Breadpig
Encyclopedia
Breadpig produces a variety of items that appeal to geeks, most notably publishing the xkcd
Xkcd
xkcd is a webcomic created by Randall Munroe. The comic's tagline describes it as "a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language." It has been recognized in such mainstream media as The Guardian and The New York Times....

 book.

Uncorporation

Breadpig calls itself an "uncorporation," which means in practice they give a lot of their profits away to charity. As explained by them: "[rather than following the typical corporate directive of maximizing shareholder wealth, breadpig aims to do interesting (good) things with its profits." For example, the proceeds fundraised from the xkcd book tour went to build a school in Laos. At the end of 2009, Breadpig donated its publisher profits from the book ($53,000) to Room to Read
Room to Read
Room to Read is an international non-profit organization with its global headquarters in San Francisco, California. Founded on the belief that World Change Starts With Educated Children, the organization focuses on literacy and gender equality in education...

 for construction of more schools and libraries in 2010 - locations to be determined by the Breadpig community.

History

Breadpig was founded by Alexis Ohanian, a co-founder of the social news site reddit
Reddit
reddit is a social news website where the registered users submit content, in the form of either a link or a text "self" post. Other users then vote the submission "up" or "down," which is used to rank the post and determine its position on the site's pages and front page.Reddit was originally...

. Alexis and Steve Huffman
Steve Huffman
Steve Huffman is a web developer and co-founder of reddit. More recently, he has co-founded the airfare search site Hipmunk. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 2005 with Alexis Ohanian to start Reddit in Medford, MA after taking funding from Y Combinator.-References:...

, the other reddit co-founder, were searching for expired domains for their yet unnamed website that had the word "read" in them. A search returned "breadpig.com" and the pair bought it purely out of comic value. Steve imaged the "breadpig" as a "pig with bread wings" and Alexis doodled the first version.

Activities

In 2008, Breadpigs raised over $30,000 from creating and selling LOLmagnetz - magnetic poetry for Lolspeak

In February 2009, Breadpig donated $15,000 to the San Francisco Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals

In October 2009, Breadpig raised $32,000 for Room to Read
Room to Read
Room to Read is an international non-profit organization with its global headquarters in San Francisco, California. Founded on the belief that World Change Starts With Educated Children, the organization focuses on literacy and gender equality in education...

 to construct a primary school in Laos. Breadpig went on to raise $52,961.78, via the sale of xkcd: volume 0 - this money was used for the development of a school room, a reading room, and a local language publishing room, also via Room to Read
Room to Read
Room to Read is an international non-profit organization with its global headquarters in San Francisco, California. Founded on the belief that World Change Starts With Educated Children, the organization focuses on literacy and gender equality in education...

.

As of December 2010, Breadpig has raised over $150,000 for charity (this includes both funds raised, and profits donated).

XKCD book

Breadpig teamed up with Randall Munroe
Randall Munroe
Randall Patrick Munroe is an American webcomic author and former NASA roboticist as well as a programmer, best known as the creator of the webcomic xkcd...

, of XKCD
Xkcd
xkcd is a webcomic created by Randall Munroe. The comic's tagline describes it as "a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language." It has been recognized in such mainstream media as The Guardian and The New York Times....

fame, to publish xkcd: volume 0, containing selected xkcd comics.
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