Big philanthropic data with a purpose

Has anyone used the open, visible portals of philanthropic foundation applications (Knight News Challenge, MacArthur DML, Hewlett OER, others) as a source of data about a certain issue?

For example, if you were trying to understand the "state" of community information efforts, would the applications to the Knight News Challenge be a useful source of data in terms of understanding what people out in the world think is important? Within those proposals exists ideas, some sense of the landscape around them, problem statements, and identified networks of interested parties. The pool of applications might be useful as either a snapshot in time or a view of an issue over time. Recognizing the limits (and changes) in the applicant pools as a sample, could these open pools of applications serve a dual purpose - funding proposals to the foundation (their stated purpose) and a data source on an issue (their big data purpose)?

This is in line with the point I made a few years in a talk at #PDF (video) about the potential of opening up all foundation grant proposals as a means of seeing what applicants think is important, a source of ideas, trends, useful data. The aggregate pool of applications to foundations (and other funding sources) would finally provide some "big data" on the ideas people have, programs that are out there, practices in place for making communities better.

Getting access to all proposals is a long term proposition (many might call it a pipe dream). Since some foundations are now holding these open challenges, do those pools of applications serve any larger purpose? Do you know anyone who has looked at them as such?

Happy Pesach, Easter, weekend.

Big Philanthropy and Democracy

(photo from http://www.bostonreview.net/)

My Stanford colleague and #ReCodingGood project partner, Rob Reich, wrote the cover article for the latest issue of Boston Review.

Rob's article interrogates the role of large foundations in a democracy, a political system that pays inherent homage to some degree of pluralism. His article, "What are foundations for?" questions the philosophical basis of organizations that provide perpetual privilege to those few with significant financial resources. He turns that question over in several important ways before concluding that they actually play a role in protecting and amplifying the minority in a majority system. This role is not codified or built into the structure of big foundations, yet it has proven to be the case for decades.

Responses to his piece come from Larry Kramer, Rick Cohen, Diane Ravitch, Stan Katz, Deborah Fung, Tyler Cowen, Pablo Eisenberg, Seana Valentine Shiffrin, and Paul Brest, among others.

A small group of us discussed the relationships between philanthropy and democracy in our #ReCodingGood charrette - those notes are here. Rob's article and the forum of respondents pushes this thinking further. Read it.

Changing our data defaults

I was thrilled to contribute to the series now running on the Harvard Business Review blog about scaling social impact. Here's a reposting of the article:

Social sector organizations are in the business of changing the world, and the information they collect and use should be the catalyst for making that happen. Courtesy of broadband Internet and mobile wifi we now have global, low-cost ways to share data that every social-purpose organization can plug into. From it, they should be able to draw what they need about previous experiments, effective practices, and achieved outcomes, as well as what has failed and why. That way, local social entrepreneurs can mimic what works elsewhere and share their ideas, successes, and failures.

Here are two organizations doing just that. The Awesome Foundation enables funders on four continents to find great ideas to support. CrisisCommons relies on open data to let others quickly learn from each other to reach people in immediate need.

In 2010, Tim Hwang and a few friends in Cambridge found themselves questioning the costs associated with raising a few thousand dollars to launch an online project. Their colleagues at Harvard and MIT regularly devoted hundreds of hours to proposals for million dollar investments, but they only needed a few thousand bucks to test some software. Several pub conversations and a few Facebook posts later, the Awesome Foundation was born — a small group of friends, each committing $100 a month, would accept proposals online for "awesome projects." Each month the group would put $1,000 to the best idea from artists, community organizers, and techies. The core principles of the group: Make it awesome. Share the ideas. Let folks know.

Fast forward three years. There are now Awesome Foundation chapters in 55 cities in eleven countries. They've funded art projects, wi-fi routers, and community events. Many of their projects go on to raise a next level of funding from Kickstarter or institutional investors. In 2011 the John S and James L Knight Foundation invested $500,000 to expand the Awesome Foundation's model to Detroit.

