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We're hiring! Benetech is in growth mode, and we're hiring for three positions right now. I'm seeking a new CTO to help grow Benetech's project portfolio and our engineering team, and to help me handle the incredible range of opportunities Benetech has for changing the world. Bookshare.org needs a dynamic person to manage and drive the expansion of our collection, managing both automated and volunteer processes to bring more books to more people with disabilities around the world.
Home About Me Subscribe Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology Thoughtful and sometimes snarky perspectives on nonprofit technology IP Tidbits August 18, 2005 Here are a few tidbits I’ve come across in the Intellectual Property arena in the past few days. Downhill Battle , which is an organization people interested in the whole "copyfight" issue should know about, has a new project, called Participatory Culture.
While checking my links in Technorati last month, I came across a link from a blog named "Darkstar.org" and wasn't sure who it was. After a little digging, I figured it out was Carnet Williams! So, I tracked him down for an interview. 1. You've been in the nonprofit technology space for a long time. I remember reading your posts in the early days of Rider's list and finally meeting you back in 2001.
Skip to Navigation Careers News Client login About Us Services Our Work Blogs Events Contact Us Home › Blogs › Influence Social Networking and #AIDS2010 Suzanne Rainey in Influence 15 Jul 2010 There’s a flurry of action this week as we await the start of the XVIII International AIDS Conference (#AIDS2010) in Vienna, Austria, next week. I wish I was able to attend, but am glad that many of my clients have the opportunity to go.
Speaker: Tim Sarrantonio, Director of Corporate Brand
Do you really know your donors? Not just what they give, but who they are? 👥 In this interactive session, we’ll break down how nonprofits can use behavioral indicators (affinity, recency, frequency, and monetary value) to build prospecting segments that go beyond wealth screening and actually align with donor identity. You’ll walk away with practical strategies to move beyond basic demographics and cultivate supporters based on how they already engage with you!
I am proud to be affiliated with the Social Enterprise Alliance, a group that works to advance the cause of people who run enterprises with a social mission. Early bird registration has just started for the Seventh Gathering, the annual meeting of the Alliance. It will be held in Atlanta in early March, and I will definitely be there!
Watching policeman rough up a taxi driver. Second and final delayed blog posting from Tunis. Original post from Nov 18, 2005: The WSIS Summit continues to be fascinating. In a recent post, I alluded to human rights activists getting beat up. Yesterday I had a personal experience with the police presence. I took a taxi back to the conference after a brief visit to Carthage for lunch.
Watching policeman rough up a taxi driver. Second and final delayed blog posting from Tunis. Original post from Nov 18, 2005: The WSIS Summit continues to be fascinating. In a recent post, I alluded to human rights activists getting beat up. Yesterday I had a personal experience with the police presence. I took a taxi back to the conference after a brief visit to Carthage for lunch.
Tunisia is very interesting this week! The WSIS conference is going on, human rights activists are getting beaten up, and we're talking about how information technology can help build a better world. I gave my talk here on Tuesday, entitled: Building a Global Library for People with Print Disabilities. It went well: many passionate and interesting people from the disabilities movement are here and we are definitely brainstorming ways to join our efforts.
The Tech Awards yesterday were a blast. The Mercury News ran a great story and quoted Peggy Gibbs, one of our execs: Old problems, new solutions : The Tech Museum Awards also provide a venue for many local foundations and non-profits to seek out new ideas and partners. "One of the reasons we're here is to make sure we're continuously collaborating," said Peggy Gibbs, vice president of business development for Benetech, a Palo Alto non-profit that looks for ways technology can help solve the prob
Thursday is World Usability Day, and I'll be giving a on-line session entitled Technology Social Entrepreneurship and Accessibility of Web Services at 20:10 GMT, or 12:10pm PST. I never have done such an event, so I'm looking forward to trying it out!
Recently we asked for some of the thousands of people with disabilities using Bookshare.org to share how it has helped them. These thoughts from Chancey Fleet were particularly eloquent and I wanted to share it with you all. For most students, the freshman year of college is a time for discovering intellectual strength, getting behind a cause or two, and exchanging rapid-fire theories on life, the universe and everything at 3 AM when you should be writing the paper that's due at 9.
Payroll compliance is a cornerstone of business success, yet for small and midsize businesses, it’s becoming increasingly challenging to navigate the ever-evolving landscape of federal, state, and local regulations. Mistakes can lead to costly penalties and operational disruptions, making it essential to adopt advanced solutions that ensure accuracy and efficiency.
I came to Amsterdam yesterday to attend a summit meeting of open source foundations. It was fascinating for me, as I realize this is yet another vibrant and growing community of social enterprises. There seem to be dozens of these groups, each built around one or more open source software project. Common threads included: - Volunteers contributing to the creation of the software, generally organized around a meritocracy - Corporate support in the form of explicit sponsorships and/or paying corpo
Benetech helps drive indictment of a former dictator. Our team has contributed critical information that has helped Human Rights Watch with its campaign to bring the former dictator of Chad to justice. This is a great example of the power of information technology to advance the cause of victims of gross human rights abuses. On September 27, 2005 a Belgian judge issued an international arrest warrant charging Hissène Habré with atrocities during his 1982-90 rule.
Bookshare.org is Rookie of the Year Finalist from EdNET. We were delighted to get this recognition, which is a measure of our move into the education field with Bookshare.org. It wasn't until last year that we really moved into providing books for students with disabilities, and we're still in the beginning phases of providing every student with a print disability with an accessible version of every textbook and trade book they need for educational outcomes!
