Autodesk, Inc. launched the Autodesk Foundation, which invests in and supports nonprofit organizations using the power of design to help solve challenges, such as climate change, access to water, and healthcare, among others. In partnership with the company, the Autodesk Foundation will provide select design-oriented grantees with software, training and financial support.
Carl Bass, Autodesk President and CEO, said the company is excited about the number of people using their technology to design a better world and solve global problems.
"These are the people who inspired us to align our philanthropic giving with our core business, to support more of these nonprofits to bring their ideas to market," said Bass. "We will also be encouraging the thousands of Autodesk employees to get involved in Foundation programs."
Impact design focuses on generating significant, measurable progress toward solving today's challenges – access to healthcare and education; clean energy and water; efficient transportation; or the many other global problems we face. Through the Foundation's Impact Design Program, carefully selected nonprofits will receive funding, and in partnership with Autodesk, Inc., software and training to create solutions that address these challenges.
The program's first grantees also include:
- MASS Design Group, which designs health facilities in parts of the world where they're needed most. The Autodesk Foundation is supporting its efforts in rural Malawi to design maternal waiting homes, which are shelters for expectant mothers, enabling women who once waited until the onset of labor to travel to receive medical care and a safe hospital birth.
- D-Rev, which designs and develops devices and products to improve the health and income of people living on less than $4 a day. Autodesk has helped fund crucial durability testing of the next generation of the organization's ReMotion Knee, an inexpensive and easy-to-fit prosthetic joint for those in the developing world.
- The Rural Studio at Auburn University, whose 20K House program challenges students to design energy efficient homes that can be built for $20,000. Autodesk is helping to fund the construction of one of these housing prototypes in rural Alabama.
Autodesk has committed to donating $7.5 million in software to at least 500 nonprofits in the first year of the program's operation. Through the Technology Impact Program, Autodesk offers qualifying nonprofits two licenses of its professional design software suites: Autodesk Product Design Suite Premium, Autodesk Building Design Suite Premium, Autodesk Infrastructure Design Suite Premium, and Autodesk Entertainment Creation Suite Ultimate.
