Tech Matters: Using tech for positive social change

Big complex social problems. Your skills and experiences. Benetech. Combining those three potent ingredients is how we change the world. If you’ve been burning to use your considerable talents to make a difference, rather than make a lot of money, it’s time you considered joining our growing team. We are looking for more than a dozen motivated individuals to make the leap to positive social impact. From executives to summer interns, from engineers and product managers, to communications and outreach professionals, we have a wide range of opportunities. From children with disabilities to African human rights activists, you will have direct exposure to how Benetech’s products and services change lives for the better. Our benefits are great, and our pay is excellent by nonprofit standards! Flexibility is one of our core values. It’s just one of the reasons that Benetech is the rare software company that is majority women (also true of our managers). We believe in wildcards : i...

Investing in education has an incredible multiplier effect as it leads to increased prosperity not just for individuals, but also for their communities and societies. It provides returns for decades. This topic was center-stage at this year’s Global Philanthropy Forum . The Forum, which has been bringing philanthropists as well as political and social sector leaders from around the world to Silicon Valley since 2001, hosted the Presidents of two foundations: Robert Gallucci of the MacArthur Foundation and Reeta Roy of The MasterCard Foundation. Gallucci and Roy jointly announced a partnership of philanthropic organizations investing more than $15 million in grants to 23 projects as well as an additional $13 million available in the coming year for innovative projects that will increase the participation, quality, and relevance of secondary education. I had the opportunity to speak with both Gallucci and Roy about this unique funder collaborative and more specifically about how ...

I was recently at the Skoll World Forum, probably the best conference in the world for meeting with top social entrepreneurs. As a longtime member of the Skoll community, I prize this week for the opportunity to talk frankly with peers about our biggest mutual challenges. Peer learning is the most valuable opportunity for a field that has no operator's manual -- like social entrepreneurship! The constant theme is raising money for our social enterprises. But not just any money -- we talk about the most difficult money to raise: the unrestricted funding that is the lifeblood for a social entrepreneur. This kind of funding is essential for innovation, for responding to time-critical opportunities, prototyping new ideas and getting them to the point where they are a saleable product to customers and/or issue-focused donors. But, unrestricted funding is far harder to raise, because the donor is investing in the leadership of the organization as opposed to a specific set of deliverab...

I greatly enjoy talking to students, and I am now in Ottawa, Canada, just having spoken to an incredible group of students, Engineers Without Borders Canada . Now, I had heard of EWB before, but I hadn't grasped how large, sophisticated and ambitious an organization this is! I'm at the annual Canadian EWB conference (each of the EWB country groups is independent of the other), and there are hundreds and hundreds of students here. Mainly engineering students, but as EWB Canada has grown and matured, they've increased the size of their umbrella and welcome non-engineering students. Oh, and at least half of the engineering students here are women. Hint to the profession: if you link engineering to helping people rather than gadgets, women seem to be more interested! Dr. Pamela Hartigan, head of the Skoll Centre at Oxford University's Said Business School, noted in her keynote that EWB was the largest single source of Skoll Scholars at Oxford. That made me realize how im...

I originally started this blog as a way to keep more of our Benetech team aware of what was going on with me and other team members (through guest blogs) while on our travels. Many of us spend a big chunk of our time on the road rather than in the office, and it's good to share some of the reasons our office chairs are often empty! Speaking publicly is an important part of our work. We do it both to advance Benetech objectives and projects, as well as advancing the field (we call these karma gigs). We invest in public speaking coaching (thanks, Melinda Henning!) to become better speakers, both for old hands like me and Benetechers getting ready for their first public speech. I asked Joan Mellea, who keeps track of these and many other things at Benetech, about my upcoming speaking commitments: she quickly came up with fifteen! More than ten of these are in just the next two months. So, I thought I'd share what's coming up to give a flavor of where in the world Jim will b...

I've just ended an exciting three week long Africa trip to Kenya, Tanzania and Ghana. There are so many exciting people and organizations to talk about! One of my very first meetings in Nairobi, Kenya, was with John Kipchumbah (Kipp) and Philip Thigo of the Innovation Program of the Social Development Network. I dropped in on them because Kipp had been trained on our Martus human rights software years ago and had been helping human rights groups in the region with using Martus. However, I was thrilled with the incredible range of activities I heard about during our dinner together. Kipp explained that they wanted to take a broad approach to improving human rights, and so had expanded into other areas in the social sector. They felt these new initiatives would all contribute to a better human rights environment in the region. One of the first areas was a budget tracking tools for Kenya, to make it easier for people to learn about budgeted amounts for their areas. Huduma mak...

