Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

OCTOBER 20, 2012

The recently launched Laura and John Arnold Foundation Giving Library is a unique resource that provides this information about nonprofits through engaging video interviews. We’re delighted that Benetech was selected to be one of the first 250 nonprofits spotlighted on the Giving Library.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 7, 2006

Asking the Wrong Questions Michael Gilbert is a fascinating observer of the application of technology to social objectives. I quite enjoyed a recent article of his looking at technocentric approaches to technology assessment. As a techie, I have to keep reminding myself of these issues!

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

AUGUST 4, 2014

cybersecurity innovation nonprofit open source Opensource.com social good social impact tech4good' We always ask ourselves how we can apply technology in new ways to improve people’s lives, and we believe that the open source model helps spark creativity and more technology-for-good ventures.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

DECEMBER 16, 2014

SocialCoding4Good brings together individual software professionals as well as corporate social responsibility teams from companies such as Cisco, Google, Hewlett Packard, LinkedIn, and VMware to volunteer their technical skills to nonprofit partners that develop and maintain free and open source software addressing critical social problems.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 13, 2011

Our Nonprofit Legal Expert Continues to Offer Wise Advice My last post mentioned our recent Benetech board meeting. 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.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

AUGUST 10, 2015

Well, we’re a nonprofit: organized as a charity. And while we pay quite well by nonprofit standards, there is no stock plan. If you would like to try the nonprofit sector on for size, read on. Flexibility: We expect the work to get done, and provide our professional staff a high degree of flexibility on how to get it done.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 29, 2016

Our benefits are great, and our pay is excellent by nonprofit standards! That’s why Benetech is organized as a nonprofit: we can afford to work on exciting problems. 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.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

OCTOBER 27, 2014

accessibility Bookshare CrowdRise ebook fundraising giving human rights nonprofit philanthropy print disabilities Reading SEChallenge Skoll Foundation social enterprise tech4good' Join us , and together we can realize the potential of technology to make the world a better place for everyone. Thank you for your support!

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 8, 2015

We are Silicon Valley’s deliberately nonprofit software company. Benetech is organized as a nonprofit, but run like a business. You are someone who dreams about using your management and leadership skills and love of technology for social impact, exceeding the bounds of what a regular for-profit business can do.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 4, 2014

We’re excited to see Y Combinator admitting some nonprofit teams into their program , but their focus is still on cultivating a community of top-end entrepreneurs for a relatively short period of time. So far, we’ve spun off one for-profit, one nonprofit, and sold one venture for $5 million.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 27, 2013

In fact, we’re doing so well in that respect that I get to engage more and more in new opportunities to advance our nonprofit mission—but less in writing my updates. We’re also pulling our Silicon Valley brain trust into these new Labs projects by creating a new kind of nonprofit advisory board, the Benetech Labs Partners.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 27, 2012

Although I'm firmly on the nonprofit side with Benetech (because we focus on big issues where the market is failing), it's definitely easier to get funded sustainably if you have an exciting and invest-able business plan. The rise of for-profit social enterprises has been quite exciting.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

OCTOBER 19, 2013

She founded the nonprofit Sustainable South Bronx , was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship and today leads the Majora Carter Group , an economic consulting firm she formed in 2008 to bring her approach to underserved communities across the country. As a pragmatic idealist, Majora acknowledges that asking companies to do good can only go so far.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

APRIL 30, 2012

This landscape, named by scholars as the “new social economy,” is being dramatically reshaped by recent trends in the social sector that have led to a blurring of the distinctions between business, nonprofit, and government organizations.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 3, 2016

Our nonprofit organization operates Bookshare , the largest online library in the world that focuses on the needs of people with these disabilities. We know a great deal about this Treaty, which is designed to help people who are blind or have other disabilities that interfere with reading, such as dyslexia.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 24, 2010

In the statute: "authorized entity" means a nonprofit organization or a governmental agency that has a primary mission to provide specialized services relating to training, education, or adaptive reading or information access needs of blind or other persons with disabilities; In this case, authorized means authorized under the statute.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

DECEMBER 17, 2015

As the nonprofit operator of Bookshare ,the world’s largest online library for people who are blind, visually impaired, dyslexic, or have a physical disability that prevents them from reading books, Benetech strongly recommends the ratification of the Marrakesh Treaty. There is still much to do, however, before the treaty takes full effect.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 22, 2013

When I ask the owners of intellectual property to license their creations to my nonprofit, for free, for these markets where they have already decided that they can’t make money, they say yes: 80% of the time! The thrill of solving problems, of figuring something out, and bringing that understanding into the service of humanity.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

