The Shuttleworth Foundation was established in January 2001 by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth as an experiment with the purpose of providing funding for people engaged in social change.

[1] While there have been various iterations of the foundation, its structure and how it invests in social innovation, the current model employs a fellowship model where fellows are given funding commensurate with their experience to match a year's salary, allowing them to spend that year developing a particular idea.

"[2] Notable past and present fellows include Marcin Jakubowski (who develops the Open Source Ecology project), Rufus Pollock (co-founder of the Open Knowledge Foundation[3]) and Mark Surman (now Executive Director of Mozilla Foundation.

[4]) The Foundation provides funding for people who have an unproven idea in the form of a 'salary', travel and office expenses.

For every dollar invested by the Fellow in a project, the Foundation will put in ten or more, allowing the Fellow to own all Intellectual Property and processes once the active fellowship has ceased.