Open data — the idea that certain data should be freely available to everyone to use as they wish — was the key to scaling Awesome Foundation's core idea. Proposals are open, the process is easily copied, and local adaptation is encouraged. When you apply to one Awesome Foundation you do so knowing that other chapters may take an interest in your proposal, and that what you produce in Toronto will be shared with peers in Melbourne.

CrisisCommons is another example. For years, a small group of crisis responders from nonprofits and the federal government had been meeting for coffee in Washington, DC and talking about how technology could facilitate disaster response. When the devastating earthquake hit Haiti in 2010 they had a ready-made network of project managers and techies in cities all over the world. Within days the network organized to develop lightweight mobile apps for crisis responders.

The tools were built in weekend shifts by coders who worked locally and then shared their code globally for similar groups in other countries. Responders in Haiti could test it, use it, and share their feedback with the dispersed network. Whoever was available to fix the bug or add the features could do it. The effort, called CrisisCommons, focused on building a network of peers and a system for sharing data.

The level of information-sharing that Awesome Foundation and CrisisCommons do is key to the organizations' ability to make a difference. But this is not the norm. Instead most social good organizations adopt an institutional replication model, where an organization focuses on reproducing the institution, not reusing the data.
This needs to change in two ways:

First, nonprofits should be using their data for social purposes only. We already distinguish nonprofit corporations from their commercial counterparts by the "non-distribution" clause that determines how they use excess revenue. A nonprofit must reinvest any "profits" in the work of the organization rather than benefitting private individuals. That's the little trick of corporate code that maintains public trust in the enterprises and keeps resources focused on the social mission.

Nonprofits should take similar heed when it comes to using the personal data of their donors and beneficiaries. To ensure the ongoing support and trust of their supporters, nonprofits should rely on an "opt in" choice for the use of their data. They need to treat data "donation" the same way they protect financial ones. By allowing donors an "opt in" choice, nonprofits will get better, more useful data and maintain public trust.

However, when it comes to enterprise level data, the default should be to share all the data you can. This is the second change that needs to happen. With regard to outcomes data or project insights, the default should be an "opt out" choice. Most of the information that organizations collect on their work never gets shared outside of their own staff meetings. Not because it's proprietary or scandalous, but because that's the way it was done in the pre-Internet, publish-it-once world. Nonprofits don't live in that world anymore, none of us do. If we're going to scale any of our efforts to solve social problems we've got to make much better use of the fastest scaling tool humans have ever built: open data.

Shifting these two defaults will help nonprofits become trusted and purposeful users of data. Have you seen other examples of nonprofits using open data for social impact? What made those examples work?"

Recommended Reading

Information for Impact

The possibilities for change that opening 990 data would unleash. This in-depth report from The Aspen Institute, written by Beth Noveck and Danny Goroff, puts forth numerous possibilities if we had machine-readable, open access to 990 data. It moves the social sector out of its old discussion about the shortcomings of the 990 and puts the sector in the middle of the more interesting reality of open data, new behaviors, data mashups, and the hidden information that is already being collected (investment information, board members). It ties in nicely with discussions about transparency and oversight, while also raising important questions about what the IRS can and cannot do well, how these efforts might help State Attorneys General, and what the public can do with this information.

Trendwatching 2013 - Center for the Future of Museums

What do 3D printing, demographic changes, and MOOCs have in common? They all matter to the future of museums. This is the second annual Trendwatching report from the Center and is well worth a read. The key trends matter to nonprofit organizations beyond museums, and the writing is quick, adept and easily transferable to other settings.

Democracy and Philanthropy

Philanthropy and the Regeneration of Community Democracy tells the story of one foundation's role, over decades, in several key local challenges. This is more than a foundation funding civic engagement or hosting neutral gatherings. It's a point of view about the meaning and purpose of both philanthropy and communities. Written by Peter Pennekamp and Anne Focke, and sponsored by The Kettering Foundation, this report offers a perspective that deserves careful consideration by many kinds of community organizations, not just community foundations.