The Palmer R. Chitester Fund is a Pennsylvania, Not For Profit Corporation, that was chartered December 26, 1985. The IRS has ruled that we meet the criteria for a 501-c-3 public foundation, and contributions to our work are tax deductible within the limits of the law.

Our mission is: To use easily understood and entertaining popular media to reach inquisitive minds regarding the value and interrelationship of personal, economic and political freedom sustained by the rule of law.

Our goal is to create entertaining media programs and material of an intellectual nature on a broad range of subjects. We are particularly interested in illuminating the prerequisites of a free society for school age children.

Intellectual content is the defining characteristic of our work, although we work to make this information accessible and relevant. We aim to offer the consumer serious, thoughtful programs. The challenge is always to do so in an entertaining manner.

People enjoy mass media and TV in particular because it demands little other than a person's time. The proverbial "couch potato" accurately reflects that. We are motivated by the challenge to create content rich programs while retaining the entertainment that makes TV appealing to millions of viewers.

Clearly the trend is toward creative uniformity and the lowest common denominator in mass media journalism as well as entertainment. This is not a healthy trend in a free society. Political correctness leads to the exclusion of some intellectual perspectives and the attention span of viewers’ truncation of complex information. Our challenge for the 21st Century and beyond is to find ways to avoid the classic failure of the self governed to retain awareness of the necessary conditions for the survival of their freedom and prosperity.

Through mass media we address this challenge. We have launched three educational initiatives to do so.

	Free To Choose Media (FTCM) brings together the talents of award-winning production teams to create high quality presentations, many of which also appear on broadcast television. We translate serious scholarship into effective storytelling that makes economic and political concepts accessible and memorable to all citizens. A major focus of activity at Free To Choose Media is the production of programs for izzit.org.
	izzit.org is a one-of-a-kind pipeline into the classrooms of America. It uniquely provides a large and growing network of teachers and students with compelling TV based teaching units not available anywhere else. Each year, over 195,000 teachers use our materials to stimulate intellectual interaction among 18 million students (figures that are independently audited annually). One out of every four secondary social studies teachers in America have used material distributed by izzit.org.
	The Idea Channel  is a unique archive of video-recorded discussions between some of the world's greatest thinkers including many Nobel Prize winners. Only the Idea Channel provides the general public with direct, unfiltered access to these individuals and their timeless ideas. It also is an on-line sales and distribution outlet for these discussions, as well as for programs from Free To Choose Media and izzit.org.

In 1977 I persuaded Milton Friedman to undertake the creation of a 10 part award winning PBS TV series – Free To Choose. With the financial support of many individuals, foundations and business, we continue to bring his and others’ ideas to millions around the world.

Contributions to the Palmer R. Chitester Fund are tax deductible.
The Palmer R. Chitester Fund, 2002 Filmore Avenue, Suite #1, Erie, PA 16506
ph: 814.833.6950  fax: 814.833.7415  email: info@palmerrchitesterfund.org