We Need Open Data To Change The World - Lucy Bernholz - Harvard Business Review

"Social sector organizations are in the business of changing the world, and the information they collect and use should be the catalyst for making that happen. Courtesy of broadband Internet and mobile wifi we now have global, low-cost ways to share data that every social-purpose organization can plug into. From it, they should be able to draw what they need about previous experiments, effective practices, and achieved outcomes, as well as what has failed and why. That way, local social entrepreneurs can mimic what works elsewhere and share their ideas, successes, and failures. Here are two organizations doing just that. The Awesome Foundation enables funders on four continents to find great ideas to support. CrisisCommons relies on open data to let others quickly learn from each other to reach people in immediate need ..."