Opinion

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, they flourish. When they fail […]

The authors of The Happy Healthy Nonprofit share tips on how to leverage data to achieve your wellness goals.

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 readers to open up their […]

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 asking whether John D. Rockefeller […]

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. I’ll go one step further. […]

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 get used to this clarity […]

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 going to take a nerdy […]

Before you read this blog post, I need to ask: when was the last time you read a website’s “privacy policy?” I bet you never have. I wouldn’t blame you—who does read those things? The answer is almost no one. And, to be frank, it would be a real problem if they did. If the […]