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On a rainy morning in February, 450 of us gathered on Stanford’s campus for the Data on Purpose / Do Good Data conference, hosted by the Stanford Social Innovation Review and the Digital Civil Society Lab at the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society. This year we combined two...

Have you ever thought about the power you hold in your wallet? Consumers in a capitalist economy, taken collectively, change the world. They drive markets. They push entrepreneurs to innovate. They cause businesses to compete with one another to provide the best experience for customers. When they deliver value to consumers,...

It’s that time of the year again. End of year appeals are going out. Annual reports are being drafted. And each of them is going to contain stories—lots and lots of stories. Stories about how powerful our programs are. Stories that show lives being changed. Stories that are meant to compel...

Andrew Means wants social sector data practitioners to take a more open-minded perspective toward alternate data methodologies.

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...

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....

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...

The Impact Lab's Andrew Means calls for transparency in algorithmic decision-making to ensure proper, equitable practice in service of the public good.

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...

  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...