The Lifelong Kindergarten research group at the MIT Media Lab initiated the Scratch project in 2002, and received a National Science Foundation Grant to support it a year later. The group publicly launched Scratch in 2007 and developed it through 2019, when the Scratch Team moved to the Scratch Foundation. The Lifelong Kindergarten group, led by Professor Mitchel Resnick, continues to collaborate with the Scratch Team to research and support creative learning with Scratch around the world.

Past Scratch Team Members: Many important contributions have been made by previous Scratch Team members, including: Yusuf Ahmad, Frank Alfano, Elaine Atherton, Shazia Badur, Jarvis Bailey, Mindee Barham, Carlos Diaz Barriga, Ashley Bass, Kevin Bedeau, Zoë Bentley, Ben Berg, Amos Blanton, Paula Bontá, Carl Bowman, Karen Brennan, Juanita Buitrago, Leo Burd, Gaia Carini, Jolie Castellucci, Francisco Cervantes, Karishma Chadha, Kasia Chmielinski, Michelle Chung, Shane Clements, Hannah Cole, Sayamindu Dasgupta, Ron de las Alas, Zachary Deiman, Melodie Deisher, Margarita Dekoli, Manuj Dhariwal, Shruti Dhariwal, Jacy Edelman, Dave Feinberg, Linda Fernsel, Samantha Fiori, Andy Forest, Elizabeth Foster, Joan Fusco, Lily Gabaree, Tiffany Gagnon, Chris Garrity, Stephanie Gayle, Alexis Goodfellow, Chris Graves, Jonathan Greene, Joel Gritter, Megan Haddadi, Kreg Hanning, LaTasha Harris, Sean Hickey, Jo Higbee, Margaret Honey, Christina Huang, Tony Hwang, Abdulrahman Idlbi, Valerie Inniss, Rupal Jain, Maria Janelli, Addae Jordan, Randy Jou, Paul Kaplan, Nikita Khalid, Lily Kim, Tauntaun Kim, Aishat Kolawole, Erik Lazzaro, Amy Lee, Saskia Leggett, Shenkiat Lim, Kate Littlefield, DD Liu, Deepankar Malhan, John Maloney, Retrouvailles Manishimwe, Kirshe Martinez, Jessica Mathelier, Tim Mickel, Meredith Mineo, Amon Millner, Ariam Mogos, Andrés Monroy-Hernández, Jennifer Moore, Marian Muthui, Katelyn Mann, Cindy Nguyen, My Nguyen, La Shauna Nichols, Prasanth Nori, Lisa O'Brien, Abisola Okuk, Kristin Osiecki, Sarah Otts, Yvette Philip, Carmelo Presicce, Tina Quach, Ashlee Robinson, Kamran Raja, Ramazan Ramazanov, Mitchel Resnick, Ricarose Roque, Natalie Rusk, Andrea Saxman, Ray Schamp, Eric Schilling, Rupa Shah, Mimi Shalf, Holli Sills, Jay Silver, Brian Silverman, Kirstin Simons-Valenzuela, Anu Singh, Andrew Sliwinski, Sarah Smirnoff, Stephanie Stephens, Tammy Stern, Russell Stone, Rosie Sullivan, Lis Sylvan, Tracy Tang, Bryce Taylor, Matt Taylor, Kimberly Thomas-Cain, Connie Tzeng, Hanako Tjia, Jaleesa Trapp, Moran Tsur, Claudia Urrea, Ben Wheeler, Kathy Wu, Shawna Young, Julia Zimmerman, Oren Zuckerman.

Other Contributors: With the help of Scratch Translators around the world, Scratch is available in many languages. The following people have also contributed to the development and support of Scratch over the years: Susan Abend, Georgi Angelov, Krum Angelov, Ivelin Atanasov, Valentin Atanasov, Yoan Babulkov, Robbie Berg, Lauren Bessen, Varun Biniwale, Keith Braadfladt, Morgan Bradley, Katie Broida, Susan Carillo, Will Denton, Alexander Dinev, Nathan Dinsmore, Miroslav Dionisiev, Ayshe Dzhindzhi, Catherine Feldman, Rachel Fenichel, Konstantin Filosofov, Jodi Finch, Ioana Fineberg, Corey Frang, JT Galla, Rachel Garber, Hristo Georgiev, Cassy Gibbs, Z Goddard, Brian Harvey, Roland Hebert, Tracy Ho, Benjamin Howe, Ross Ingram, Anton Ivanov, Martin Jivkov, Yasmin Kafai, Viktor Karagyaurov, Kapaya Katongo, Brittany Sommer Katzin, Evan Karatzas, Christine Kim, Joren Lauwers, Mike Lee, Jeff Lieberman, Mark Loughridge, Kelly Liu, Anthony Lu, Danny Lutz, Kaloyan Manolov, David Malan Wayne Marshall, John McIntosh, Paul Medlock-Walton, Dongfang (Tian) Mi, Kristi Michelson, Ekaterina Mihaylova, Dalton Miner, Ximena Miranda, Jens Moenig, Evan Moore, Geetha Narayanan, Kate Nazemi, Cynthia Nelson, Liddy Nevile, Wing Ngan, Derek O'Connell, Tereza Pashinska, Nikolay Petrov, Marta Petrova, Tim Radvan, Karen Randall, Ian Reynolds, Miriam Ruiz, Maxim Schram, Boaz Sender, Chinua Shaw, Ed Shems, Aleksandar Shumakov, Mira Siegel, Cynthia Solomon, Marie Staver, Mickey Stepanskiy, Bogomil Stoyanov, Daniel Strimpel, Kilmer Sweazy, John Henry Thompson, Svetlana (fo) Tobova, Georgi Todorov, Ubong Ukoh, Ivelina Velkova, Vladimir Vuksan, Han Xu, and Alexander Yordanov.

Illustrations: Many thanks to the following artists for their contributions to the Scratch sprite library: Champika Fernando, Natalie Rosalinda Hall, Wren McDonald, Leigh McG, Wing Ngan, Andrew Rae, Daria Skrybchenko, Robert Hunter, Alex Eben Meyer, Ding Ding Hu, Owen Davey, Zoë Bentley, DD Liu, Kristin Osiecki, Kathy Wu. 

Sounds: The Scratch sound library uses free sound resources from Adobe.com, Archive.org, FreeMusicArchive.org, FreeSound.org, and Incompetech.com. Thanks to Nina Paley from Archive.org; Kellee Maize, Peter Rudenko, and Chris Zabriskie from FreeMusicArchive.org; and Kevin MacLeod from Incompetech.com. Thanks to the following freesound.org artists: acclivity, belloisec, Benboncan, Calcuttan, coby12388, copyc4t, cs272, Flick3r, FreqMan, gelo_papas, han1, InspectorJ, jiserte, junggle, juskiddink, klankbeeld, LittleRobotSoundFactory, LloydEvans09, lonemonk, rhodesmas, sandyrb, themfish, tyops.

The ideas of Seymour Papert and Alan Kay have deeply inspired and influenced our work on Scratch.

We greatly appreciate all of the contributions by members of the worldwide Scratch community, who have shaped the direction of Scratch by sharing their projects, comments, and ideas.