Our Nonprofit Legal Expert Continues to Offer Wise Advice My last post mentioned our recent Benetech board meeting. This seemed like a great moment to introduce our newest board member, Robert Wexler . Rob has a deep understanding of what makes nonprofits successful. He’s a principal at Adler & Colvin, San Francisco's top law firm specializing in nonprofit law. His practice focuses on tax and corporate matters for nonprofits and their donors. Rob is also a lecturer at Stanford Law School where he teaches the Law of Nonprofit Organizations. Rob has helped Benetech navigate important transitions over the years including providing critical legal advice during the sale of the Arkenstone product line in 2000, including expanding our charter from just working on disability issues to a wider range of social issues (now including human rights and the environment). Proceeds from the sale of the Arkenstone reading machine for the blind provided the capital to fund Benetech and launch ...

One of the great memories I have of last week's Skoll World Forum is Willy Foote of Root Capital kicking off the Skoll Convening (the grantee meeting just before the Forum) with this ash-cloud inspired song: “Floating in this Cloud” How can I scale the impact of my work? Should I partner or go it alone? How many funders do I really need? And how many miles have I flown? Yes, and does it make sense, to hire a COO Given how much this outfit has grown. The answers, for now, are floating in this cloud The answers are floating in this cloud How can I find the kind of hires that I need Before we all just explode? How can I build a strong culture for us all Before we burn out from overload? Yes and how many times must I change my strategy Before I get on a steady road The answers, for now, are floating in this cloud The answers are floating in this cloud (Repeat) And when will I know my work has been done That the impact will forever be How will I measure my mark on the world That it not...

Benetech doesn't make tangible stuff: we've decided that our expertise is in making electronic bits. Software and content are easily scaled up. But, the world still needs tangible things, and the market often fails to deliver them. Rich Thesing, a long-time disability activist and fellow Fellow of the American Leadership Forum in Silicon Valley, has been thinking hard on how to make exercise equipment accessible. As someone was injured as a result of an accident, Rich knows that there can be severe consequences for people with these kinds of disabilities if they don't maintain muscle tone in their limbs. There are lots of exercycles that are in health clubs and exercise rooms around the world, but they lack minor accessibility features to make them usable. Most people who are quads have partial use of their limbs, for example, little use of their legs but partial use of their arms. Rich's problem is that he can get his first foot onto the pedal and strapped in, b...

My latest President's Update is up on the Benetech website. This update spotlights our new Benetech report celebrating twenty (!) years of technology serving humanity. When I first started Benetech, I never dreamed that we would actually be where we are today. Through the generosity of our committed supporters, Benetech has had remarkable success and I am proud of our impact in the fields of disability, human rights and the environment. Our report asks the question “How many people can a single idea help?” This is a question we ask every day at Benetech. As a technology company where social benefit—not profit—is the bottom line, we believe the knowledge is readily available to solve many of humanity’s most vexing problems. Our innovative solutions take the best of existing technology and adapt it at low cost to confront these challenges. In this time of social conflict, environmental destruction and economic uncertainty, the need for such a strategy has never been greater. We’re...

Great to see two social enterprise bloggers, Kylie Eastley of Tasmania and Tristan Pollock from Minnesota, won Halle Tecco's contest on Huffington Post to go to the Social Enterprise Alliance Summit later this month in San Francisco. I just heard from Jerr Boschee, the interim CEO of SEA, that registrations are already well ahead of past Summits, and that over 30% of the attendees are coming from outside the United States. This year's Summit is being held in conjunction with the Social Enterprise World Forum, which was in Australia last year and Scotland the year before that. Next year it will be in South Africa. We're excited to playing host to the growing global social enterprise movement, and I'm glad that Kylie will be blogging up a storm from down under even Down Under! This Summit will be my swan song in a leadership role at the Alliance. I joined the board ten years ago, and my term limits were extended to act in the chair's role these past two years, fo...

