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, e-store, conference organization, event participation, operational support for blender.org, managing development fund grants, software research projects, workshops, meetings, and so on!
Read more about the way how the Blender organization facilitates the Blender open source community on this code.blender.org blog post.
These operational & development expenses are covered by the Blender Foundation, income from donations and the Development Fund.
Next to that, the Blender e-store generates additional income by selling goodies and the tickets for the annual Blender Conference.
In rare cases Blender Institute will accept a co-development agreement with third parties; to work on specific Blender features that fit in the blender.org road map but don’t have high priority or strict deadline. Such agreements, as opposed to Development Fund memberships, have a milestone planning and clear deliverables. Only projects that involve 3 or more months of work will be taken in consideration.
History
In 2007 Blender Foundation chairman Ton Roosendaal established the “Blender Institute” following the overwhelming success of “Elephants Dream”, the world’s first open movie project. This became the permanent office and studio to more efficiently organize the Blender Foundation goals, to bring core Blender developers and top Blender artists together.
In the past 12 years, Blender has realized twelve open projects.
This creative work is possible thanks to the Blender Cloud platform – for content (short films, training) and Cloud Services (production and render management).
In 2020, the Blender Institute’s studio activities have been split off into a separate company; Blender Studio. Here new short films will be developed and activities will continue to develop a complete free/open source pipeline for independent production of feature animation films.
Blender currently employs 26 full time employees, and 12 freelancers remotely. The building in Amsterdam houses offices for administration, developers, a store, a render farm and test lab, space for workshops/sprints and a studio where artists work on animation film productions.
Contact details
Until further notice, the offices are not open for visits.
Blender Institute B.V.
Buikslotermeerplein 161
1025 ET Amsterdam
the Netherlands
Director: Ton Roosendaal
Administration: Anja Vugts-Verstappen
Chamber of Commerce: 34276786
Tax (VAT/BTW): NL818152011B01
Bank: ING Bank
Bijlmerdreef 109
1102 BW Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Account #: 52 96 212
IBAN: NL22 INGB 0005296212
BIC/Swift code: INGB NL2A
Paypal: ton(at)blender(dot)org
Contact: institute(at)blender(dot)org