Some claim that everything is business. Sesame Street is certainly a business and a very good one. It is also an innovative enterprise. Innovative enough to warrant an entry on Joan Ganz Cooney, the founder of Sesame Street, in a book by Harold Evans with Gail Buckland and David Lefer: They Made America From the Steam Engine to the Search Engine: Two Centuries of Innovators (2004). In case you wonder what other innovators received an entry in part 3 of this book  (The Digital Age), here are some examples: Gary Kildall: PC software, Raymond Damadian: MRI scanner, Pierre Omidyar: eBay, and Larry Page and Sergey Brin: Google. Not bad company to be in.

Sesame Street was produced from its inception in 1969 by a private, non-profit organization, Children's Television Workshop (CTW), which since 2000 has been known as Sesame Workshop. According to the database ReferenceUSA  it employs at its headquarters in New York (1 Lincoln Plz. #2) between 20 and 49 people.

The self-described mission (read: line of business) of Sesame Workshop is “to use the educational power of media to help all children reach their highest potential.” Using Standard Industry Classification (SIC) codes (thankfully one does not need to know them by heart) which were further modified by ReferenceUSA, Sesame Workshop has been assigned the following codes: 8211-03 (Schools) and 8244-01 (Schools-Business & Vocational). The SIC is a system for classifying industries by a four-digit code which was established in 1937 (and later updated) and is used by government agencies to classify industry areas. There is also North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) but let's leave it for another occasion.

These codes can be used to create a list of Sesame Workshop's competitors or in other words a list of businesses/organizations that do what Sesame Workshop does. ReferenceUSA helps with that by providing the names of ten of them, including for example College Board, Drisha Institute, Ethical Culture Fieldstone School, Fordham University's Institute of American Language and Culture, and Fusion Academy.  You may have noticed however that none of these competitors uses any muppets to achieve their goals. Therefore the SIC coding, although quite sophisticated, is not perfect and the research into "educational muppets" would have to be taken to a different level.

Because of its private, non-profit status, finding financial information about Sesame Workshop is somewhat challenging. Private companies modules that are present in our subscription to MergentOnline and Plunkett Research databases do not list Sesame Workshop and neither does another source of financial information on companies: Standard and Poor's Net Adventage. Sesame Workshop is actually also a grantmaker (public charity) which in Foundation Directory Online Professional is also described as "organization that normally receives a substantial part of its support from a governmental unit or from the general public." The same source states that for the year ended June 30, 2012 Sesame Workshop reported assets: $396,390,471 (market value), gifts received: $26,619,160; expenditures: $138,420,124 and total giving: $4,269,027. Sesame Workshop gives away a good amount of money but hold your horses if you are planning to apply. Under "Application Information" section Foundation Directory Online Professional states: "Unsolicited requests for funds not accepted."

By 2005, income from the Sesame Workshop's international co-productions of the show was allegedly $96 million. So it was only natural that that year Sesame Street, as reported in Furniture/Today (10/17/2005), launched new TV program in France under the title "5, Rue Sésame," which was co-produced by Expand-Drama. The same year, as reported in License! (June 2005), a partnership between Loblaws Cos. Ltd. and the Sesame Workshop was announced regarding the launch of a new infant brand in Canada called Sesame Beginnings. However, as of 2005, as reported in License! Europe (Feb./March 2006), Sesame Street was not aired in Great Britain (?).  Maura Regan, who at that time was the program's general manager, stated that its worldwide initiative could help start the program in the country. By now Sesame Workshop claims that its products reach millions of children in more than 150 countries. You can see a list of them here, with some of them highlighted on this original furry map.

It has been claimed  that there is nothing that 'Sesame Street' can't teach you, if you let it. Therefore it is not a surprise that Seasame Workshop, just like SIBL (see our Money Matters @ Financial Literacy Central), is involved in financial education. In 2002, as reported in Euromoney (October 2003) Merrill Lynch joined forces with Sesame Street to develop a "financial fitness" curriculum aimed at children between the ages of two and six. In 2009 Merrill Lynch  announced a commitment of $5 million to Sesame Workshop to launch a global financial literacy program for children. Another timely project was announced in 2013 when a $2 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was given to Sesame Workshop to promote hygiene and sanitation among children and families in high-need areas of Bangladesh, India, and Nigeria.