Google.org's Giving $20 Million to Engineer a Better World for 
the Disabled
  Damien Maloney for WIRED
  Google's philanthropic arm, Google.org, has been making a big 
global push this year to aid the one billion people around the 
world living with disabilities.  To further that goal, it's just 
awarded $20 million to the 30 nonprofitsit believes could benefit 
most from its tech and data-driven approach to charitable giving.  
From open source electric wheelchairs to multi-lingual keyboards 
you can control with eye-tracking technology, the chosen projects 
focus on solutions for disabled people in five main categories: 
education, communication, mobility, independence, and employment.
  For Dot-org, as Googlers call it, this is a big moment.  
Google.org has revealed some awardees and partial grant amounts 
for its first-ever Global Impact Challenge in the past few 
months.  But today it's announced its full lineup, including 17 
new nonprofits.  Dot-org gave six of the 30 grantees more than $1 
million to spend on advancing their causes.  And the average 
grant size promised to these nonprofits, Dot-org says, is 
$750,000.  According to the philanthropic organization, the final 
roster of grantees reach over 50 countries with their projects.
  "We want to use our global voice to try and spread these 
innovations to more people," says Brigitte Hoyer Gosselink, 
project lead for Google's global impact challenge.  "We also have 
scale in mind in funding these projects.  We're really looking 
for ways that these organizations can put this innovation out 
into the universe."
  The range of nonprofits reflects the breadth of Google.org's 
ambitions: One of the grantees is the Center for Discovery, which 
is developing an open source power add-on that converts any 
manual wheelchair into a powered one that gives people more 
automatic steering options and better mobility.  Another pick is 
the Perkins School for the Blind, which is working on tech that 
goes beyond GPS to give people with visual impairments more 
visibility into their immediate surroundings-helping them pick 
out bus stops, for instance, or building entrances.  Dot-org also 
chose Click2Speak, a nonprofit that's developing an on-screen, 
multi-lingual keyboard that includes support for input devices 
such as switches, joysticks, or eye-tracking devices, aimed at 
users with impaired motor skills.
  Of course, Dot-org's announcement isn't the first, or even the 
biggest, pledge in the history of tech philanthropy.  (That 
distinction goes to Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, who 
pledged 99 percent of their Facebook fortune-$45 billion-to 
philanthropic causes.) But this year's Global Impact Challenge 
portfolio is typical of Google's unique way of giving.  Google is 
all about approaching poverty and inequality as an engineering 
problem, and one of its goals is to democratize tech access for 
those in need in new and innovative ways.  Improving life for 
people with disabilities gives Google.org a unique challenge to 
solve with its tech expertise.
  Giving, the Google Way
  Tech is no stranger to philanthropy.  Generations of tech 
moguls, from Bill Gatesto Pierre Omidyar to Marc Benioff have 
given away impressive sums of their own wealth-and in doing so, 
have invited much scrutiny to the question of how tech can best 
approach philanthropy.  Google.org, however, claims that it's 
different: as an agnostic organization, it says can be more 
objective than individuals who might be more passion-driven about 
the issues they pick.
  In this case, Google.org says it has data-driven reasons for 
making disabilities its cause.  More than a billion people live 
with a disability worldwide.  A person with a disability, 
regardless of where he or she lives or works, has fewer 
opportunities than more able-bodied peers.  In a place like the 
US, 50 to 70 percent of people with disabilities are unemployed; 
in developing nations, that proportion rises to as high as 80 to 
90 percent, according to the United Nations.  Access is another 
concern: Only 5 to 15 percent of people with disabilities in 
developing countries have access to the assistive devices they 
need, the World Health Organization determined.
  What Dot-org says it can uniquely offer is broadening disabled 
people's access to services and technology that will improve 
their lives, in small and big ways.  One obvious way Google.org 
can do this is by lending tech expertise to nonprofits to create 
efficient, affordable products and services.  But Google.org also 
wants to give everyone equal access, helping these nonprofits 
figure out how to overcome barriers to getting their projects 
into the hands of people who need them, whether that's through 
upending stodgy insurance models, open sourcing project plans, or 
building in customization so that more individuals can find 
products designed specifically for their unique conditions.  It 
also can't hurt that Google is a company with a truly global 
reach.
  Democratizing Access
  The Center for Discovery's indieGo, which Google gave over $1 
million, is a model example of a nonprofit that could uniquely 
benefit from Google's tech-savviness.  The indieGo is a 
lightweight frame with a motor that converts any wheelchair into 
a powered one.  Its inventors are experimenting with a variety of 
control mechanisms, from joysticks to touch buttons and 
industry-standard switches.
  "Someone with a spinal cord injury who has use of their hands, 
though not their legs, could use a joystick with this device," 
John Damaio, creator of the indieGo system, says.  "But you can 
take this to another patient who maybe doesn't have use of their 
hands, but has use of their head and neck, to drive with their 
head using the same device." Because its tech is more 
sophisticated, a power wheelchair with head and neck controls 
could cost thousands of dollars more than a joystick-controlled 
chair, Damaio says.  Meanwhile, the indieGo is aiming to go on 
the market for about $1,000-significantly lower than other power 
wheelchairs out there.
  The nonprofit also plans to cut out middlemen, so that users 
who need the assistive device can order it directly.  Perhaps 
most significant of all: the indieGo device plan is open source, 
right in line with Dot-org's criteria.  If all goes well, 
according to its road map developed in conjunction with 
Google.org, indieGo could be ready for manufacturing within two 
years.
  Yes, the indieGo team has lofty goals.  But they think they can 
get there.  "The nice thing is, Dot-org isn't just giving us 
money and stepping away," McNamara says, anticipating that the 
team will need help soon, especially when it comes to specific 
technical questions-like how to extend their device's battery 
life.  "I assume with Google's driverless car, that they have a 
whole slew of battery experts," McNamara says.  "We could reach 
out to them and ask for advice on the batteries that we are going 
to be using in our own device."
  There's no way to know now whether all of Google.org's bets 
will succeed.  More likely than not, these nonprofits won't hit 
every single one of their targets.  But risk is inherent to 
philanthropy, as Google knows-and that's to say nothing of the 
increased public scrutiny on such a high-profile institutional 
organization.  Whether its investments succeed or fail, 
Dot-org-and its beneficiaries-are revealing a unique way to do 
tech philanthropy.  And it's one way that may well shape our 
expectations for how philanthropy is done by other very wealthy 
and very powerful organizations in the future.


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