Charity and modern technologies in 2018
How technically advanced have NGOs been in the world?
According to many experts, in terms of technology, the past year was marked by machine learning and neural networks. How technically advanced have NGOs been in their work in this world, aimed at creating a full-fledged artificial intelligence. On the one hand, it would seem that there were no breakthroughs. On the other hand, in the non-profit sector they talked about a fundamentally new trend - "NGO 2.0".
What advice did NGOs receive?
The 2018 consultants and experts traditionally began by reminding nonprofits of the importance of technology for their work and mission. In Nonprofit Tech for Good , the bar was set high: insisted that NGOs need to understand how blockchain, cryptocurrencies, artificial intelligence, online data encryption, cloud technology and the Internet of Things work.
Cureo’s recommendations were more restrained. The organization suggested that NGOs look closely at mobile fundraising, arguing that this method of fundraising will become more relevant with the final enthronement of the smartphone as the main gadget of Internet users. Cureo also invited NGOs to explore storytelling opportunities and actively "sit" on social media.
NonProfitPRO advised to master the "disappearing content" of Snapchat and the Stories format of other social networks. Predicted the growing popularity of video content and called for betting onZ is "a brilliant generation concerned with social problems no less than millennials" and "grown up with smartphones in hand." NonProfitPRO also recommended launching chatbots and looking at Facebook Spaces , Facebook ’s virtual reality space "under the umbrella . " Another recommendation was the need to work with influencers - popular people on social networks, whose opinion is listened to by Z and millennials. All these recommendations do not lose relevance in 2019. And what advice did NGOs listen to?
Non-profit organizations around the world, especially the flagships of the sector, have really switched to the production of video content, sometimes these videos even went viral.
Tommy’s, a charity that funds research into the causes of miscarriages and miscarriages, has created a visually simple campaign with a powerful message that has made this video mega-popular on social media. Its goal is to overcome the taboo of discussing miscarriages, stillbirths or premature babies in society.
Another viral video belongs to Amnesty International, for which people were hypnotized on camera. Volunteers were asked to follow the paths of migrants. A professional hypnotist worked with them, and their reaction to what they experienced in hypnosis was recorded on video. The five-minute five-minute video on social media garnered 1.6 million views on Facebook.
Many NGOs worked on immersion in the past year. For example, WaterAid has equipped its staff in five countries - Madagascar, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Malawi and Zambia - with 360-degree cameras to capture the world around them, explaining what their work is and how much help they provide.
They mastered NGOs and storytelling. War Child, which helps children who have been or are in war zones, has created a long grid for its50-page report. And the British Dyslexia Association has used street displays and face recognition technology to visualize the difficulties faced by people with this disorder. The text appeared on the screens , and the more a passer-by read it, the more confusing the text became.
For its information campaign, Fight for Sight held a virtual marathon in which participants could download an application for their 10-kilometer race or hiking, during which they were given the opportunity to learn more about the structure of the eye and the features of human vision. The interactive application used geolocation to provide users with information about their location.
NGOs also relied on user-generated content.
StoryLines is a campaign run by the Royal Air Force Charitable Foundation to mark the 100th anniversary of their creation. On a specially created site, users were invited to upload stories of their own, their ancestors and relatives, and related to service in the British Air Force. The result was dozens of stories from the First World War to the military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Other NGOs have mastered new methods and forms of attracting new supporters. A simple but very effective method of attracting potential donors and other concerned people has been invented by a small NGO from the West Midlands in the UK to tackle homelessness among young people. She attracted local companies by calling for "donations" to the main pages of their websites, which posted information about the NGO, its work and an invitation to visit the site, as well as subscribe to the free newsletter.
But according to the results of 2018, many experts conclude that there have been no major breakthroughs in the non-profit sector and that the majority of NGOs are still lagging behind global techno-trends.
However, according to experts, there are also reasons for optimism. An increasing number of NGOs are coming into contact with the latest technological solutions indirectly - through applications and tools offered by third parties: from Google to Mailchimp. For example, organizations that use the Salesforce platform in their work, such as fundraising, have access to Einstein, an AI-based CRM assistant that optimizes the online fundraising process.
