Mobile technology is changing the way of life for millions of rural farmers across the West African country of Ghana. They receive texts with up-to-date crop prices, weather alerts, and advice about planting. Using electronic payment services, they now have …
Grantee Profile: Algorithmic Risk Assessment in Pretrial Detention
When Hannah Sassaman heard that the City of Philadelphia was looking to use AI to help judges determine whether someone accused of a crime should be released before trial, she was instantly worried. “I knew that any data used to …
Grantee Profile: Good Data Collaborative
Like most businesses, the nonprofit sector loves data—or desperately wants to. But Laura Walker McDonald has a blunt message for leaders, donors, policymakers, researchers and service providers who see data as the elixir to doing good. Don’t, she says, collect …
Grantee Profile: ImpactView
Two years ago, when the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) made electronic tax returns filed by nonprofits available for the first time in a searchable format, many celebrated what they saw as a new age of transparency in philanthropy. For Neville …
Grantee Profile: Data Culture Project
To hear Rahul Bhargava tell it, too many people are afraid of data. “The first thing you feel is their trepidation,” says Bhargava, a research scientist at the MIT Center for Civic Media who speaks with organizations and workers about …
Grantee profile: Data Orchard
In early 2017, a small non-profit published a free online guide to help under-resourced organizations in the social sector make better use of their data. Sian Basker, one of the masterminds behind the guide, wasn’t sure if it would make …