Now you've all heard me say this before but it bears repeating - philanthropy will not cut it as a market, marketplace, industry, what-have-you as long as reporters like Strom, experts like those cited from IUPUI and analysts/pundits like me have to guess/estimate/postulate/suppose about real-time data on capital flow in the sector. Sure, we'll all get data from GivingUSA and The Foundation Center next June and then again in June 2010 that will actually tell us what is or is not happening now. Not good enough - we need to be able to track giving flow.
So how can we do this? Here are some ideas:
- APIs across online giving platforms that would feed a common source of transactional data;
- A single online giving platform that chose to be the resource for the sector;
- a fivethirtyeight.com that would aggregate and regress surveys and giving platform data;
- Grantsfire or another common RSS feeds of foundation giving;
- Community foundation and other community philanthropy data feeds;
- A creative collective approach to data and trend indicators that would tell us something when we need to know it
*I just got a Kindle and it changing how I read, where I read, when I read, and what I do with all the stuff I read. Here's what I need - a way to connect my Kindle highlights/notes to my twitter feed - stay tuned.
Tags:
5 comments:
I just saw an amazing little tool called Google Flu Trends that indirectly tracks the rate of influenza in real time. Maybe there's ways to indirectly track charitable donations?
Sean
I'd just posted a piece on googleflu trends - an hour later your comment came in - yes, I agree, this is an example of what we can see when we can see data!
Lucy
here's the link for the post on googleflu
http://philanthropy.blogspot.com/2008/11/predicting-pandemics-with-search.html
Ah! I'm still digging out from under emails and posts after getting back from my trip. You're one step ahead of me as usual!
We at the Foundation Center are feeling the same way and, for our part, are actively reaching out to foundations to try to get the most timely information possible on their giving. In fact, we have made it a top priority to reach out to funders to ask them to report their detailed grants data to us electronically so that we can make their most current information available quickly. To date, close to 360 grantmakers—including many of the nation’s largest foundations—have done so.
We also work to get as close to real-time data as possible on institutional giving in response to the economic crisis, much as we did following the Gulf Coast hurricanes and 9/11. So far we’ve collected more than $440 million worth of real-time data on grants related to the crisis, available on an interactive map at our web site and through an RSS feed. And in our recent research advisory, (http://www.foundationcenter.org/focus/economy/advisories.html) we reported on findings of a September 2009 grantmaker survey, updating the predictions we made earlier this year about overall foundation giving in 2009 and 2010.
It’s a challenge, but we’re committed to improving both the comprehensiveness and timeliness of data on the sector and welcome all ideas for and assistance with making this happen.
Post a Comment