Giving Compass' Take:

• Barron's reports on a new initiative from TED called The Audacious Project: $250 million will be awarded each year to social entrepreneurs willing to tackle the world's most challenging issues. Among the prize recipients is a doctor who trains community health workers in East Africa.

• The Audacious Project will essentially replace the TED Prize, but the sentiment of rewarding bold ideas is similar. It's worth looking at the entrepreneurs in line for the TED money to see what they're doing right — and how future programs can be supported through collective philanthropy.

• You can read more about Last Mile Health's founder — the last TED Prize winner and one of the first Audacious Project beneficiaries — right here.

TED, the nonprofit known for its hugely popular video lectures — or TED Talks — and the TED Prize, which annually awarded $1 million to social entrepreneurs aspiring to solve global problems in health care, education and other areas, announced Wednesday the launch of a project that aims to take the group’s philanthropic impact to the next level.

The Audacious Project, which is backed by the collective investment of an influential group of foundations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, grew out of and will replace the TED Prize, says Anna Verghese, who previously ran the TED Prize and now oversees The Audacious Project as executive director. The project essentially pools philanthropic support — $250 million this first year — from a variety of organizations to kickstart bold ideas into being — like a venture capitalist for a new nonprofit.

“Today, we face some of the greatest challenges: a threat to the planet from global warming, social injustices, disease, and the list goes on,” Verghese tells Penta. “These daunting challenges are what The Audacious Project is all about. We want to support the best social entrepreneurs alive to dream and collaborate at the most transformative scale possible.”

The final recipient of the $1 million TED Prize (and among the first recipients of the new project’s money) is Dr. Raj Panjabi, who helped inspire the new initiative with his effort to build a Community Health Academy that provides training to community health workers in East Africa. TED realized Panjabi’s vision was ripe for a bigger investment, Verghese said, so the organization helped the doctor team up with a nonprofit called Living Goods, which will support training and deployment of some 50,000 health care workers in six African countries.

Read the full article about The Audacious Project from TED by Mareesa Nicosia at barrons.com.