Technology for Good: How Nonprofit Leaders Are Using Software and Data to Solve Our Most Pressing Social Problems

A visionary guide to using technology for positive social change, from a MacArthur genius awardee, former rocket engineer, and passionate leader in the social enterprise movement.

The accepted wisdom in big business is that the only worthy ideas are ones that make a lot of money, preferably billions. But Jim Fruchterman believes there is a different path for technology. What if tech returned to its roots and made people more effective and powerful? What if the benefits of technology came to the 90 percent of humanity traditionally neglected by for-profit companies in favor of immense profits gained by focusing on the richest 10 percent? In Technology for Good, Fruchterman explores that question and delivers a comprehensive how-to for leaders who want to create, expand, join, support, and improve organizations that see building technology as a key element of delivering on their social good mission.

The author makes a strong case that tech is required for social change at scale. He then offers guidance on how to structure, fund, staff, manage, scale, and sustain nonprofits that leverage technology for social good. The book includes actionable, proven practices; compelling case studies of nonprofits that have ＂cracked the code＂ on tech for good; and Fruchterman’s own stories of what he has learned as a tech-for-good entrepreneur. With 80 percent of the examples in the book from organizations and individuals outside the US, Technology for Good is a call to action with a genuinely global focus, blazing a path toward a future in which human beings come rightly and justly before profits.

Jim Fruchterman is a leading social entrepreneur, MacArthur Fellow, and a recipient of the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship. He is the founder of Benetech, an award-winning tech nonprofit. He also leads Tech Matters, a tech nonprofit that develops open-source software for crisis response and climate adaptation.