Blender Foundation

Everyone should be free to create 3D CG content, with free technical and creative production means and free access to markets.
Robin Tran

Organization

The Blender Foundation (2002) is an independent public benefit organization with the purpose to provide a complete, free and open source 3D creation pipeline, managed by public projects on blender.org.
Its spin-off corporation Blender Institute (2007) hosts the foundation’s offices and currently employs 24 people who work on the Blender software and creative projects to validate and stress Blender in production environments.

The Foundation’s income is via donations and the Development Fund. The Institute revenues come from Blender Studio, the Blender Store and sponsoring. This enables Ton Roosendaal and a small staff to work full-time on Blender, organize activities for SIGGRAPH or the Blender Conference, support development, documentation and training projects, maintain and host blender.org services, and pay for bookkeeping and administration expenses.

Blender remains a true community effort. Work on Blender itself, new projects or roadmaps are all managed via open channels on blender.org. You can learn more about them and get involved.

Reports

Goals

Blender Foundation facilitates a public project on blender.org with the mission to get the world’s best 3D CG technology in the hands of artists as free/open source software.

Our vision is that everyone should be free to create 3D CG content, with free technical and creative production means and free access to markets.

The Foundation’s goals are:

  • Manage the facilities on blender.org for users and developers who want to contribute to Blender.
  • Maintain and improve the current Blender product via a public accessible source code system under the GNU General Public License.
  • Establish funding or revenue mechanisms that serve the foundation’s goals and cover the foundation’s expenses.
  • Provide individual artists and small teams with a complete, free and open source 3D creation pipeline

Part of the industry

Blender Foundation is a recognized partner for many big corporations in the technical/creative industry. This not only via the membership of the Development Fund, but especially as official member of:

Blender Development Fund

The Development Fund is the Blender Foundation’s main source of donation income. Individual users and corporations can sign up here for a recurring donation – starting at 5 euro per month.

The Development Fund enables developers to work full-time on Blender, to support users and other developers and work on core development.

Corporate members of the Fund can indicate a preference which projects they like to see supported, provided these are generally agreed projects that benefit everyone and that fit in Blender’s mission and road map,

Blender Institute

Blender Institute formally acts as the working company of Blender Foundation.

To keep the Foundation lean and a safe place for Blender, almost all activities of the Foundation are being conducted by the Blender Institute. That includes office rent, daily administration, general management, HR services, online store, Blender Conference organization, participating in events, operational support for blender.org, managing Development Fund grants, software research projects, workshops, meetings, and so on.

Contact

Blender Foundation

Stichting Blender Foundation
Buikslotermeerplein 161
1025 ET Amsterdam
the Netherlands

Board
Chairman: Ton Roosendaal
Secretary: Francesco Siddi

ONLY for organizational, branding, legal or press topics:
Email: foundation (at) blender (dot) org

Chairman: Ton Roosendaal

Chamber of Commerce registry in Amsterdam: 34176425
Tax number NL811166223