May 14, 2007

Fundraising and Philanthropy: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

Many of you may have seen this OnPhilanthropy article discussing the history and future of fundraising and philanthropy. As it points out, even though the dollars to nonprofits are increasing rapidly, competition for these dollars are also increasing. This will challenge us to grow our capacity for understanding our donors and relating to them more effectively.

The world of tomorrow will not only be one of increased public and political pressure for nonprofit accountability, but it will also see increasing reliance upon financial sustainability and impact measurement. Donors will move away from making "gifts," to creating philanthropic contracts in which the donor expectations are legally binding, often held in perpetuity by their recipient.

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Artificial Intelligence enters the Mainstream

...One has to understand that the massive amounts of data being generated today cannot possibly be analysed effectively enough either by humans or traditional software, if one wishes to derive all the knowledge inherent in that data or ascertain the intrinsic hidden patterns. It is here that AI is playing a big role, whether in biotechnology or in banking.

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Organization-wide Business Intelligence

Here is a cross-industry survey about integrating business intelligence and analytics from Optimize Magazine.

If business intelligence (BI) isn't in the hands of a majority of your organization's users, chances are it will be in the next two years. BI is expanding beyond its decade-long use by only handfuls of technically savvy employees. No longer will business and financial analysts own data mining, analysis, and reporting tools. Businesses are trying to get smarter about BI, and they're planning to expand use of these applications outside the historical confines of finance, sales and marketing, customer service, and IT departments. The idea is that spreading BI technology to more business functions—such as human resources, supply chains, and E-commerce—will eventually allow more data sharing and collaboration throughout the value chain.

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Data Mining at the New York Times

In a previous posting I pointed out the common negative associations with data mining. This article about data mining at the New York Times is another good example of this.

Prospect research has dealt with managing public perceptions of its work for decades. APRA, the professional association serving the prospect research field, put together a fine code of ethics for prospect information. It is important for data miners to adopt similar standards. Using data mining to identify prospects for philanthropic purposes is a very positive use of the technology. It locates individuals with strong affinity for the work of nonprofits. And, it helps segment out unattached or uninterested individuals.

Barely a year after their reporters won a Pulitzer prize for exposing data mining of ordinary citizens by a government spy agency, New York Times officials had some exciting news for stockholders last week: The Times company plans to do its own data mining of ordinary citizens, in the name of online profits.

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