This page contains links to all of the frequently asked questions (FAQ) sections found throughout the Foundation website, categorised according to subject. To see the FAQs in context, please consult the relevant sections of the site.
Funding
Does the foundation provide bursaries or scholarships to school and university learners?
The Shuttleworth Foundation understands and appreciates the great need for bursaries, but carries a mandate that prevents it from providing for them. Instead, funding is focused on driving change, innovation and policy reform in the areas of education and technology.
What does becoming a Fellow mean and how does one become a Fellow?
We pick people who are working in our focus areas and are at the top of their game. They are people who can highlight the issues at hand on podiums and in papers and help drive investment into the best possible showcase projects to drive policy change. If you belve you have an idea that can change the world – have a look at our Fellowship programme and tell us about it.
Who funds everything?
The Foundation is solely funded by Mark Shuttleworth. We receive an annual budget which we apportion to our various Fellows.
General
How do you learn and evolve like an open source project?
The Cluetrain Manifesto taught us that markets are conversations. The same is true of making a better world. Open philanthropy must include constant engagement and conversation with partners, activists, policymakers and (god forbid) customers. Knowing what people think in real time with 75% accuracy (using cluetrain-style market research) is way better than finding out with 99% accuracy five years too late (using the rigorous and expensive evaluation processes that foundations love). This is especially true if people think what you are doing sucks, as you’ve still got time to fix it. Our aim is to do kind of listening in a very systematic way, and then to use what it is hearing and learning to steer the ship. Of course, this is probably the biggest challenge on our open philanthropy plate.
What’s the link between openness and transparency?
We believe in radical transparency. This means opening up not only your yearly books (we need to do this anyway), but also openly sharing your planning, learning and relationships as you go along. By the doing things like this, we hope to have partners who come with better ideas, offer improvements and even run with things on their own. That’s what we want.
How does community fit into the open philanthropy picture?
We believe that community should be a part of everything we do. Despite the rhetoric, most philanthropy and social investment happens in silos. The result is zero leverage, poor use of resources and slow progress. We believe that we should get down and dirty with communities working on education, innovation and access each step of the way. The open source world has lots to teach us about this.
What is the Foundation’s approach to licensing?
Everything that the Foundation creates, funds or helps with should be open sourced. This means: under an open license; available in an open format; and accessible from a public web site, always. All of our consulting and grant contracts require this.
What do you mean by open philanthropy?
Open philanthropy uses transparency, participation, community and other open source principles to create a better world. Our aim is to run the Shuttleworth Foundation on these principles.
How does the Foundation measure the success or failures of projects and will they publish both the successes and failures?
Each project is different. On the simplest of measures, success is when people start copying you – like the Freedom Toasters that are popping up on the continent and in North America and Europe. Others require more rigorous data evaluation.
What is social innovation?
Wikipedia defines it as: Social Innovation refers to new strategies, concepts, ideas and organizations that meet social needs of all kinds – from working conditions and education to community development and health – and that extend and strengthen civil society. Over the years, the term has developed several overlapping meanings. It can be used to refer to social processes of innovation, such as open source methods. Alternatively it can be used to describe innovations which have a social purpose – like microcredit or distance learning.
The concept can also be related to social entrepreneurship (entrepreneurship isn’t always or even usually innovative, but it can be a means of innovation) and it also overlaps with innovation in public policy and governance.
Social innovation can take place within government, within companies, or within the nonprofit sector (also known as the third sector), but is increasingly seen to happen most effectively in the space between the three sectors.
