established the world’s largest annual award given to an individual: the £1,000,000 Templeton Prize. The Prize is intended to recognize exemplary achievement in work related to life’s spiritual dimension. Templeton also contributed a sizable amount of his fortune to the John Templeton Foundation, which he established in 1987. Templeton passed away in 2008, but the Foundation that bears his name continues to award millions of dollars in annual grants in pursuit of its mission to serve as a philanthropic catalyst for research on what scientists and philosophers call the “big questions.”