MFG Archive

As President Obama takes to SXSW to encourage techies to join government, we need to ask not only how technology can improve democracy, but how democracy must shape civic technology.

  As of this month, 7,000 patients have been funded on Watsi.   Some patients and their families wait years for healthcare. When they finally have the opportunity to receive treatment, what do they say? When a patient seeks care, a doctor interviews them and their family about the patient’s life, medical history, and expectations […]

  “I love big data.  It’s got such potential for storytelling.”  At DataKind, we hear some version of this narrative every week.  As more and more social organizations dip their toes into using data, invariably the conversation about data visualization comes up. There is a growing feeling that data visualization, with its combination of “engaging […]

  For a long time, nonprofits and foundations have been seeking to improve outcomes. Getting there requires all kinds of new measurement schemes, thus the last two decades have brought us talk of social return on investment, quality-adjusted life years, and many other calculations.   I think it’s time we recognize we’re operating with a […]

Released this month, the study “Ebola: A Big Data Disaster,” written by Sean McDonald with the support of the Open Society Foundation, Ford Foundation, and Media Democracy Fund, leaves no stone unturned as it explores the use of Big Data in the form of Call Detail Record (CDR) data in humanitarian crises. This study raises […]

  We’ve seen the headlines: the San Francisco Bay Area is experiencing a serious housing crisis. As of August 2015, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Marin counties had median home prices of $1.35 million, $1.3 million and $1.2 million, respectively. A buyer in these three counties would need to make between $230,000 to $270,000 annually […]

To celebrate Open Data Day, we revisit five articles from years past that are still relevant to conservations surrounding open data.

Hot on the heels of the Knight News Challenge, the Knight Foundation is continuing to prove their dedication to the world of data by announcing the 11 projects that will receive funding through the Knight Prototype Fund. In fact, nine of the projects were also winners of the Knight News Challenge on Data. The Knight […]

  Philanthropoids, donors and nonprofit leaders want (and use) data for different reasons. Philanthropoids and donors hope to compare options and allocate investments while nonprofit leaders hope to learn and prove impact using data. But in all cases, the data they seek needs to tell a story and have a narrative in order to provide […]

  Facebook has been busy at work using artificial intelligence software to map global populations by scanning satellite imagery for human-built structures. The plan is to use (and share) the data to determine the best placement for internet-beaming drones, they also believe, “this data has many more impactful applications, such as socio-economic research and risk […]