Welcome to our New Site! (and...)

On behalf of the Benetech team, including our Board of Directors, I’m delighted to welcome you to our new website and formally introduce our newest program area: Benetech Labs!

At Benetech, our goal is to create positive social change through technology. Telling our story is an important way we’re able to accomplish that goal—it allows us to generate the interest and support necessary to develop technology that helps countless people around the world. With this new site, we hope to better share our story and the impact of our work in a clear and consistent way across our four program areas, which encompass a diverse set of initiatives, products and services.

Look around—there’s a lot that’s new. We’ve updated our brand identity. We’ve made things more engaging, adding more images and video along with the ability to share and comment on content. We’ve started a Benetech blog that will feature voices from across our organization (one that is separate from my personal Beneblog). We’ve also started an email list, which I encourage you to sign up for, so we can stay better connected with you on important updates on Benetech’s work.

We’ve designed the site to be fully searchable, making it easy to find the information you need, and developed new content to convey the impact of our work and provide resources we hope will be useful. You’ll also find information about several meaningful ways to support our work. We hope you’ll consider them: our ability to sustain our ongoing efforts, while exploring and creating new technology to meet pressing social needs, depends on the generosity of people like you!

One last important note about our new site is regarding its accessibility. Benetech is committed to making our website accessible to all. We’ve partnered with Knowbility, Inc., 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. Knowbility conducted a thorough accessibility and usability audit of our site. Based on their report, we worked with our web developers to both remove any barriers to accessibility and to make many usability enhancements. You can read more about the accessibility features of our site and submit any issues on our site accessibility page.

Benetech Labs

Finally, we’re excited to formally announce the launch of a new core program area: Benetech Labs. I’m proud to say that over the past 24 years, Benetech’s track record has been one of proven success. We’ve started the Labs to build on that foundation—to explore many more new ideas for using technology for social good.

At any given time we’ve got dozens of new ideas in our pipeline, coming from our extensive network of social innovators, social sector leaders and technology visionaries. Benetech Labs will be a place for us to engage more deeply with these “best and brightest” and identify the big ideas with potential to successfully meet a pressing social need. It’s also a place that allows us to try, and not always succeed—many ideas will never make it out of the Labs. However, we know that many others can progress and become tools that help countless people. We think that’s an exciting risk worth taking!

This is a thrilling time for Benetech—we’ve got great momentum and are poised to have more impact than ever over the next few years. I hope you get involved personally and join us in our work to make the world a better place through technology. And I hope you like our new site!

As always, your feedback is valuable to us. Please feel free to share any thoughts or comments with us. Please drop by again soon…and often!

Kind Regards,

Jim Fruchterman
President & CEO