Advancing Philanthropy Through Data Analytics

Most foundations are engaged in the art of the possible. They invest in organizations and programs aimed at transforming current realities into better possibilities and in ideas that "push the envelope" in ways that test the edges of what could be. But few foundations are taking advantage of a proven tool for expanding the possible in their own grant making and mission effectiveness: data analysis. Analytic methods are routinely used and considered essential in nearly every other sector of the economy. In healthcare, retail and financial services, to name just a few hotbeds, analytics has dramatically affected what -- with a given amount of time and money -- is possible to measure, to manage, to learn, to change and to achieve. The foundation world -- which holds over USD $1.5 trillion in assets globally and$646.1 billion in the U.S. alone, with annual grant making of approximately $100 billion globally and$46.9 billion in the U.S. -- uses analytic methods to assess, select, monitor, and report on its capital market investments for the 95% of its corpus that generates revenue. These very same methods, with even the introduction of the most basic analytic techniques, will provide demonstrable gains for the remaining 5% of the corpus that is distributed for charitable purposes. Foundations can gain visibility into how resources are allocated across their organization, view grant distribution compared to per capita need and explore outcomes data... among many other uses. For grant making organizations, analytics are a key that can be used to unlock answers to vital questions such as:How well does our grant making align with our strategy and stated tactics?Which grantees produce the best outcomes in support of our mission and strategy?Has this intervention strategy been tried before and, if so, how well did it work?Does this strategy merit replication, and is there evidence that it can be replicated and/or scaled?If we committed the same grant making budget differently, could we produce a greater impact?Board members gain visibility into the execution of top-level strategies and timely enough operational feedback to actually refine their strategic plans and, therefore, better influence desired outcomes in alignment with their mission. Foundations leaders and senior managers gain insights into what is working and clear indicators of where improvements are needed. Program managers gain time-saving tools that simplify their work and help them steer toward grant making objectives. Data analysis also improves communication and coordination by helping all participants arrive at a clear and common understanding of what types of grants and/or investments are being deployed and how they are influencing outcomes. Moreover, improved transparency enables stakeholders and the community at large to better see what investments are accomplishing. This paper looks at some of these early achievements in Kuity's work with The California Endowment (TCE). It also discusses where the nonprofit sector is headed in the implementation of more advanced analytic methods that will yield even greater benefits

Student-Centered Learning: Functional Requirements for Integrated Systems to Optimize Learning

The realities of the 21st-century learner require that schools and educators fundamentally change their practice. "Educators must produce college- and career-ready graduates that reflect the future these students will face. And, they must facilitate learning through means that align with the defining attributes of this generation of learners."Today, we know more than ever about how students learn, acknowledging that the process isn't the same for every student and doesn't remain the same for each individual, depending upon maturation and the content being learned. We know that students want to progress at a pace that allows them to master new concepts and skills, to access a variety of resources, to receive timely feedback on their progress, to demonstrate their knowledge in multiple ways and to get direction, support and feedback from—as well as collaborate with—experts, teachers, tutors and other students.The result is a growing demand for student-centered, transformative digital learning using competency education as an underpinning.iNACOL released this paper to illustrate the technical requirements and functionalities that learning management systems need to shift toward student-centered instructional models. This comprehensive framework will help districts and schools determine what systems to use and integrate as they being their journey toward student-centered learning, as well as how systems integration aligns with their organizational vision, educational goals and strategic plans.Educators can use this report to optimize student learning and promote innovation in their own student-centered learning environments. The report will help school leaders understand the complex technologies needed to optimize personalized learning and how to use data and analytics to improve practices, and can assist technology leaders in re-engineering systems to support the key nuances of student-centered learning

Are black friday deals worth it? Mining twitter users' sentiment and behavior response

The Black Friday event has become a global opportunity for marketing and companies’ strategies aimed at increasing sales. The present study aims to understand consumer behavior through the analysis of user-generated content (UGC) on social media with respect to the Black Friday 2018 offers published by the 23 largest technology companies in Spain. To this end, we analyzed Twitter-based UGC about companies’ offers using a three-step data text mining process. First, a Latent Dirichlet Allocation Model (LDA) was used to divide the sample into topics related to Black Friday. In the next step, sentiment analysis (SA) using Python was carried out to determine the feelings towards the identified topics and offers published by the companies on Twitter. Thirdly and finally, a data-text mining process called textual analysis (TA) was performed to identify insights that could help companies to improve their promotion and marketing strategies as well as to better understand the customer behavior on social media. The results show that consumers had positive perceptions of such topics as exclusive promotions (EP) and smartphones (SM); by contrast, topics such as fraud (FA), insults and noise (IN), and customer support (CS) were negatively perceived by customers. Based on these results, we offer guidelines to practitioners to improve their social media communication. Our results also have theoretical implications that can promote further research in this area

The Digitalisation of African Agriculture Report 2018-2019

An inclusive, digitally-enabled agricultural transformation could help achieve meaningful livelihood improvements for Africa’s smallholder farmers and pastoralists. It could drive greater engagement in agriculture from women and youth and create employment opportunities along the value chain. At CTA we staked a claim on this power of digitalisation to more systematically transform agriculture early on. Digitalisation, focusing on not individual ICTs but the application of these technologies to entire value chains, is a theme that cuts across all of our work. In youth entrepreneurship, we are fostering a new breed of young ICT ‘agripreneurs’. In climate-smart agriculture multiple projects provide information that can help towards building resilience for smallholder farmers. And in women empowerment we are supporting digital platforms to drive greater inclusion for women entrepreneurs in agricultural value chains

Deaf STEM Community Alliance: Establishing a model virtual academic community

Abstract - This presentation describes the incremental and iterative development of the Deaf STEM Community Alliance’s virtual academic community, the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Virtual Academic Community (DHHVAC). The DHHVAC components address three critical barriers to the success of students who are deaf or hard-of-hearing: student preparation, socialization, and access to media

ALT-C 2012 Abstracts

This is a PDF of the abstracts for all the sessions at the 2012 ALT conference. It is designed to be used alongside the online version of the conference programme. It was made public on 7 September 2012

Total Technology Space Map as a Digital Platform

A strand of recent studies utilized complete patent databases and classification systems to construct large network maps of patent technology classes, which might approximate the total technology space. It has been argued that such maps are useful for competitive intelligence analysis, technology road mapping, innovation decision support, and so on in the literature. In this paper, we illustrate the InnoGPS system to integrate such a map with various map-based visual analytic functions for technology navigation, positioning, neighborhood exploration, path finding and information retrieval. These analytics are either descriptive, predictive or prescriptive. During the process of developing InnoGPS, we have conceived a wide spectrum of other potential applications of the total technology space map for consumers, business, education and so on. These possibilities together with the difficulty to construct an accurate technology space representation suggest the strategic value to develop the total technology space map as a digital platform for any applications to discover, manage or represent any data, information and knowledge related to technologies, and to nurture an ecosystem of developers and users

MOOCs and the Rise of Online Legal Education

Whereas the capacity to grow and distribute food defined the agrarian economy, and the capacity to manufacture and distribute goods defined the industrial economy, the capacity to create and apply knowledge defines the post-industrial digital economy. In this context, sustainable prosperity depends on a society’s capacity to create and apply knowledge to solve problems. Universities continually look at quality assurance processes and the use of new technologies to increase participation and improve student outcomes. The combination of traditional practice associated with aging legal academics, the demands of digital natives and the ability of new technologies to disrupt accepted practices suggests that new teaching modes are needed. The situation is no starker than that presented by the advent of MOOCs - Massive Open Online Courses