For Immediate Release
Contact: Chad Colby: Chad.Colby@greatminds.org
Friday, Jan. 10, 2020—The nonprofit Great Minds® today announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Great Minds LLC, has converted to a public benefit corporation, Great Minds PBC. The move enables Great Minds to more effectively pursue its mission to provide all students exemplary, knowledge-rich curricula.
“Great Minds started as a tiny research and advocacy organization promoting the creation and use of high-quality curricula,” founder and CEO Lynne Munson said. “When textbook companies failed to create products that met teachers’ needs, Great Minds LLC put resources in the hands of teachers who pioneered the creation of high-quality curricula designed for all students. Today, our curricula are in thousands of classrooms. Becoming a public benefit corporation will allow us to reach even more students and teachers.”
The public benefit corporation (PBC) structure requires companies to create a meaningful, positive impact on society. The Great Minds mission, now embedded in its corporate charter, is “to improve Prekindergarten through twelfth grade education by supporting teachers with best- in-class curriculum materials and implementation products and services in mathematics, English, science, history, and other subjects. Best-in-class curriculum is knowledge-driven, coherent, and uses research-based instructional methods that are proven to work for all learners, including but not limited to striving readers, students with dyslexia, and English language learners.” The nonprofit Great Minds will continue to exist and is the sole owner of Great Minds PBC.
The Great Minds motto is “every child is capable of greatness.” The company’s guiding principle is the essential role of education in democracy. Being a PBC allows Great Minds to formally incorporate its mission into its legal structure. As a PBC, Great Minds will be able to scale its educational resources to meet the needs of even more educators.
Great Minds has grown rapidly since its founding in 2007 and now competes with the big three textbook companies. From a handful of advocates promoting high quality education for all students, the company of 650-plus employees now offers comprehensive curricula in three subjects and a library of early reader books. Eureka Math®; Wit & Wisdom®, the English language arts curriculum; PhD Science™; and Geodes® books for emerging readers are in classrooms nationwide. Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Detroit are among the many school districts using one or more of the curricula. According to a 2016 study released by the RAND Corporation, Eureka Math is the most widely used math curriculum in the United States.
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About Great Minds: Great Minds PBC is a public benefit corporation and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Great Minds, a nonprofit corporation. Great Minds provides the highest quality curricula to schools and districts nationwide, inspiring joy in teaching and learning. Great Minds is the only curriculum creator to have earned three Tier 1 ratings, the highest possible, from the Louisiana Department of Education, highly respected for its curricular leadership. Curricula earning the Tier 1 ratings were Wit & Wisdom, Eureka Math, and PhD Science. A 2016 RAND Corporation report found Eureka Math and its original version, EngageNY Math, to be the most widely used elementary school math curricula in the nation. Geodes, a library of beautifully illustrated, content-rich books with phonics practice for emerging readers, is the result of a collaboration between Great Minds and Wilson Language Training. Learn more at greatminds.org.
