A MESSAGE FROM OUR CEO

A couple of months ago

I celebrated my seven year anniversary at the helm of The Atlas Society—and the only “seven year itch” I feel is itching to build on the remarkable progress we’ve made, as measured by so many metrics, to become the category leader in engaging young minds with Ayn Rand’s ideas.

Ed Crane, with whom I had the pleasure of working with at CATO during the mid-’90s, once observed that Ayn Rand was the “all time greatest recruiter for the liberty movement.” The challenge today—and opportunity—is this: how can Rand keep recruiting when daily reading of books among young people has fallen from 70% in the late 1970s to 12% today?

The Atlas Society has demonstrated we’re up to this challenge: Pioneering artistic, technologically savvy ways of marketing Rand’s ideas to new audiences—and leaning heavily on partnerships to engineer win-win collaborations with other groups.

This annual report will walk you through the progress we’ve made in the past 12 months, but let’s take a moment to reflect on what we’ve achieved in the past few years:

• 455% increase in followers on Facebook since 2017— and grew to become the largest Objectivist account on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Rumble

• Over 3,000 pieces of digital content produced annually, including:

• 400 Instagram Takeover videos, and 2,600 memes annually (average engagement per individual piece of content includes 40K comments, shares, likes)

• 40 animated Draw My Life videos (total views 42M+) and 40 foreign language adaptations (total views 84M+)

• We built our Instagram audience from zero in 2016 to 12K by 2018. Today that number is at 100K

• By mid 2022, The Atlas Society’s TikTok following had grown to 9,312 followers. Today that figure has increased by 343% to 31,947.

• Since 2016 over a dozen publications including pocket guides & graphic novels—nine adaptations in Spanish and Portuguese (75K copies distributed annually)

• Since 2020, hosted over 162 episodes of The Atlas Society Asks webinars, with individual episodes drawing upwards of 160K views

• Recruited a world-class paid faculty of six universityaffiliated scholars and fellows for online programming, live speaking engagements, and writing

• Since 2021, 180 Clubhouse chats, averaging 70 participants in the rooms (with 45K podcast downloads)

• Six successful galas featuring Peter Thiel, Palmer Luckey, Chip Wilson, Michael Saylor, Peter Diamandis, and Ricardo Salinas

• Revenue growth since 2015: over 270%, with current budget $2.74M

This demonstrated success in reaching new audiences means we’re well on our way to achieving our moonshot of engaging a billion young minds with Ayn Rand’s ideas. With 90% of young people on social media spending an average 9 hours online daily, the most efficient and scalable way to reach new audiences is to build powerful distribution networks through engaging short form content that then serves as a marketing funnel to upsell opportunities for increased intellectual exploration.

We take a comprehensive approach, providing content and programming for “skimmers, swimmers and deep divers”— ranging from TikTok videos to online webinars to in-depth, in-person seminars with our faculty. We take an individualistic approach not just to our consumers (the young people we serve), but to our customers: the donors who “hire” us to project their values, and share Ayn Rand’s literature and philosophy with the next generation.

Whether you’re supporting us at the $100 level or the $100,000 level, whether you’ve been with The Atlas Society since its founding or you’ve just discovered us, whether you donate with cryptocurrency or invest old-fashioned sweat equity as a volunteer—you are the lifeblood of our organization. You make our work possible. You have our commitment, and our profound appreciation.

While it’s colloquially common to say one feels “humbled” by such generosity, it’s more accurate to say I feel proud to have earned it, privileged to work for it, and profoundly grateful for the opportunity to promote our shared ideals.

As Ayn Rand reminds us, “Those who fight for the future live in it today.” I am glad to be fighting for, and living in, that future with you!

Benevolently yours,

Jennifer Grossman CEO, The Atlas Society