There may also be another phenomenon in the nonprofit sector. While existing NGOs are trying to bring their websites in line with smartphone realities and start producing video, there is a surge in NGOs in this sector. CareerVillage.org founder Jared Chang calls these organizations "second-generation NGOs."
One striking example is WattTime , created at the Rocky Mountain Institute and working with machine learning algorithms. Its task is to give people the right to choose the sources that generate the electricity they consume. It is a software package that analyzes the power grid and determines the moments in which the supplied electricity is produced with the least harm to the environment. WattTime software can be installed on any Internet-connected device, and it will optimize energy consumption by automatically selecting the most "green" type of energy and adjusting the operation of the appliance accordingly.
And WattTime is far from the only NGO to take advantage of artificial intelligence capabilities. Crisis Text Line - a platform for text messaging, designed to provide round-the-clock support to people in difficult situations. It also works on the basis of machine learning algorithms that determine the order in which messages are sent to volunteers who are able to help a person in need.
Thus, with the help of AI, the creators of the platform found that the word "ibuprofen" in the text 16 times more often signals an emergency than the word "suicide". The purpose of AI is to minimize the time between sending a message and the response of operators to critical cases.
Another striking example is Quill , creating free online tools for low-income students to improve their written speech. The experts of this NGO create tools using machine learning based on open sources. In particular, an array of correctly composed text fragments was collected by web-scraping Wikipedia pages.
Or the Berlin-based NGO The Guradian Project, whose team creates free applications and tools to protect people from online data from "unfair intrusion, interception and monitoring."
According to Shannon Farley, founder of San Francisco’s Fast Forward Accelerator NGO, the trend of technology NGOs has been going on since 2012. According to Farley, their number is increasing by 30 percent a year. Now in the Fast Forward databasealmost 400 NGOs from around the world, whose mission is to ensure the public good through technology.
New Year is ahead, which means new opportunities and prospects for Ukrainian NGOs. And who knows, maybe our charities, which really do their job, will be on the same list of Fast Forward, thus proving that in Ukraine there is a trend of technological NGOs.
According to many experts, in terms of technology, the past year was marked by machine learning and neural networks. How technically advanced have NGOs been in their work in this world, aimed at creating a full-fledged artificial intelligence. On the one hand, it would seem that there were no breakthroughs. On the other hand, in the non-profit sector they talked about a fundamentally new trend - "NGO 2.0".
What advice did NGOs receive?
The 2018 consultants and experts traditionally began by reminding nonprofits of the importance of technology for their work and mission. In Nonprofit Tech for Good , the bar was set high: insisted that NGOs need to understand how blockchain, cryptocurrencies, artificial intelligence, online data encryption, cloud technology and the Internet of Things work.
Cureo’s recommendations were more restrained. The organization suggested that NGOs look closely at mobile fundraising, arguing that this method of fundraising will become more relevant with the final enthronement of the smartphone as the main gadget of Internet users. Cureo also invited NGOs to explore storytelling opportunities and actively "sit" on social media.
NonProfitPRO advised to master the "disappearing content" of Snapchat and the Stories format of other social networks. Predicted the growing popularity of video content and called for betting onZ is "a brilliant generation concerned with social problems no less than millennials" and "grown up with smartphones in hand." NonProfitPRO also recommended launching chatbots and looking at Facebook Spaces , Facebook ’s virtual reality space "under the umbrella . " Another recommendation was the need to work with influencers - popular people on social networks, whose opinion is listened to by Z and millennials. All these recommendations do not lose relevance in 2019. And what advice did NGOs listen to?
Non-profit organizations around the world, especially the flagships of the sector, have really switched to the production of video content, sometimes these videos even went viral.
Tommy’s, a charity that funds research into the causes of miscarriages and miscarriages, has created a visually simple campaign with a powerful message that has made this video mega-popular on social media. Its goal is to overcome the taboo of discussing miscarriages, stillbirths or premature babies in society.
Another viral video belongs to Amnesty International, for which people were hypnotized on camera. Volunteers were asked to follow the paths of migrants. A professional hypnotist worked with them, and their reaction to what they experienced in hypnosis was recorded on video. The five-minute five-minute video on social media garnered 1.6 million views on Facebook.
