Blog

I’m on the hunt for rocket fuel because new social enterprises—ones that five years from now could reinvent a part of the social sector—cost money to identify, to explore and to grow the most promising ones into self-sufficiency. Just like for-profit tech ventures search for angel investors, we need you—the philanthropic investors—to provide the rocket fuel that drives innovation. Are you a social investor? Are you a donor with passion for BIG ideas that can lead to BIG change? Then we have the opportunity for you! This Giving Tuesday, give different. Invest in innovation with Benetech and become part of the creative process that yields disruptive solutions for social good.

At Benetech, we believe that as accessible digital content and applications increasingly become more available, they must also be easily discoverable. That’s exactly what we set out to do through the Accessibility Metadata Project, one of our Benetech Labs projects. Earlier this year, we submitted to Schema.org—an initiative supported by the major search engines—our group proposal for accessibility metadata that would make it widely possible to find online content with accessible features. Today we have big news to share: the Schema.org team has just announced it agreed to adopt the accessibility properties we proposed!

Because you care about what we do, we’ve been able to create good in the world. We do that through technology innovation that has exponential and global impact—and with your help we can do so much more. As we explore the next big ideas, we hope you will make a donation to drive social change through technology. Your philanthropic gift of any amount is an investment with high returns for social good and will directly impact real people around the world.

Technology is transforming innovation at its core and our team at Benetech does quite well in leveraging this “innovation at warp speed” for social good. 2013 has been an incredibly busy and productive year for us. I’m excited to share highlights from our work and its significance for the multitudes we serve.

Earlier this month, on November 6th, jointly with Human Rights Watch and WITNESS, we celebrated Martus’ 10th Anniversary—ten years of secure human rights documentation by the Martus user community. The Martus story that has unfolded during that time is a tale of hard-won success and focused efforts to bridge human rights and technological innovation. As our panelists pointed out, technology offers great opportunities for the human rights movement but also creates enormous challenges. With more and more people participating in human rights documentation, it’s critical to get the tools and skills in their hands to do it safely, ethically and effectively.