Digital Impact was created by the Digital Civil Society Lab at Stanford PACS and was managed until 2024. It is no longer being updated.
September 6, 2016
Mark Zuckerberg’s choice to use the legal structure of an LLC for his philanthropic endeavors has been making headlines for the last several months. When he sold $95m worth of his shares in June the storm started again with Wired saying “He’s No Hero Yet” and The Chronicle of Philanthropy asking whether John D. Rockefeller […]
August 9, 2016
I need to get this off my chest. I am sick and tired of hearing about overhead. I don’t even mean in the overhead-ratio police kind of way. I mean at all. It is an irrelevant metric. It is a complete and utter distraction from the measurements that really matter. I’ll go one step further. […]
August 2, 2016
Math is nice isn’t it? That feeling of getting the right answer. 1 + 1 = 2. There is no other answer. It’s so clear. Something is either correct or incorrect. It’s not left open to interpretation. Our first exposure to numbers is usually this kind of simple mathematics. We get used to this clarity […]
July 6, 2016
The Impact Lab’s Andrew Means calls for transparency in algorithmic decision-making to ensure proper, equitable practice in service of the public good.
June 3, 2016
I’m not going to bury the lede. I think the nonprofit sector has too many ineffectual organizations with too many resources. I think it’s a problem when the quality of impact isn’t correlated with the quantity of dollars donated. But to get us all to my point of frustration we’re going to take a nerdy […]
May 10, 2016
On April 27th, the Chicago Hyatt Regency ballroom began filling up with 900 people from 20 countries and nearly every state. They were gathering for two days of learning, community, and nerdery at the fourth annual Do Good Data conference. When I started Do Good Data three and a half years ago, I […]
December 9, 2015
Digital Impact Councilmember Andrew Means says more can be achieved by allocating limited resources across organizations, but who sets the agenda?
August 12, 2015
For the first interview in our Community Insights series, we sit down with Andrew Means, Co-Founder of The Impact Lab.
February 3, 2015
We need more data talent in the nonprofit sector. Data has the power to revolutionize our organizations yet we lack the workforce to launch the revolution. So where should this workforce come from? There are two strategies we can employ to increase the data talent in the sector; attract or develop. Many […]
July 1, 2014
Last week I published The Death of Program Evaluation, highlighting my firm belief that evaluation as it is today needs to change and evolve. Program evaluation is often not forward looking, over-focused on statistical proof, and actually undermines program improvement. The post sparked a debate across twitter, the website, and the Markets for Good community […]
