Philanthropy and innovation - how could open data and artificial intelligence help funders do better? | Nesta

"But a significant minority of funders are working to open things up, to adopt new methods and act in the more accountable ways they would want their grant recipients to. As a result it’s now possible to see how philanthropy could become a lot more data-driven and better at learning.

A debate is beginning to gather steam about everything from new tools aimed at a mass market - like AI-based philanthropic advice, or fund-raising tools (like the Arthritis Research UK partnership with Microsoft on using AI to target pop-ups to potential donors). There’s also an emerging debate about better ways of linking data sets- as in this interesting speculation from last year - and there are some intriguing, if still embryonic, projects like the Open Philanthropy Project.

Here I suggest potential innovations that could transform how the bigger funders - and we at Nesta - might work in the future. I’m setting them out to encourage critical and constructive comments. I’m also hoping for constructive engagement from other funders on how we could cooperate to push the field forward. The blog covers how funders could use data; better sift and assess applications; reduce bureaucracy for applicants; strategically scan different fields; and tap into crowd knowledge."