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A Call for Millions: Ending the Global Book Famine for the Blind

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

We have the technology. We have the ebooks. The Global Treaty for the Blind makes it legal to create ebooks for people with disabilities without having to pay a royalty or getting permission. We have hundreds of thousands of ebooks in a dozen languages already available globally. We can scale quickly.

Global 109
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Join Benetech in the Skoll Foundation’s 2014 Social Entrepreneurs Challenge!

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

“They get frustrated and don’t want to read,” she says, “but access to digital books and reading technologies changed all that for Zach.” Zach Bryant The change happened when Zach was in high school and his Assistive Technology teacher introduced him to Benetech’s Bookshare library. Thank you for your support!

Challenge 144
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The Gift of Reading, a Circle of Life

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

It became a burden to his family and caregivers to constantly drop what they were doing to turn a page, so he began seeking out ebooks. It also demonstrates how each ebook that is added to the Bookshare collection is a brick in our members’ foundation of independence and inclusion. Eventually he had to ask others to turn pages for him.

Life 147
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Donor Spotlight: Lavelle Fund for the Blind

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

The Lavelle Fund exemplifies the tremendous social return that bold philanthropy can create. Today, Bookshare serves over 330,000 American students with a rapidly growing collection of hundreds of thousands of accessible ebooks. I’d like to share our experience with Lavelle, where they took a series of calculated risks in grantmaking.

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10X: CEO’s Update: Spring 2014

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

How can we use technology in a new way to improve people’s lives that is an order of magnitude better? Can we help stimulate the creation of far more technology-for-good ventures? Technology currently serves privileged groups through tools that provide access to education, literacy, health, and justice.

Literacy 158
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CEO’s Update: Fall 2014

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

My personal goal is to channel the aspirations of the technology community to do more social good. More and more of my time is spent around both raising money and raising awareness of how much more could be done with technology to increase social impact. Are you excited about technology benefiting the world?

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Benetech’s Framework for Developing New Social Enterprises

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

As philanthropy wonk Lucy Bernholz writes , together, these changes add up to a new social economy: “[A] dynamic and diverse set of enterprises that deploy private resources to the creation and sustenance of public goods.” In my contribution to Ron’s book, I discuss the framework that guides us at Benetech, the technology nonprofit I lead.

Develop 144