Digital Nations Fund

The Digital Nations consortium is particularly interested in collaborating with governments that represent developing regions of the world. But these governments generally do not have the resources to pay the Digital Nations membership fees. To address this problem, the Media Lab is establishing the Digital Nations Fund as a mechanism for corporations, foundations, institutions, and individuals to support the membership of developing nations in the Digital Nations consortium.

The Digital Nations Fund works in the following way:

• Interested parties contribute to the Fund in the form of cash gifts, at a minimum level of US$50,000.

• Governments apply to the Fund for subsidy of their membership in Digital Nations (at the Basic Member level). Applicants will be asked to document the interest and commitment of key government officials to participation in Digital Nations and implementation of programs related to Digital Nations.

• From this pool of applicants, governments to be subsidized by the Fund will be selected by the Digital Nations Principal Investigators, with input from the Board of Advisors, existing Digital Nations sponsors at the time, and contributors to the Fund.

The initial target for the Fund is US$20million to fund membership in Digital Nations (plus related project and administrative expenses) for 10 governments for five years. The Digital Nations Fund will be administered by the MIT Treasurer’s Office.

Board of Advisors
Jose Maria Figueres, former President of Costa Rica
Nicholas Negroponte, MIT Media Laboratory
Jeffrey Sachs, Harvard Center for International Development

Principal Investigators
Alex (Sandy) Pentland
Mitchel Resnick

Project Leaders
Walter Bender, Michael Best, Justine Cassell, David Cavallo, Glorianna Davenport, Joe Jacobson, Geoffrey Kirkman, Bakhtiar Mikhak, Seymour Papert, Deb Roy, Ted Selker, Brian Smith

For more information, please contact:
David Riquier
Communications and Sponsor Relations
riquier@media.mit.edu