Many NGOs worked on immersion in the past year. For example, WaterAid has equipped its staff in five countries - Madagascar, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Malawi and Zambia - with 360-degree cameras to capture the world around them, explaining what their work is and how much help they provide.
They mastered NGOs and storytelling. War Child, which helps children who have been or are in war zones, has created a long grid for its50-page report. And the British Dyslexia Association has used street displays and face recognition technology to visualize the difficulties faced by people with this disorder. The text appeared on the screens , and the more a passer-by read it, the more confusing the text became.
For its information campaign, Fight for Sight held a virtual marathon in which participants could download an application for their 10-kilometer race or hiking, during which they were given the opportunity to learn more about the structure of the eye and the features of human vision. The interactive application used geolocation to provide users with information about their location.
NGOs also relied on user-generated content.
StoryLines is a campaign run by the Royal Air Force Charitable Foundation to mark the 100th anniversary of their creation. On a specially created site, users were invited to upload stories of their own, their ancestors and relatives, and related to service in the British Air Force. The result was dozens of stories from the First World War to the military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Other NGOs have mastered new methods and forms of attracting new supporters. A simple but very effective method of attracting potential donors and other concerned people has been invented by a small NGO from the West Midlands in the UK to tackle homelessness among young people. She attracted local companies by calling for "donations" to the main pages of their websites, which posted information about the NGO, its work and an invitation to visit the site, as well as subscribe to the free newsletter.
But according to the results of 2018, many experts conclude that there have been no major breakthroughs in the non-profit sector and that the majority of NGOs are still lagging behind global techno-trends.
However, according to experts, there are also reasons for optimism. An increasing number of NGOs are coming into contact with the latest technological solutions indirectly - through applications and tools offered by third parties: from Google to Mailchimp. For example, organizations that use the Salesforce platform in their work, such as fundraising, have access to Einstein, an AI-based CRM assistant that optimizes the online fundraising process.
There may also be another phenomenon in the nonprofit sector. While existing NGOs are trying to bring their websites in line with smartphone realities and start producing video, there is a surge in NGOs in this sector. CareerVillage.org founder Jared Chang calls these organizations "second-generation NGOs."
One striking example is WattTime , created at the Rocky Mountain Institute and working with machine learning algorithms. Its task is to give people the right to choose the sources that generate the electricity they consume. It is a software package that analyzes the power grid and determines the moments in which the supplied electricity is produced with the least harm to the environment. WattTime software can be installed on any Internet-connected device, and it will optimize energy consumption by automatically selecting the most "green" type of energy and adjusting the operation of the appliance accordingly.
And WattTime is far from the only NGO to take advantage of artificial intelligence capabilities. Crisis Text Line - a platform for text messaging, designed to provide round-the-clock support to people in difficult situations. It also works on the basis of machine learning algorithms that determine the order in which messages are sent to volunteers who are able to help a person in need.
Thus, with the help of AI, the creators of the platform found that the word "ibuprofen" in the text 16 times more often signals an emergency than the word "suicide". The purpose of AI is to minimize the time between sending a message and the response of operators to critical cases.
Another striking example is Quill , creating free online tools for low-income students to improve their written speech. The experts of this NGO create tools using machine learning based on open sources. In particular, an array of correctly composed text fragments was collected by web-scraping Wikipedia pages.
Or the Berlin-based NGO The Guradian Project, whose team creates free applications and tools to protect people from online data from "unfair intrusion, interception and monitoring."
According to Shannon Farley, founder of San Francisco’s Fast Forward Accelerator NGO, the trend of technology NGOs has been going on since 2012. According to Farley, their number is increasing by 30 percent a year. Now in the Fast Forward databasealmost 400 NGOs from around the world, whose mission is to ensure the public good through technology.
New Year is ahead, which means new opportunities and prospects for Ukrainian NGOs. And who knows, maybe our charities, which really do their job, will be on the same list of Fast Forward, thus proving that in Ukraine there is a trend of technological NGOs.