The Google Library question is a hot one, and we believe that this project will lead to better access for disadvantaged people. But, the disputes between Google and the publishing industry and authors needs to be concluded before things will move forward. The core question is whether Google's Library program is a fair use of copyrighted material. Good summary in the attached review post: Does Google Library violate copyright?
Managing HR tasks like payroll, compliance, and employee data can overwhelm small businesses. That’s where a Human Capital Management (HCM) solution comes in. Our eBook, Why Every Small Business Needs an HCM Solution: A Comprehensive Guide , shows how an HCM system automates tedious processes, ensuring your business stays compliant and efficient. You’ll learn how to simplify payroll, eliminate costly errors, and empower your employees with self-service tools.
Orphan works article in the San Francisco Bay Guardian News. I'll be speaking out more on copyright issues in the coming months. A recent article mentions why Benetech is concerned about orphan works: obscure works are hard to find the copyright owner, and it costs to much to hassle with. Tim O'Reilly (who has been hugely helpful to us and especially Bookshare.org) published an op-ed in the New York Times about the Authors Guild suing Google's Library project.
Helping protect human rights information is one of our critical goals at Benetech. Information is the core of human rights work, and suppressing of such information is one of the ways perpetrators of abuses get away with their crimes. We created our Martus software to help protect human rights information. However, the confidential nature of field human rights work often makes it difficult for us to share our successes, lest we add to the risks grassroots activists already take on as part of the
Sometimes I like to update people on my travels. I've got a lot of trips planned for the next few months, and sometimes these blogs lead to people getting in touch with me about ideas for action! Right now, I'm in Kyoto, Japan, to speak at the Science and Technology in Society forum (STS). It's an interesting and high powered group, and I'm looking forward to talking about Security and Privacy of Information.
There are nice occasions where something humorous makes an important point. This presentation entitled Escape from CAPTCHA has a funny slide that captures the inaccessibility of many schemes used on web pages to keep out robot programs by requiring a human to enter obscured text. Thanks to Ivo Pletikosic for the link!
Speaker: Tim Sarrantonio, Director of Corporate Brand
Is your organization ready to build a recurring giving program that not only sustains but also propels your mission forward? 🚀 In this new webinar with industry visionary Tim Sarrantonio, we’ll guide you through the critical steps to establishing and scaling a successful recurring giving program. Whether you’re starting fresh or enhancing an existing program, this session will provide the strategies you need to deepen donor relationships and secure long-term support!
The MacArthur Foundation just published a nice article on Benetech's human rights program in their latest newsletter. The Foundation has been a steady supporter of our work in the human rights field, and recently renewed that commitment with a three year, $800,000 grant to Benetech. Our human rights program is meeting its sustainability plan thanks to support from people like MacArthur.
"For the first time I can read what I want, when I want, where I want, by myself." A great quote from a five minute video on accessible e-text books produced by college students in New York. It really delivers the message of how access to books changes the lives of students with disabilities.
Great article on one of our funders and one of their leaders, Barbara Kibbe of the Skoll Foundation, in Nonprofit Online News, entitled Role Models of Rigor and Vision. It covers a broad range of issues around the Foundation and Barbara's thinking. We're especially excited about the commitment to capacity building, a topic for which Kibbe has been a major advocate and leader.
I spent an hour today trying to write up just my list of action items from the O'Reilly Foo Camp 2005 ! This is where tech publisher Tim O'Reilly and his team host a weekend of camping in their empty second office building (built during the Bubble) by over 200 of the leading geeks. The energy was great, and lots of folks were excited to talk about the social applications of technology.
Speaker: Andrew Olsen, CFRE - EVP, Fundraising Solutions at DickersonBakker | Kat Landa, CFRE, CSD - SVP, Talent Solutions at DickersonBakker
Across the nonprofit sector, organizations invest heavily in donor retention efforts, yet the struggle of cultivating lasting relationships remains. While attracting new donors is crucial, the lack of repeat donors poses significant financial risks. Through a comprehensive analysis of industry data, experts argue that there is a direct correlation between donor burnout, donor retention, and the talent retention crisis.
Home About Me Subscribe Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology Thoughtful and sometimes snarky perspectives on nonprofit technology More patent office silliness August 10, 2005 OK, this is great. At the same time as the patent office is granting business method patents that everyone knows have tons of prior art, they are busy rejecting trademarks, based on who knows what, exactly.
On occasion, a sad event occurs that makes a major impact on me personally. Last weekend, one of the leading entrepreneurs in adaptive technology in the world, Dr. Russell Smith, died in a small plane crash in New Zealand , along with his wife. Russell was someone I greatly enjoyed and admired. His commitment to developing technology for blind and low vision people started long before I even knew there was a field.
We got some great local TV coverage this week, thanks to a referral from the Skoll Foundation and Community Foundation Silicon Valley. Here is the video and text from our CBS-Channel Five: Silicon Valley Ten Years After Netscape's IPO. A newspaper story had come out in the Washington Post about how the Valley had become more friendly to social issues and causes.
Last week Jane Simchuk, Dave Offen and I got a demonstration of Quindi: the Meeting Capture tool. The link to Quindi came from my old buddy Patti Price, who I've known for many years as a leading speech technology researcher. Quindi makes capturing meeting video/audio and action items really easy. It's the sort of thing that is a bit hard to describe, but very cool to see in operation.
Effectively managing cloud technology is getting more complex. From cybersecurity concerns, vendor lock-in, cost increases, or lack of transparency on costs, it can quickly get out of control. Knowing what you can control and finding a platform that’s built with nonprofits in mind is key.
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