AUGUST 18, 2008

Setting up as a nonprofit is not easy. But, setting up a nonprofit and getting 501(c)(3) status can take a year or more and cost ten or twenty thousand dollars (unless you get pro bono legal help). Many folks doing starting up nonprofit work might be better off finding a fiscal sponsor. This is a qualified nonprofit (i.e.,

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 18, 2013

under a terrific exception to copyright that makes it possible for a nonprofit like ours to simply provide accessible books to people with disabilities. Rely on national law in each country to qualify the nonprofits that can use these exceptions to help people with disabilities. For example, we run Bookshare in the U.S.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

DECEMBER 13, 2015

It is full of examples of interesting ed tech from for-profits and nonprofits, as well as local, state and federal government agencies. I just finished reading the National Education Technology Plan , and I can recommend it to anyone interested in the future of technology in American education.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 8, 2017

I can stretch this analogy a lot further, but here's my advice to the nonprofit sector specifically. Those measures do not ensure I will not get robbed, but they raise the cost of robbery, either by slowing the robbers down or increasing the chances they will be caught by the police.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 18, 2011

Speed Geeking at the Gates Foundation Global Library Program about Bookshare International 9/22 Stanford Social Innovation Review online webinar "Nonprofit, For-profit, or Something in Between?"

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 9, 2013

Together with our partners in the nonprofit, technology, government, academic and publishing sectors, we participate in new cultural and technological movements, deriving new knowledge that we apply for social gain. The Lex Mundi Foundation is a nonprofit affiliate of Lex Mundi, the world’s leading association of independent law firms.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

APRIL 20, 2013

I remember the day I told my wife, Virginia, that I’d do this “nonprofit thing” for just one year and then go back to regular for-profit high tech companies. That was over 24 years ago!

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 27, 2013

Digital and mobile communications are changing the rules about social networks, intellectual property, and the availability of big data, with an overall blurring of the boundaries between state, for-profits, and nonprofits. In my contribution to Ron’s book, I discuss the framework that guides us at Benetech, the technology nonprofit I lead.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 13, 2010

Tim's point wasn't that all tech developers should go to work for nonprofits, it was that people should step back and think about what matters to them. At my nonprofit tech company Benetech, our team applies successful models from Silicon Valley to better solve really important social problems.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 19, 2017

Free service with a “pay what you can” request (like Wikipedia’s) is a sustainable nonprofit model. We’ve already built the library in the cloud, meaning we can scale infrastructure at the click of a button. We have a new business model. The majority of donations stay local, sourcing content in local languages and creating jobs.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 16, 2011

Statement of Benetech to the 22nd Session of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights at the World Intellectual Property Organization June 15, 2011, Geneva, Switzerland • Greetings from California’s Silicon Valley!

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JULY 11, 2013

The staff at Benetech , the nonprofit tech company I lead, recently came together to answer this question: “What values define our identity and drive our work?” For many in the nonprofit space, being “flexible” and “getting stuff done” don’t always go hand in hand. This post originally appeared on CSRwire Talkback.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 14, 2011

Technology has revolutionized business, but bringing those breakthrough developments to government, education and the nonprofit sectors can take 5, 10, even 15 years. To see one example, check out my recent paper “For Love or Lucre” on how to decide whether to be a nonprofit or for-profit when starting a social enterprise.)

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 8, 2014

I was happy to offer Jerry some advice on that front and to discover that Benetech may be able to help with his efforts through our SocialCoding4Good initiative, which bridges the open source software, corporate tech, and nonprofit communities for social change.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 15, 2013

We’re honored to be included in this elite group of nonprofits known for their innovative approaches to tackling social problems. This campaign is part of the Social Entrepreneurs Challenge , an effort launched by the Skoll Foundation in partnership with The Huffington Post and CrowdRise in order to support leading social enterprises.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 25, 2013

We get a huge amount of pro bono assistance from the legal profession, both because of our social impact as a nonprofit, and because of the challenging and interesting issues we tackle. We’re not an advocacy organization, but our technical insights are in great demand from advocates.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 4, 2010

Tim's point wasn't that all tech developers should go to work for nonprofits, it was that people should step back and think about what matters to them. And, the same spirit of innovation for a purpose is affecting nonprofits and government as well. Life is too short to throw your professional life away on stuff you don't care about.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

AUGUST 10, 2011

The Read2Go application was developed by Bookshare’s parent nonprofit Benetech in partnership with Shinano Kenshi Co., According to Maria, books in the DAISY format have the same page numbering as the text which is a big benefit to scholars who need precise citations. Ltd which is known for its PLEXTALK® brand of digital talking book players.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 19, 2013

Benetech, my nonprofit organization operates Bookshare, the largest online library dedicated to serving blind and print disabled people. We have 197,000 books available in the United States today, and serve 250,000 people , mainly in the United States, but also in 40 other countries.

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