Type Non-profit NGO Founder Jim Fruchterman | Area served Worldwide Date founded 1989 | |
Focus Accessibility Human rights Technology Location Palo Alto, California United States Product Software for nonprofits and disadvantaged communities Key people Jim Fruchterman (CEO), Christy Chin (Chair) Motto Technology Serving Humanity Similar Skoll Foundation, American Printing House for, Samasource, National Federation of the Blind, Lawyers' Committee for Civil R | ||
Axschat with jim fruchterman founder and ceo of benetech
Benetech was founded in 1989 by high technology entrepreneur Jim Fruchterman in Palo Alto, California. Benetech is a nonprofit social enterprise organization: it creates technology social ventures, such as Bookshare (providing e-books to people with print disabilities), the Route 66 Literacy Project, the Miradi environmental project management software, Martus (human rights abuse reporting), and the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, which provided statistical evidence in the trial of Slobodan Milosovic.
Contents
Benetech s president has a call to action for inclusion
History
Benetech was founded under the name of Arkenstone in 1989. It was created to provide reading machines for blind people. During the period 1989-2000, over 35,000 reading machines were sold in sixty countries, reading twelve different languages. In 2000, the Arkenstone reading machine product line was sold to Freedom Scientific, and the nonprofit's name was changed to Benetech. The funding from the asset sale was used to start the Bookshare.org and Martus projects.
Benetech and its Martus software was featured on the PBS NewsHour.