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 It is no longer being updated.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 19, 2016
With each passing day, new technologies crop up and become integral parts of our social media-entrenched, smart device-embedded lives. When we use these new technologies, we trade access to our intimate moments for convenience and entertainment. The petabytes of data generated by each waking (and sleeping!) nanosecond are a treasure trove for the companies that […]
September 9, 2016
Perpetual Limited is one of Australia’s oldest trustee companies and largest managers of philanthropic funds. The story of how Perpetual refocused its philanthropy business to build non-profit capacity (particularly digital capacity), as opposed to project funding, is nearly 130 years in the making. In this article we look at how that change occurred and the […]
August 17, 2016
The CT Data Collaborative (CTData) is a public-private partnership between the state government and the nonprofit sector in Connecticut, created to advance effective planning and decision-making through the use of open and accessible data. CTData serves residents, nonprofits, policymakers, and funders in using and sharing data to drive policy, program, and service improvements. CTData provides […]
August 3, 2016
Data has been called “the new oil” as private companies discover its value for generating business insights and driving profits. Likewise, the nonprofit and civil society sector — including healthcare organizations — is increasingly using data-driven insights to design better interventions and programs. Unfortunately, the unethical and unsafe use of data in the nonprofit healthcare sector […]
July 25, 2016
After listening to Markets for Good’s Virtual Roundtable “Giving Day Technology: Making Good on the Big Day and Beyond,” the big takeaway for giving day hosts, platforms, and participating nonprofits is to be prepared when technology fails — but also learn from every experience and share it with peers. Let’s look at what a number […]
July 19, 2016
Doctors Ren Nianbao and Xie Guangguo have worked at the Lang Mao Shan Clinic in rural China for 20 years. Approximately one-fifth of their patients suffer from cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), one of the leading causes of death in China. In the past, the clinic relied on a conventional, 12-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) machine to screen for […]
July 8, 2016
Picture this: I’m standing in front of a room of dozens of social sector professionals, ranging from Executive Directors to program assistants, and I ask, as I often do, “Raise your hand if you have taken a statistics course before.” As usual, a majority of hands go up. “Now keep your hand up if you […]
June 23, 2016
Humanitarian aid and disaster response groups are regularly faced with the promise and peril of digital data and infrastructure. The opportunities to use real time satellite imagery, to improve communications in dangerous situations, and to experiment with social media feeds for information on the fly are tempting. At the same time, the ethical demands to […]
There are more than 1,000 online giving platforms, but only one matters for your giving day – the one you chose. The Pittsburgh Foundation and 47 other foundations found that out the hard way during this year’s Give Local America Day when technology ground giving to a halt. Technology is increasingly ubiquitous and always evolving, […]
“As we approach nearly a decade of using the term ‘impact investing,’ what can the industry learn from microfinance, particularly when it comes to impact measurement, evidence, and expectations?” For those of you who are familiar with Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE), it won’t surprise you to know that this was one of the […]
