Digital Impact was created by the Digital Civil Society Lab at Stanford PACS and was managed until 2024. It is no longer being updated.
April 10, 2013
In February, we visited the topic, Nonprofit Data And The Arc Of History, a perspective on “how the US currently collects, digitizes, and distributes data about charities through an annual reporting return called the Form 990…” This comment came on the heels of an Aspen Institute forum where a new report was released, entitled “Information for […]
April 8, 2013
Enjoy our strategic story on SlideShare here. This concept of upgrading the information infrastructure of the social sector is the result of years of informal conversations now broadened and coalescing into a specific imperative to improve the way we generate, use, and share data, i.e. the “plumbing” of the sector. If, together, we can […]
April 1, 2013
“This is not just a need for donors. Leaders of nonprofits and NGOs, media, policy makers, and most importantly, beneficiaries of services need critical data and information that could increase results for everyone.”
Notes From The Field: Nikon Rasumov, co-founder of Pullapproach outlines a route to data collection with lower transaction costs and, thus, a shorter route to impact for social enterprises.
March 29, 2013
Jack Dorsey, founder of Twtter, recently sat for an interview with the CBS television program 60 Minutes. What we learned is that Twitter owes its existence to his love of trains, specifically the dispatching function that guides them. Throughout the day, dispatchers and train operators communicate in short, descriptive blurbs. Jack’s insight was that, suddenly, […]
March 28, 2013
Darin McKeever is Deputy Director, Charitable Sector, Global Policy & Advocacy, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. His comment here, Moving From Big Data To Big Wisdom (just published on the blog of Skoll Foundation World Forum), throws a welcome spanner in the works with respect to the thought of a full on march into getting […]
March 27, 2013
NOTES FROM THE FIELD: The following post is a dispatch from both the classroom and the field. Nicolas Galarza looks at an example of social entrepreneurship in Colombia and finds links between open data and the diffusion of innovation. The result is a route to market development that better reaches the poor with new technologies […]
March 26, 2013
Fast forward to a social sector in which the data practices we are currently imagining are implicit in both our day-to-day activities and in the strategic underpinnings of our work. Sheetal Singh (@multi_tude), Senior Director of Global Media at TechSoup Global provides a case study that looks into that future and suggests a way to […]
March 25, 2013
For anyone attending the NTEN Conference, GlobalGiving will host a Markets for Good meetup with a focus on brainstorming ideas for the MFG challenge: Increasing Interoperability of Data for Social Good. Here are the details: April 11, 2013 5 pm – 7 pm The News Room 990 Nicollet Mall (at 10th St) Minneapolis, MN 55402 […]
March 21, 2013
In this continuation of our series on Technology, Scott Smith offers a “user’s guide” of sorts in this technologist’s view of what we need to build a robust infrastructure. He also challenges the sector to revisit specific perspectives on data practice to be sure that we establish durable pillars for our work. …
