Get to know the 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.

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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

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.

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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 - click through to see the rest.

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

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.

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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!

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.

18 comments

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There are some really surprising names among your members and trustees, some very powerful and famous people and an astronaut! It’s good to see that there are so many women in the list too.

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I like how Carrie Anne is the only one with a silly hat on. :)

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Appartement from Alex that is

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That’s a bike helmet. Possibly the most sensible of all headwear.

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What a bunch of amazing folks!:)

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Hi everybody! *waves* A great, inspirational and ever-growing bunch of people. Lucky enough to have been able to meet quite a few of the faces. Continued success!

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You guys are having simply great team. :)

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Now after Brexit, what is the Raspberry Pi Foundation going to do about:
-higher tax for selling in Europe (make a subsidiary in France or Germany maybe)
-european customers (especially the “really bad” ones from the east)

And why is MagPi not available in press stores in Europe – people would buy more if they would see it displayed together with other magazines.

And is the foundation pro Brexit (all of Europe stops buying Pi’s) or anti Brexit (all of Europe buys much more Pi’s) ? And please don’t lie. Choose a side.

Thank you.

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I think perhaps you misunderstand what’s happening in this country at the moment (there’s no information about tariffs, which could go down as well as up – and nobody has branded any customers “really bad”, “really good” or otherwise); and how magazine distribution works (retailers have to ask to stock the magazine – we don’t get to force it on them).

As for the Foundation’s position on Brexit: it doesn’t have one. Why? Because it’s not a person, and it doesn’t have a vote. We’re a team of nearly 70 people, and I have no idea how everybody voted; it’s none of my business. If your boss demanded to know how you’d voted in a referendum, you’d have a right to be very cheesed off. As an organisation, we’ve strongly believed all the way through this that an individual’s vote is private and personal; and that a charity should not be partisan in politics. Whatever comes next in terms of stock markets and currency prices, we’re well positioned to deal with it. (I’ll note here that we’re priced in dollars because we always negotiate and purchase parts in dollars.) Nobody here at Pi Towers, at our factory, or with our distributors, is in any danger of losing their job over this.

We won’t be answering any more comments about Brexit here: it’s just an invitation to a flame war, and you’ll find our whole position in this comment.

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Well said! :-) … now to get back on topic – this is one of my favourite posts on your great blog – *what* an amazing team! :-) Thank you for writing and posting it Philip! :-)

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Well said! The mission of the Pi Foundation is one of improving the future by educating the next generation.

The entire Brexit campaign and anything that followed is nothing more than a burning reminder that this world desperately needs more people like you who believe in a better future and are willing to put an effort to it!

Thank you for that!

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Liz, am I missing something or are you really missing from the team? Where do you come in? (yes, I know, as blogger-extra-ordinaire ;-P, but in the hierarchy of the Foundation?)

Just curious.

PS: impressive list of members and Trustees, with Royal patronage too. I was reliably informed HRH the Duke of York is a bit of a geek himself? If you can elaborate, did you ask the Duke or did he offer himself for this position? (I understand if it’s confidential, no worries :-) )

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Nope, I’m on there: look under L for Liz!

HRH asked us if he could be Patron several years ago, after coming on a visit to the office – of course, we jumped at the chance!

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Off to Specsavers it is then ;-)

(but I now realise I hadn’t found the full list, the one I saw only went to G ;-P Now I’ve found the full list, yes, you’re there)

Good to see so many women listed too, role-models for young girls, I hope.

Thx for answering about HRH. Great to see the vision of the founders is shared by some-one so senior in the Royal Family and very close to the Monarch. I hope HRH can help you open doors you’d otherwise bumped your nose at ;-)

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The team is listed in alphabetical order by first name btw :)

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I’ve always thought that there should be a donation button on the website somewhere to allow one off, or month direct debit donations.
While I could subscribe to the magazine, it seems a roundabout way to do it, and it stops the charity from claiming the tax back.

I noticed that the annual accounts included a voluntary income, is this from donations, or something else?

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We sometimes receive large donations from other organisations (https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/googles-alphago-donation-help-code-club-grow/ is a good example from a few weeks ago); that’s what that income represents. We prefer for users to “donate” by buying Raspberry Pis and our official add-ons and swag so that everybody wins (and if you’re particularly keen you could look at kitting out a local school or after-school organisation), but if you’re set on giving us some money, you can email info(at)raspberrypi.org, and we can sort you out with a way to do that.

Of course, we’re also always looking for volunteers for Code Club (now part of the Raspberry Pi Foundation), who are worth their weight in gold to us! There’s a link to find out more about that at https://www.codeclub.org.uk/.

(And thank you!)

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