The Benetech Initiative is a non-profit venture that provides social benefits by harnessing the power of technology. It delivers these benefits using a new model of social entrepreneurship which combines market forces with philanthropic capital and entrepreneurial drive. Benetech focuses the efforts of technology and technologists to solve important problems facing society.
A quick sampling of projects currently underway illustrates the power and promise of Benetech. Bookshare.org is a legal book-sharing community of people with disabilities, meeting the stringent copyright law exemption for providing accessible books. The Martus Project provides critical tools for the reporting and dissemination of human rights information, improving the effectiveness of the human rights sector worldwide. The Landmine Detector Project will transfer exciting new technologies developed by U.S. Department of Defense to applications to meet the needs of humanitarian landmine removal efforts around the world.
Innovation
Each Benentech project brings technology dramatically to bear on major problems facing global society in fields where these applications are not commercially viable. Management techniques and technology already available from the commercial sector are applied to projects in which Benetech serves as an incubator. The organization provides seed capital for market and technical feasibility studies, and provides infrastructure for these ventures.
Benetech offers a powerful new philanthropic option to the technological community, providing an outlet for the positive social intentions of many of its corporate and individual members. Large donors will find philanthropic investments that are closer to the new venture development model, complete with business plans, rather than grant applications. Active donors will find the opportunity to directly apply their technology skills to social good, thus leveraging their investment for more than just profitable gain. Executives can find rewarding interim opportunities after major career transitions. Professionals reaching a point in their family lives where they want to dedicate less than 70 hours per week to their jobs can find fair compensation with high personal rewards. Companies can see their technologies applied to exciting, beneficial applications and can reap marketing and public relations benefits.
Benetech's Origins — The Arkenstone Story
Benetech grew out of the pioneering work of Arkenstone, the world leader in reading machines for the blind. A 501(c)(3) non-profit, Arkenstone was founded to provide reading tools for people with disabilities. From 1989-2000, Arkenstone delivered these tools in a dozen languages to more than 35,000 individuals in 60 countries. Rather than increasing dependency by giving technology to its users, Arkenstone provided affordable tools to help people help themselves. During this time, more than 99 percent of Arkenstone's budget came from the sale of these products. Arkenstone has been one of the nation's most successful examples of a high technology social enterprise, using an innovative business model to achieve major social objectives in education, employment, and independence.
The objective in creating Benetech is to spread the original, very successful Arkenstone model to more fields, all with the common thread of technology in the service of humanity. Benetech grew out of Arkenstone, after the sale of Arkenstone's business operations, to a for-profit company. This sale exemplifies the philosophy and success of the social entrepreneurial model. Arkenstone filled a gap during its first decade, and has now achieved sustainability for its reading machine effort by transferring it to the for-profit sector. This transaction has provided the initial capital to launch new social ventures created by Benetech.
Carrie Kirby, a San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer, wrote:
“Ten years ago, entrepreneur Jim Fruchterman asked himself a tough question: Can technology save people from brutality? He had just read a detailed account of the slaughter of hundreds of villagers in the El Salvador village of El Mozote, denied at the time by the U. S. government in an alleged political cover-up. "How can technologists protect peasants from being murdered?" Fruchterman asked. "We're engineers, we like to think about all kinds of fancy things, but when it comes down to it, the only thing that helps groups like this is truth."
Now Fruchterman's nonprofit, Benetech, has an answer: the Martus Human Rights Bulletin System, a simple database program that helps human rights observers in often low-tech field offices avoid losing their records of police brutality, rapes and other abuses. Martus means "witness" in Greek.
"We think of ourselves as a high-tech company, but our customers are people who most high-tech companies won't go after," Fruchterman said. The Palo Alto organization's first project used optical-recognition software -- inspired by smart bombs -- to convert printed books into audio books for the blind.
When researching Martus, Benetech learned that a human rights group in Sri Lanka had lost five years of records to termites. Other groups recorded their data on computers, but the PCs were stolen. Data collected by local human rights observers is often the basis of international investigations and trials. Such investigations can stall if the original data has been lost, said Fruchterman. To combat data loss, Martus not only helps groups store the data on PCs, it backs the files up on remote servers so the data can't be lost even if the original PC is destroyed.
After beta testing, Martus is now in use by seven to 10 groups in Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America, the company estimates. Benetech is not charging money for Martus, but the technology may generate revenue if, for example, a foundation pays Benetech employees to set up a server. It does charge a fee for the use of one of its other current projects, Bookshare.org, a Napster-style file-trading system for audio books for the blind (Bookshare. Org).
Impact
Although Fruchterman thought of Martus years ago, it did not become possible until Benetech sold its first project, the talking book software, to a for-profit firm for $3 million in 2000. Benetech used much of the proceeds to fund Martus and Bookshare.org.
Benetech intends to have each project generate enough revenue to break even within three years. In 2002, the company brought in $525,773 in fees and royalties, but it spent $2.17 million. It bridged the gap with $407,940 in grants and $1.23 million from the capital it raised by selling Arkenstone, the talking book technology.
Fruchterman is thinking about trying that approach for a Benetech project that's in the planning stages now. The organization is researching mine- detection technologies that people living in former war zones could use.
Inspiration
Benetech:
"There is no other organization in the world doing this kind of work, which is vital in the struggle for the protection of human rights and the pursuit of justice."
Dr. Todd Landman
Co-Director, Human Rights Centre
University of Essex
(Taken from Benetech website)
The World Inquiry editorial team edited this profile from the original submission of the interviewer or other source. The views expressed do not necessarily represent Case Western Reserve University, the Weatherhead School of Management or the Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit. More >>
