Shuttleworth Foundation
The Shuttleworth Foundation was established in January 2001 by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth as an experiment with the purpose of providing funding for people engaged in social change.[1] While there have been various iterations of the foundation, its structure and how it invests in social innovation, the current model employs a fellowship model where fellows are given funding commensurate with their experience to match a year's salary, allowing them to spend that year developing a particular idea. The Foundation announced that it is shutting itself down "by the beginning of 2024."[2]
Founded | 2001[1] |
---|---|
Founder | Mark Shuttleworth |
Focus | Open source, open content, open educational resources |
Location | |
Area served | Global |
Method | Fellowships |
Key people | Mark Shuttleworth, founder Helen Turvey, CEO |
Website | shuttleworthfoundation |
Notable past and present fellows include Marcin Jakubowski (who develops the Open Source Ecology project), Rufus Pollock (co-founder of the Open Knowledge Foundation[3]) and Mark Surman (now Executive Director of Mozilla Foundation.[4])
Funding model
The Foundation provides funding for people who have an unproven idea in the form of a 'salary', travel and office expenses. For every dollar invested by the Fellow in a project, the Foundation will put in ten or more, allowing the Fellow to own all Intellectual Property and processes once the active fellowship has ceased.
Projects
- Freedom Toaster
- Kusasa
- SchoolTool, student information system
- Serval Project, for smart phone ad hoc networks
- strong encryption for Twitter
- tuXlabs
- FarmBot
- Lawuna
References
- "The Shuttleworth Foundation Home". www.shuttleworthfoundation.org.
- "All good things..." Shuttleworth Foundation. Retrieved 27 April 2023.
- "Rufus Pollock | Extended Profiles | Open Knowledge Foundation". Archived from the original on 2012-12-19. Retrieved 2012-12-13. Retrieved 2012-12-13
- "Mark Surman". www.shuttleworthfoundation.org. May 2007. Retrieved 6 January 2018.