First Big Data Research Results in Philanthropy Announced

Big Data is getting to be big news in philanthropy. A team of researchers at the University of Schmerz am Überhogen recently starting analyzing a large database compiled by a consortium of Bavarian foundations. They used anomaly detection and dependency modeling techniques to sift through 700 petabytes (700 x 10¹⁵ bytes) of digitized conference plenaries and flip chart notes.

In a paper recently published in the Überhogenerzeitungsgebrungensjournal, these researchers reported finding a very striking linear correlation between the age of grantee organizations and the year of their founding. They also uncovered a series of highly “cohesive” (German: kohäsiv) data patterns, one of which is displayed below:

Comments

[phil cubeta]

What do we know? We know certain things that lie before our face, what we touch with our own hands, the land we cultivate, the child we raise, the organization we support and on whose board we serve. We also know at one remove what we get reports on, what we get data on. As reports flow upward, local autonomy, what was once considered professionalism, is displaced by the controls and markets driven from outside and above by data. That shift in power is itself of interest to any theory of social justice, or what it means to be human. Where will Huck Finn shelter from Aunt Sally, when she has Big Data?

[Enrique the Gay Philosopher]

Plenty of qualitative data there on the kinds of human transformations that might occur on a raft trip down the Mississippi with a runaway slave. I get the sense that not very much of it would be of interest to people looking to make High Impact Data-Driven Investments, even though the benefit-to-cost ratio is very high.

[Tidy Sum]

Big data is ushering a bold new era for the social sector. This project is the equivalent of the human genome project for philanthropy It points out how important it is for the field to underwrite its own research program to develop the rigorous scientific evidence we have all been waiting for. Until now, the “arslosch-dachshund-model” was a theoretical construct, but now we have indisputable proof. I can only hope that this finding will speed up the fundraising campaign to develop the collective impact particle accelerator proposed for construction in Geneva. Big data, indeed!

[Anonymous Gates grantee]

Gates plops down--what?--tens of millions of dollars for Big Data and Big Markets, and now the conversation needs to be about that. Can Ford please, for God's sake, use its money and influence to change the conversation to one about Big Justice?

[The Incredible Hulk]

Justice is BIG. Justice is BIG.

[Albert]

... BIG. ... BIG.

[Alejandro H. Fukit]

Lol, to five-legged dogs (and the horse they rode in on!) Oi!

[SuffocatedByRules Blog]

Do you as a rule exclusively for this domain or you do that for some other online or offline portals?

[WCT Ombudsman]

SuffocatedByRules: Our authors contribute to many publications online and off-.