Post Syndicated from Philip Colligan original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/get-know-raspberry-pi-foundation/
One of the best things about the Raspberry Pi Foundation is our awesome community. Anything we achieve is only possible because of the growing movement of makers, educators, programmers, volunteers and young people all over the world who share our mission. We work really hard to celebrate that community on this blog, across social media, in our magazine, and pretty much every other opportunity we get.
But how much do you know about Raspberry Pi Foundation as an organisation? What kind of organisation are we? Who works here? What do they do?
Trustees
Our founders set Raspberry Pi up as an educational charity. That means we are an organisation that exists for the public benefit and, like all charities in the UK, we are governed by a board of trustees who are responsible for making sure that we use our resources effectively to achieve our charitable goals. It’s not an easy gig being trustee of a charity. There’s a lot of legal and other responsibility; endless paperwork, meetings and decisions; and you don’t get paid for any of it.
We’re insanely lucky to have a fantastic board of trustees, which includes several of our co-founders. In all sorts of different ways they add huge value to our work and we are very grateful to the whole board for their time and expertise.
Pete Lomas: founder, trustee and hardware designer of the first-gen Raspberry Pi
The board of trustees is chaired by David Cleevely, who is a successful technology entrepreneur, angel investor, founder of charities, adviser to governments, and much, much more besides. If the role of a trustee can be tough, then the role of the chair is an order of magnitude more so. David makes it look effortless, but he puts in a huge amount of his personal time and energy into the Foundation, and we simply wouldn’t be where we are today without him.
David Cleevely and some friends
Members
Charities in the UK also have members: if the trustees are like the board of directors of a commercial company, the members are like its shareholders (except without the shares). At the end of last year, we expanded the membership of the Foundation, appointing 20 outstanding individuals who share our mission and who can help us deliver on it. It’s a seriously impressive group already and, over the next few years, we want to expand the membership further, making it even more diverse and international. It’s important we get this right, in future the trustees of the Foundation will be selected from, and elected by the membership.
You can now find a full list of our members and trustees on the Foundation’s website.
A few of our members and trustees – click through to see the rest.
Trading
Our commercial activity (selling Raspberry Pi computers and other things) is done through a wholly-owned trading subsidiary (Raspberry Pi Trading Limited), which is led by Eben Upton. Any profits we make from our trading activity are invested in our charitable mission. So, every time you buy a Raspberry Pi computer you’re helping young people get involved in computing and digital making.
Eben Upton, Founder and CEO of Raspberry Pi Trading
Like any company, Raspberry Pi Trading Limited has a board of directors, including a mix of executives, trustees of the Foundation and independent non-executives.
We’re delighted to have recently appointed David Gammon as a non-executive director on the board of Raspberry Pi Trading Limited. David has widespread experience in developing and building technology based businesses. He is the non-executive chairman of Frontier Developments and the founding CEO of investment firm Rockspring. He’s only been with us for a couple of weeks and is already making an impact.
Reading
We’ve also added a new section to the website which makes it easier for you to find the key documents that describe what we do, including our strategy, annual reviews from 2014 and 2015, and our Trustees’ report and financial statements for the past few years.
Click through to read our Annual Review, reports, strategy document, and more.
Team
The final part of our new and improved About Us section is an introduction to our fabulous team.
A few of our team members – we’re working on getting pictures of the people who are currently ghosts!
The Foundation has grown quite a lot over the past year, not least as a result of the merger with Code Club last autumn. Altogether we now have 65 people beavering away at Pi Towers (and other locations), designing awesome products and software, delivering educational programmes, supporting Code Clubs around the world, producing magazines, books and educational resources, training educators and lots more.
It’s a fantastically diverse and creative bunch of programmers, educators and makers. We love talking to members of the community, so please do look out for us at events, on the forums, on Twitter, and elsewhere.
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