Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 28, 2013

We are a high tech organization that is not organized as a for-profit company, but instead as a nonprofit charitable corporation working to ensure technology serves all of humanity. At Benetech , we like to think of ourselves as part of Silicon Valley’s heart. In many countries, over 90,000 titles are available.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

AUGUST 10, 2015

It’s hard for most organizations to accommodate nonstandard approaches to work. 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. Do you want flexibility in your job?

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

APRIL 30, 2012

The ESI Award recognizes outstanding individuals and organizations whose innovations blend methods from the worlds of business and philanthropy, and that challenge the status quo to create sustainable social value with a potential for large-scale impact.

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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

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

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. 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).

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JULY 28, 2014

Gerardo during a brainstorming session in Benetech offices Advising to and leading Benetech’s collaboration with standards organizations and groups that advance the field of accessibility in education, such as the World Wide Web Consortium ( W3C ) and the DAISY Consortium.

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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. (and

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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

DECEMBER 17, 2015

The international legal landscape for people with these disabilities dramatically changed on June 28, 2013, when the World Intellectual Property Organization adopted the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who are Blind, Visually Impaired, or Otherwise Print Disabled. delegation signing the treaty.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 17, 2014

As a different kind of Silicon Valley tech company—a nonprofit with a pure focus on social good—our goal is to see that the best of technology gets applied to social needs left unaddressed by for-profit businesses. And, Benetech is committed as an organization to all of these six principles. copyright law. But, it’s not the only one!

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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! Now, more than 30,000 current copyrighted books are available globally on Bookshare to thousands of users. •

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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. We have a pipeline of ideas, not teams.

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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

MARCH 13, 2014

And this creates serious personal threats in an era where numerous organizations around the world collect individually identifiable data that regularly leaks into other hands. Take for example a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) rights-focused organization with which we work.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

AUGUST 19, 2013

We’ve started a Benetech blog that will feature voices from across our organization (one that is separate from my personal Beneblog ). a nonprofit organization whose mission is to support the independence of people with disabilities by promoting the use and improving the availability of accessible information technology.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 15, 2013

All the organizations participating in the Challenge are recipients of the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship. We’re honored to be included in this elite group of nonprofits known for their innovative approaches to tackling social problems.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 25, 2013

We’re not an advocacy organization, but our technical insights are in great demand from advocates. 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.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 15, 2013

We may be a nonprofit, but we’re also a tech company: in ten years, we shouldn’t be doing what we’re doing today! It’s a great resource for organizations that are engaged in spinning off sustainable projects, or that are considering similar strategies. We used it to review our planning as we wrapped up this move.

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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

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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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 12, 2014

As the parent nonprofit organization of the Bookshare online library, a leading provider of accessible books to people with print disabilities in the U.S., You can read more about our position in the Amicus Brief , which we filed jointly with our peer organization, Learning Ally. The Authors Guild then appealed the ruling.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 3, 2011

A longtime venture capitalist with his DEFTA Partners firm , he wants to help solve social problems using hybrid capital structures that meld nonprofit and for-profit partners. bracNet is one of these hybrid ventures, joining a majority for-profit ownership led by DEFTA Partners with BRAC , Bangladesh’s largest social enterprise organization.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

As a foundation, we do more than just write a check; through our community, philanthropic and corporate partnerships, we help nonprofit organizations find new revenue sources to become more self-sustaining. That's why ZeroDivide partners with grantee organizations that are willing to take bold, new directions.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 1, 2011

Benetech is a Silicon Valley nonprofit organization developing innovative technology solutions with a primary goal of positive social change rather than profit. We avoid competing with our partner organizations. Writing them down has been powerful for us: these truths articulate who we are and how we do things at Benetech.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 27, 2013

We see tremendous innovations in social enterprise, but these are merely part of larger, global changes in the ways in which society organizes itself to create public goods. 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

JUNE 23, 2010

with print disabilities, with more than 70,000 copyrighted works in our library, the majority of which have been created under the US copyright exception by volunteers, mainly people with disabilities themselves, helping each other. • We now have global permissions for around 8,000 copyrighted books out of our 70,000. •

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

AUGUST 7, 2013

That makes it legal in these countries for people with these disabilities, and the organizations that serve them, to make accessible versions of books without having to get permission from the author or publisher. First, it makes creating a national domestic copyright exception an obligation of countries that ratify the Treaty. Article 2(c).

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Section 121) , defines a special class of organizations known as authorized entities. Section 121 of the Copyright Act, also known as the Chafee Amendment (17 U.S.C.

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Authoring Copyright Library Award 100

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

JUNE 9, 2014

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.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 7, 2012

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 deliverables. But, many of the others were eager to think through the challenges of adapting this model to their organization, and how it might work well.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 5, 2015

What is it like for a nonprofit to have a successful, lasting partnership with a private philanthropic foundation? It funds primarily organizations that serve the New York City metropolitan area or New York State. And what are some of the social benefits and impact that may result from such a relationship?

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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

FEBRUARY 3, 2016

The Bookshare Library Experience I am the CEO of Benetech, the nonprofit organization that provides the world’s largest online collection of accessible books, for people with disabilities that interfere with reading, through our Bookshare library. Bookshare was created under the Section 121 U.S. exception model works well here.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 25, 2013

Delivering my opening remarks at the Martus'' 10th Anniversary A decade later, in 2003, Benetech —the nonprofit tech company I founded and lead—launched our Human Rights Program to address this very question. Beyond those top organizations, almost no groups had good technology designed for human rights documentation.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 1, 2016

My nonprofit creates the Martus software for human rights activists to securely store their sensitive information (via encryption). When we called an LGBT organization in Africa last year for a regular check-in, we found that they took the call from the back yard of their offices.

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