Available September 2025
Technology for Good
How Nonprofit Leaders Are Using Software and Data to Solve Our Most Pressing Social Problems
Jim’s Book Notes
I’ve been talking about doing a book for a couple of decades, but the opportunity came thanks to a 2023 Bellagio Residency (thanks to the Rockefeller Foundation), where I had a month to write the first draft! The opportunity to share the stories of more than sixty nonprofits powerfully using tech for social impact was irresistible. Although there are thousands of books on how to get rich starting tech companies, I felt it was important to talk about the more important work of using tech for social good. My hope is that my book inspires many more technologists to make the move from money to meaning, and solve some of the thousands of problems waiting for a nonprofit tech team.
ORDER NOW
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.
Published by MIT Press
Hardcover
ISBN: 9780262050975
216 pp., 6 x 9 in
From MIT Press
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? Even bolder, what if the benefits of technology came to the 90% of humanity traditionally neglected by for-profit companies in favor of immense profits gained by focusing on the richest 10%?
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 the author’s own stories of what he has learned as a tech-for-good entrepreneur. With 80% of the examples in the book from organizations and individuals outside the U.S., Technology for Good is a call to action with a genuinely global focus, blazing a path forward where human beings come rightly and justly before profits.
What’s in the book
Longtime tech leader and MacArthur Fellow, Jim Fruchterman, delivers the first book explaining how to succeed as a deliberately nonprofit tech company, highlighting key learnings and sharing the stories of more than 60 nonprofits using tech effectively to maximize their social impact.
Contents
- Foreword
- By Vilas Dhar of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation
- Preface
- Introduction
- Chapters
- Bringing Tech to Social Change
- The Top Bad Ideas in Tech for Good
- The Three Best Tech-for-good Ideas
- Designing Tech for Good
- Building Successful AI Solutions
- The Tech-for-good Life Cycle
- Funding, Talent, and Intellectual Property
- The Future of Tech for Social Impact
- Afterword: Go Forth and Use Tech for Good!
Go Forth and Use
Tech for Good!
Technology, including artificial intelligence, can be a major force for good—and Jim Fruchterman shows exactly how to do it. This book lights the way forward based on decades of insight and brilliance.
At a time when the harmful effects of our current era of technology innovation are becoming increasingly clear, Fruchterman has drawn on his many years on the frontline of social change to write an essential guide to how we can ensure that, in the end, all this incredible new technology is a force for good.
Fruchterman makes a compelling case for using technology for social innovation rather than profits. Technology for Good is the first how-to book in this field, complete with inspiring real-world impact stories.
Whether you are a nonprofit leader, technologist, academic, or policymaker, the arguments here remind us that technology’s direction hinges on the questions we ask and the purposes we pursue. Technology for Good invites us to adopt a deliberate, evidence-based approach—one in which ethical design, inclusive governance, and rigorous measurement are not optional, but essential.
An Excerpt: Kill the Dinosaurs
You might work in an organization with a legacy program that bears a startling resemblance to a dinosaur. Perhaps you have begun thinking about how to innovate with a more modern and better approach to the same social problem.
—Excerpt from Technology for Good, Jim Fruchterman