INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Social entrepreneurship pioneer Jim Fruchterman has launched a new nonprofit, Tech Matters, with $1.7 million in backing from corporate and
address what he sees as a crippling weakness in the social good sector: the failure to use technology the way technologically savvy
impact, Tech Matters is aiming for wins at the technology systems level that can benefit multiple organizations facing similar
platform for 170 groups around the world providing hotlines for children facing crises such as drug and sexual abuse
Jim Fuchterman with A Technology News Room reporter Megan Rose Dickey at A Technology News Room Sessions: Blockchain in Zug, Switzerland,
2018.Today, most of those 170 hotlines are either iffy hacks running on a computer somewhere or dependent on a volunteer, a phone and a pad
started in 1989 with his first nonprofit, the Palo Alto-based Benetech
Fruchterman, a Caltech engineering grad, MacArthur Fellow and successful entrepreneur, set up Benetech to raise capital, much the same way
venture firms do, to support technologically sophisticated approaches to social problems, especially in the disabilities and human rights
reading materials for the blind
Benetech won the contract by digitizing the materials that were formerly cassette tapes and Braille books, which in turn reduced costs,
improved the service to readers and expanded services
in 2018 and left to start work on Tech Matters
Fruchterman is especially eager to take on a close cousin to the crisis text hotline project
backers of Tech Matters include EcoAgriculture Partners, FJC, the Hitz Family Foundation, the Peery Foundation and the Ray and Dagmar Dolby
