Executive Summary

Our Mission

Our mission is to create new products that allow social enterprises in developing countries to offer improved services and scale more quickly. DtM has built a collaborative design process through which hundreds of volunteers, in academia and industry, donate their skills and expertise to the creation of breakthrough products for communities in need. Our goal is to deliver a better quality of service, and a better quality of life, to one million beneficiaries through products designed for our clients by 2012.

Statement of Need

By World Bank estimates, two-thirds of the world population lives on less than $2 per day. These communities lack access to such basic necessities as clean water, affordable health care and basic education. They lack stable housing and employment opportunities. In many cases, they are not participants in the cash economy.

These disadvantages produce a vicious cycle for the world’s poor that results in sub-standard living conditions, which can hinder them from participating in activities that transcend daily survival. In order for these individuals to improve their quality of life—through productive work, community organization and political participation—they must receive more than direct charity and aid. The poor must be given the tools and opportunities to improve themselves, their families and their communities. This is the issue that social entrepreneurs address in serving those at the “bottom of the pyramid.”

Social entrepreneurs are change agents for the social sector. They are mission-driven, determined to achieve results and committed to maintaining accountability to the communities they serve. According to Ashoka founder Bill Drayton: “An entrepreneur plows the field” and “weakens the idea that change isn’t possible.” Social entrepreneurs effect systemic transformation by tackling not only the problem at hand, but also the roots of that problem. What’s more, social entrepreneurs are usually more effective in addressing root causes than are supranational NGOs because they are better integrated into the societies they serve, and know the specific needs of their beneficiaries.

The challenge that many social enterprises in the developing world face is a lack of access to financing, information technology, consulting services and other forms of intellectual capital, without which they are inhibited in their growth and efficiency. These social enterprises can offer better services and scale more quickly if provided access to better products, particularly those designed specifically for their needs. Design that Matters was created to provide this service.

Organizational History

In 2001, graduate students at the MIT Media Lab launched Design that Matters as a design studio and seminar course for fellow students looking to connect their education to real needs in poor communities. The DtM founders believed that the university system could become a catalyst for the creation of new tools to better serve basic needs in developing countries. The seminar course was a smash success, but proved difficult to scale as an extracurricular student project. In 2003, Timothy Prestero and Neil Cantor committed themselves to the concept full-time, and launched DtM as an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and a low-cost design company serving the developing world.