What The Rebus Foundation does

The Rebus Foundation is a Canadian Registered Charity and non-profit founded in 2016 in Montreal, Quebec, dedicated to advancing open publishing, open educational resources (OER), open pedagogy, and accessible learning. It operates a suite of certificate and fellowship programs — most prominently the Open Publishing Projects Certificate (OPC, evolved from the six-year Textbook Success Program), the Supplemental Materials Development Certificate, and the inaugural Rebus Luminary Fellowship for Education Leaders — that guide educators through the lifecycle of creating, peer-reviewing, accessibility-reviewing, and distributing open textbooks and course materials. The underlying technology stack centers on the Rebus Forum community platform and Rebus Press publishing platform, which together provide collaborative workspaces, resource sharing, and hosting for OER produced through the programs.

The organization's business model is philanthropic rather than commercial: it is sustained primarily by grant funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, with programs offered at no cost to participants. Go-to-market is community-led, leveraging the Rebus Forum, free webinar series, blog content, a fortnightly newsletter, social channels (YouTube, LinkedIn, Bluesky), and select in-person workshops to build awareness among higher education faculty, librarians, and scholarly communication offices in the U.S. and Canada. Customer segments are concentrated in higher education — individual educators developing OER and academic libraries/institutions building OER capacity — with no disclosed pricing, no commercial revenue streams, and a 1-10 employee footprint consistent with a lean non-profit operating structure.

Name

The Rebus Foundation

Legal name

The Rebus Foundation

Website

https://rebus.foundation

Company type

Private

Founded year

2016

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

The Rebus Foundation is a Canadian non-profit that runs certificate and fellowship programs helping higher education educators create, peer-review, and publish open educational resources through its Forum and Press platforms.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Open Educational Resources / Educational Publishing

NAICS

Educational Support Services (611710)

SIC

Books: Publishing Or Publishing & Printing (2731), Services-Educational Services (8200)

akta.pro primary industry

Open Educational Resources (OER) & Curriculum Repositories (EDAFACAJ)

akta.pro secondary industries

OER Quality Review, Alignment & Certification (rubrics/standards) (EDAGAJAN), Open Ancillaries & Instructor Resources (slides, test banks, solutions) (EDAGAJAC), Certification & Credentialed Creator Programs (MPACALAI)

Keywords

• Open educational resources
• Open publishing programs
• Open textbook development
• Educational publishing platforms
• Collaborative OER production

Headquarters

HQ city

Montréal

HQ country

Canada

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Services

Cost components

Personnel, Operations, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales, Infrastructure

Revenue model

1. Foundation Grant Funding: The Rebus Foundation operates as a Canadian Registered Charity funded primarily through philanthropic grants, with the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation explicitly identified as a major supporting partner. Revenue appears to be grant-based rather than commercial.

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels3 records

Marketing channels7 records

Core offering

The Rebus Foundation runs certificate programs (Open Publishing Projects Certificate, Supplemental Materials Development Certificate, Rebus Luminary Fellowship) and supporting platforms (Rebus Forum, Rebus Press) that enable educators, librarians, and institutions to collaboratively develop, peer-review, and publish open educational resources such as open textbooks. Programs are delivered at no cost to participants and supported by philanthropic grant funding.

Product overview

The Rebus Foundation offers a suite of educational programs and platforms focused on open publishing and open educational resources (OER). The core offerings include the Open Publishing Projects Certificate (OPC), which evolved from the Textbook Success Program and guides educators through OER creation and publication; the Supplemental Materials Development Certificate for developing supplementary course materials; and the Rebus Luminary Fellowship for education leaders. These programs are supported by the Rebus Forum for community collaboration and resource sharing, and Rebus Press for publishing completed OER. The organization positions itself as a collaborative model for producing and scaling high-quality open textbooks.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• Rebus Luminary Fellowship: Fellowship program for education leaders
• Open Publishing Projects Certificate (OPC)
• Supplemental Materials Development Certificate
• Rebus Press

Products and services

• Open Publishing Projects Certificate (OPC) A certificate program that empowers educators to create, publish, and scale open educational resources (OER). The program guides participants through the book-production and distribution process, including peer review and accessibility review.
• Supplemental Materials Development Certificate A six-week certificate program that helps educators develop supplemental educational resources for existing OER textbooks, supporting course material enhancement and adaptation.
• Rebus Luminary Fellowship A fellowship program for education leaders that provides guidance and support for advancing open education initiatives within their institutions.
• Rebus Forum A community platform for sharing and discovering resources, templates, and tools related to open publishing and OER development.
• Rebus Press Publishing platform for open educational resources produced through Rebus Community programs, providing distribution infrastructure for completed OER.
• Rebus Free Webinar Series Hosted webinars and events that provide education and community building for open education practitioners.

Quantifiable outcome

• Over six years of program evolution from Textbook Success Program (TSP) to Open Publishing Projects Certificate (OPC)

Named customers5 records

Segments2 records

Ideal customer profiles2 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Scale indicators2 records

Recent moves5 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Regional players

• BCcampus: Canadian OER initiative supporting open textbook development, adaptation, and adoption across B.C. post-secondary institutions. Comparable because it funds and coordinates OER creation in Canada — a primary market for Rebus — and overlaps on training programs and institutional capacity-building.

Direct peers

• LibreTexts: Open educational resources platform focused on STEM and humanities textbooks with remixing, accessibility, and community adaptation features. Comparable because it offers a community-driven OER content library and authoring environment directly overlapping with Rebus Press and the OPC.
• OER Commons: Public digital library of open educational resources maintained by ISKME. Comparable because it functions as an OER discovery and repository platform — overlapping with the role of Rebus Press and the Rebus Forum as discovery, curation, and publishing infrastructure.
• Pressbooks: Book-publishing platform widely used by OER authors and institutions. Comparable to Rebus Press because both provide publishing infrastructure for open educational content, though Pressbooks is a commercial SaaS product whereas Rebus Press is a non-profit publishing arm.
• Open Education Network: U.S. network of institutions advancing OER adoption and open education policy. Comparable because it is a community-of-institutions model for advancing OER, similar in mission to Rebus's community-led approach with faculty and librarians.

Broad incumbents

• Creative Commons: Global non-profit that provides the licensing framework (CC licenses) underpinning OER publishing. Comparable because it is a non-profit enabling infrastructure for open content, addressing a closely adjacent layer of the same OER ecosystem that Rebus operates in.
• Lumen Learning: Commercial OER courseware provider serving higher-ed institutions with curated, supported open course content. Comparable because it operates in the same OER-for-higher-ed space and competes for institutional OER adoption budgets, though its business model is commercial rather than philanthropic.
• OpenStax: Rice University-affiliated OER publisher producing peer-reviewed open textbooks at scale. Comparable because it serves the same higher-ed OER market that Rebus-trained authors feed, but operates at significantly larger scale and with deeper institutional backing.

Others

• SPARC: Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition advocating for open access and open education. Comparable as an adjacent ecosystem advocate that influences the same institutional and policy environment in which Rebus's OER training programs operate.

Emerging players

• Wikibooks: Wikimedia-hosted open-content textbook project. Comparable as a community-authored open textbook repository, though it lacks the structured peer review, accessibility review, and credential-bearing training programs that differentiate Rebus.

Market position

Strengths4 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• YouTubeyoutube.com/@RebusFoundation
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/rebus-foundation
• Xx.com/rebusfdn
• Facebookfacebook.com/RebusFoundation

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about The Rebus Foundation