Join The Greater Sum in supporting…
Wikitongues
7,000 languages are spoken or signed today, but at least 3,000 languages could disappear in a generation, erasing centuries of cultural, historical, and ecological knowledge.
People lose their mother tongues to economic exclusion, political oppression, or violence — but language extinction is not inevitable. With the right tools, anyone can learn their ancestral language and teach the next generation, keeping their culture alive.
To prevent language extinction, Wikitongues safeguards endangered languages and directly supports mother-tongue projects. Since 2014, we've crowdsourced resources for over 700 languages, or 10% of every language in the world, and helped grow 40 endangered languages across every continent. Now, after a decade of well-tested impact, we're ready to scale our reach by expanding our resources for language activists and growing our multilingual support staff.
Research shows that language revitalization leads to better school performance, precipitous declines in suicide, and more resilient communities. Moreover, when implemented alongside environmental education, mother-tongue projects have, according to UNESCO, improved land management and helped protect biodiversity.
The Greater Sum provides strategic training and mentoring for early stage nonprofit innovators. We invest in organizations who are providing new solutions to old problems, and are ready to expand the scale of their impact. We share their stories so that other philanthropists like you have the opportunity to do the same. If you represent a grant-making organization and would like to be connected with these organizations, contact us directly and we’ll make an introduction! Individuals interested in connecting with Wikitongues, please visit their website for more information.
The Greater Sum supports organizations that are scaling their impact, either by expanding their service area or by teaching other organizations to replicate their innovation. Why are we excited about the Promising Practices cohort? Because they’re graduates of our Financial Strategy incubator, we know they’re mapping out a plan for sustainable impact. When they applied for funding they created a Pitch Deck that describes the problem the organization was founded to address, the solution they have created, and resulting outcomes. We invest in teams; the pitch deck shows how the leadership of Wikitongues is laying the groundwork for success.
