Grants/Problem Statement

How This Works
Thumbnail Description Vision, Mission, Values Statements Leader Overview Board of Directors Management Team Awards and Recognition Financial Statements Problem Statement Programs Description Compare to Other NGOs Theory of Change Outputs Description Outcomes Description Impact Description Results to Date Organizational Model Scaling Strategy Long Term Strategy Grant Budget
List of Submitted Grants
Annual Fundraising Plan 2013

Common Question Phrasings

Describe the current state of the pressing problem or issue(s) that your organization addresses. - Skoll Foundation
Overview of Need: what is the problem? Why is it important? - Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation
Describe the critical need(s) your solution seeks to address and its impacts on both the local and global system. - Buckminster Fuller Institute

Our work is designed to address the following problems:

Climate Change: promoting the development of local industrial manufacturing capacities using environmentally sustainable technology is a way to simultaneously reduce carbon emissions and prepare for the destabilizing consequences of climate change.
Destruction of Ecosystems: we need to situate our product manufacturing systems within the boundaries of natural ecological limitations by developing products that can be made with renewable and local resources. We believe that people make environmentally-sound decisions when natural resources are sourced from their own backyards and regional ecosystems.
Declining Wages: multiple factors are contributing to the stagnation and decline of wages internationally, and we can expect these trends to continue with the internationalization of the labor market and the more widespread use of factory automation and software-based service delivery.
Crisis of Global Economy: the economic system is in crisis as populations in developed nations age, as cheap natural resources are depleted, as wages decline, and as nations face problems with mounting debt and corruption.
IP: excessive patenting frustrates innovation and threatens the openness of the internet and the wider economy.
Design for Obsolescence: products are often designed to be as cheap as possible and to break down, creating relationships of dependency on costly services, which maximize profitability, but degrade the quality of our general material environment.