Deregulation, unrestricted funding, and focusing on the right (data) problem...what we're reading this week
A round-up of articles that have caught our eye in the last few weeks
From UX Indonesia on Unsplash
All of our articles this week are about funding, philanthropy and data.
We read (and listened) to this conversation from representatives in the philanthropic sector about what is next for data in the social sector. Participants spoke about the shift in power that data can give to the sector - enabling changemakers to access data can transform the work and create more effective work.
Woodrow Rosenbaum, one of our partners at GivingTuesday, shared that “effective data use in the nonprofit sector is not a technology problem” but rather, a problem of framing the questions we want answers to. We wanted to pull this quote out because it is a central tenet of our approach to data in the sector. Addressing only technology is insufficient for making progress.
We read about possible reasons that funders are still not giving (warning: paywall) unrestricted support to nonprofits despite an apparent shift that seemed to be starting in the spring of 2020. This is an interesting debate and we are excited that people are talking about it. The author highlights a lack of trust in the sector from donors, which was interesting to us.
The CRA released new draft guidelines about granting to non-qualified donees. There are several big shifts in these guidelines and lots of implications for the sector. We hope there is follow-up research and discussion about the impact of these changes - including negative ones. The long term implications of loosening restrictions on foundations to grant more broadly are complex - and it’s not clear what those impacts will be. We want to see work to evaluate whether the impact matches the intention of this policy change.