New ideas for Benetech projects come to us from interesting people all the time. The challenges that people bring are rarely technology problems: they are market problems. One repeating theme came to me during a recent and fascinating meeting with Professor Rebecca Richards-Kortum, the Director of Rice 360, the Institute for Global Health Technologies . Rebecca was looking for help with a familiar problem. Her students at Rice University have been busy inventing new tools and equipment for global health. Many universities do similar things, but Rice goes a key step further. Their students actually go into the field, work with local medical professionals, and learn their real problems, their real pain points. They design solutions in response to these pain points, and bring them back into the field for real-world feedback. So far, so good. But, what happens after doctors in Africa rave about how successful this or that invention are in their hospital? How do you go from ten or tw...

As I head off to the WEF Summit in Davos, I'm also excited about the Social Enterprise Alliance Summit coming up in San Francisco at the end of April. The membership of the Alliance are "my people," folks who speak both social and business fluently. The response to the early bird registration was incredible. We had to extend the early bird a week (actually, from last Friday to today) for member organizations to make sure everybody who wanted to register early got their double-discount (being a member and being an early bird). Benetech is sending four of our team, including me. We're really looking forward to it. This year's Summit is special because we're cohosting the Social Enterprise World Forum, which was held in Scotland and Australia the last two years (I got to go to the first one in Scotland: it was incredible to see how vibrant and successful the movement is in the UK). So, we're expecting a great turnout from our international peers in th...

I just got back from the Economic Self-Reliance Conference at Brigham Young University in Utah. When I attend conferences to give a keynote, I usually try to stick around for more of the conference and listen in to the other presenters. This practice was especially awarded at the ESR conference. David Wiley's keynote was on the social returns from a new venture he helped create, Flat World Knowledge . His projection was that students were going to save more money on textbooks after three semesters of Flat World operations than investors had put into it. Not the typical SROI calculation, but the dramatic point was that Flat World is making impact the center piece of their foray into Open Educational Resources (OERs). OERs are the open source equivalent of open source software. My biggest concern about OERs has been that few people developing them have been measuring the impact: they celebrate the creation of the open content textbook or coursework, but don't collect the in...

As the chair of the Social Enterprise Alliance, I have the opportunity to address the annual Summit. I had a blast in New Orleans revving up the crowd about this exciting time for the Social Enterprise Alliance and the movement. Here's the text of my speech: [long post alert] Social Enterprise: Not Business as Usual! Jim Fruchterman Chairman’s Address to the Social Enterprise Alliance 2009 Annual Summit The world’s a mess. I thought that would be news to you. We’ve got a lot of problems. We have a global economic meltdown. We have instability and violence all over the world. And we have this thing called the global climate crisis. It’s kind of daunting. The challenges of today’s world demand innovation because we can’t afford — business as usual. I want to talk to you today about this moment in time, this great opportunity for us. We’re joining together to talk about the new face of business. An approach that puts social issues foremost; a strategy that delivers better resul...

It was exciting to note the publication of my big article on Benetech in MIT Press' Innovations journal. I just received the PDF and was able to post it on Benetech's site. As many of you know, I'm committed to doing a book (and am holed up at Caltech's Athenaeum this week working on it). This article was my first big step in writing up some of Benetech's history and why we do what we do, and the process of working with the editors gave me a taste of what I'm in for with a book!

One of the highlights of last week's Social Enterprise Alliance's Summit was the Launch of the Policy Track . We were delighted to have with us Carlos Monje of the White House Office of Social Innovation (so new, it doesn't have a website). A lot of cool things happened in the policy track (even I spoke), but I think the interesting thing was Carlos' comments. And so, I'll share those with you. According to Carlos, the Office is part of the domestic policy team inside the White House. They have four staff right now. They have three areas of focus: Service. The big deal here is the Edward Kennedy Serve America Act. Michelle Obama was a big part of Public Allies and is a huge fan of national service Public Private partnerships. Social innovation. The service angle is not service for its own sake. They see this as a big deal, and expect to upgrade Volunteer.gov to really rally more volunteer service. There will be a Social Innovation Fund, small by federal stan...

I'm getting ready to head to the Social Enterprise Summit 2009 next month in New Orleans. I'm especially excited about the significant focus on public policy and advocacy for social entrepreneurship. We were lucky to have the support of the Surdna Foundation for a policy-specific conference track. Experienced practitioners tend to engage at levels above their specific organization. For me, it's about advancing the movement. It's crystal clear to me that the creativity of social enterprisers is essential to bringing us out of this current economic and social hole we're in. With President Obama expected to launch a new White House Office of Social Innovation, this seems like an opportune moment to get together with leaders from the social enterprise movement to help influence the national and international agenda! If this gets you interested, I hope to see you in New Orleans!