Benetech

Benetech’s Human Rights Program, as the lead partner in a consortium that includes The Guardian Project and Internews, has been awarded a two-year, $2.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) to enhance and expand our suite of digital security tools. Named “On the Frontier of Secure Technology for Human Rights Monitoring,” it is the largest individual grant in the history of Benetech’s Human Rights Program.

Today, we’re excited to introduce an exciting new partnership with the VMware User Group (VMUG), marking our first engagement with a corporate partner’s extended user community. This joint initiative, in support of the VMUG social impact program, will enable VMUG members to offer their skills to our nonprofit Project Partners through pro bono service, or make charitable donations that will be matched by VMUG.

Press Release: SocialCoding4Good has announced an exciting new partnership with the VMware User Group (VMUG), marking its first engagement with a corporate partner’s extended user community. This joint initiative, in support of the VMUG social impact program, will enable VMUG members to offer their skills to SocialCoding4Good Project Partners—nonprofit organizations creating and maintaining open source software addressing some of the world’s most critical challenges.

Our neighbors at Palo Alto Online have featured our CEO, Jim Fruchterman, in their “First Person” video series. The series includes one-on-one interviews with locals who are making a difference in the community. In the conversation, Jim describes the journey that led him from studying engineering at Cal Tech to the founding of Benetech. He also talks about how while most companies focus on developing technology that will generate big profits, Benetech, as a nonprofit, focuses on developing technology for social good.

SocialCoding4Good began with the idea of building a sort of Match.com for tech volunteerism — an algorithmic platform that would match individual software developers to nonprofit organizations that were building open source software for socially good causes. Everything would be automated, everyone would get what they needed and our idea would help change the world! At the time of inception, venturing into the world of corporate social responsibility was not even on our roadmap. The problem: our idea wouldn’t address the real challenge…