Point Foundation (environment)

For other uses, see Point Foundation (disambiguation).

The POINT Foundation was a nonprofit organization based in San Francisco and founded by Stewart Brand and Dick Raymond.^[1] POINT was established in 1971, for the role of distributing funds deriving from profits of the Whole Earth Catalogs to innovative and promising ventures.^[1]

POINT Foundation

Company type	Nonprofit
Founder	Stewart Brand and Dick Raymond
Headquarters	San Francisco, California , United States of America

The Whole Earth Catalog (WEC), was an American magazine and product catalog.^[2]

The foundation's board members were united by concern for the natural environment. Besides Brand and Raymond, board members included computer engineer Bill English, who became the co-inventor of the computer mouse, and Huey Johnson, former western-regional director of the Nature Conservancy.^[1] One of POINT's first large grants, in 1972, enabled a group of environmental scientists, activists, and Native Americans to attend the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm.^[3]: 57

POINT took over publication of the WEC from its original publisher, the Portola Institute, by 1980, when the publication had swelled to a 452-page edition. As well, the foundation published a number of mostly periodical offshoots of the WEC.^[1] POINT was also a co-owner of an early online discussion platform titled The WELL.^[4]