Putting Visualizations to Work

Jake GarciaGeographerThe Foundation CenterNew York, NY

NTEN WebinarJanuary 24, 2013

The Foundation Center

Leading source of information about philanthropy worldwide

• Information on more than 106,000 global foundations, corporate donors, and grantmaking public charities

• Database of 4.1 million grants

The Foundation Center

Aim to enhance grantmaker and nonprofit effectiveness through shared information and understanding

• Research reports and advisories on giving trends• Mapping tools• Custom, issue-based portals

- Economic crisis, U.S. education, funding after the Haiti earthquake

Aggregated dataU.S. foundation assets increased across the board in 1997.

Aggregated dataU.S. foundation assets decreased across the board in 2008

This is kinda compelling – but did it inform anyone, or help anybody make a decision?

John Snow’s cholera map, London, 1854

% change in stock prices,May 21 – June 14, 2012

FACEBOOK

APPLES&P 500

GOOGLE

yahoo.finance.com

Results for philanthropy

Fundraising

Building awareness

Advocacy

Internal decision-making

Enabling collaborations

Analysis

Question

Fundraising

Building awareness

Advocacy

Internal decision-making

Enabling collaborations

Analysis

What do you, or would you, use visualizations for?

It all starts with Open Data

In regard to U.S.-based philanthropy, our datasets originate from tax forms that foundations submit to the U.S. government.

The government, in turn, makes the completed forms available to the public.

…but the data requires curation

Data extractionOccasionally requires optical character recognition (OCR)

Data coding • Internal subject taxonomy includes 1,100 codes.• Recipient type• Population codes• Location of recipients as well as location of projects

This curation might require ~60,000 hours of labor* each year.

The Foundation Center employs over 120 people, around 30 of whom are exclusively dedicated to the gathering, cleaning, coding, entry, and analysis of data.

* this is a very rough estimate, based on a 2,000-hour work-year and assumes no fluctuation in job tasks and staffing levels

Ideally, we’d have granular indicator data…(NYC census blocks, 2010)

Demographic Analysis

Demographic Analysis

Internal decision-making, collaborations, analysis

Jake GarciaGeographerThe Foundation CenterNew York, NY

2,809 foundation grants,$477.2 million(80% for Disaster Relief)

338 WB project locations,$326 million

(35% for Transportation)

FC and World Bank dataNo Ag/Forestry project funding in Angola, 2001 to 2007

2003 2005 2007

Foundation funding around the world

Case studies

Case studies

Q: Can we show the impact of all foundation-funded activity related to water, sanitation, and hygiene?

Collaboration

Collaboration

Collaboration, decision-making

Collaboration, decision-making

FC and OECD dataViewing funding details: Kenya

Grant records

OECD funding

Financial benchmarking, decision-making

Exploratory data analysis

Exploratory data analysis

Which data set has a more completelisting of Chinese cities?

Exploratory data analysis

The meaning and message of the data is important, not just how awesome the visualization looks. *

-- is it accurate?

-- did it help sustain the author’s argument?

-- did it help you (or anyone else) make a decision?

* Although, it really helps if it looks awesome, too.

Conclusions

In the process of attempting to assess the overall impact of foundation funding (still one of our long-term goals), we’ve begun to make progress in related areas:

•Helping create a more complete picture of philanthropic projects around the world. Mapping helps identify gaps and overlap in funding.

•Helping non-profits find foundations that might be interested in their work

•Enabling collaboration between donor institutions

•Inspiring better data standards, particularly the submission of better geographic and outcomes-related data from foundations, and participation in the IATI standard

…back to John Snow

Thanks! Questions?

Jake GarciaGeographerThe Foundation CenterNew York, NY