Digital Impact was created by the Digital Civil Society Lab at Stanford PACS and was managed until 2024. It is no longer being updated.
May 9, 2014
Chronicle of Philanthropy’s most recent article within its ‘Measuring Up’ section begins with a statement we know all too well: “One of the greatest challenges facing nonprofits is proving how effective they are.” From varied reports, irrelevant data, or not understanding what the data means, it’s a big challenge. To solve the problem, this article […]
May 8, 2014
“On April 28, 2014, the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act, or DATA Act, sending it to President Barack Obama for his signature. The DATA Act is the nation’s first legislative mandate for data transparency (set to) transform U.S. federal spending from disconnected documents into open, standardized data, and […]
May 7, 2014
Today we present to you a practical toolkit for nonprofits. More than that, it is a library, which everyone working in social innovation can access and use to develop their programs. This toolkit came to our attention via a long-standing friend of the site, Beth Kanter. —
May 6, 2014
The Global Impact Investment Network (GIIN) is a not-for-profit dedicated to increasing the scale and effectiveness of impact investing. Today, they discuss the developing investment and philanthropic climate, with more and more venture capitalists moving into the social impact world, bringing more ideas from the private sector. One fundamental concept, is unsurprisingly data. But how do they see the change […]
May 5, 2014
Today, we’d like to take some lessons from the private sector. Most of us will be highly familiar with the sight of UPS delivering a parcel. What you probably don’t know is that their drivers are among the best paid in the industry, thanks in large part to their use of data. How, you ask? […]
May 1, 2014
Riders for Health is a social enterprise, which works in seven countries in Africa to manage and maintain vehicles and fleets that carry health care to remote rural communities. They are transforming health care for 14 million people. Matthew Hann, Communications Manager at Riders for Heath gives an in-depth description of how they utilise data in […]
April 30, 2014
We are pleased to welcome Peter Grundy, the “father of infographics” to the conversation, with groundbreaking experience that began in the 70’s and continues with a sharp look into the future of communicating information. He opens with a quote: “The humble basic communication of information has never had the glamour of other areas of design. […]
April 29, 2014
Today we take a look at a call to action – an article from Foundation Center, via Philanthropy News Digest. The original piece’s writer, Jeannine Corey, Director of Grants Information Management at Foundation Center, highlights that their staff have spent the last 18 months working on the taxonomy behind Foundation Center. In this case, taxonomy […]
April 28, 2014
Last week, The Chronicle of Philanthropy highlighted a new report entitled ‘The Effect of Effectiveness,’ which demonstrated that despite all the current emphasis on data, it doesn’t always have the desired impact. Donors simply aren’t giving more based on better data – but is this true across the whole donor spectrum? We examined both the […]
April 24, 2014
Today we feature a rather special piece. A friend of the site and digital charity consultant Zoe Amar recently attended the British Library exhibition on ‘Beautiful Data’ – the twist being the focus is on data from as early as 1854. It puts things nicely into perspective when we think of the sudden emphasis on data visualization, or […]
