FUNDRAISING AND MANAGING
Visualized Data Can Help Charities Run Programs More Effectively
data and use those insights to improve
their programs, says Jake Porway,
founder of Data Without Borders. “
Humans are incredibly visual creatures,”
he says. “Our inability to see patterns
when we have spreadsheets in front of
us really hampers us from doing really
good work.”
Continued from Page 1
Volunteer Data Scientists
Data Without Borders is one of several new nonprofits springing up to
help their fellow charities analyze and
present information. Formed last summer, the group seeks to match organizations with data scientists who volunteer
their time and skills. And the Center
for Digital Information’s mission is to
help nonprofit think tanks and policy
“You need to think about
your audience and your
donors. What information
is going to inspire them,
educate them?”
groups find new ways to present their
research that take better advantage of
the Internet. (The center’s first meeting, held last month, was called “
Beyond the PDF.”)
But as data visualization becomes increasingly popular, nonprofit officials
who have used the technique caution
that charities need to guard against
getting swept away by the excitement.
“If your boss walks into your office
and says, ‘We need to make an infographic,’ it’s the wrong approach,” says
Paull Young, director of digital engagement at Charity: Water. “You need to
think about your audience and your donors. What information is going to inspire them, educate them, provide any
sort of value to them?”
This infographic for A Child’s Right tells prospective
donors why one $10-million gift won’t pay for all
of the charity’s needs and what additional support
might help it accomplish.
Interactive Graphics Can Enhance Supporters’ Engagement
Going Viral
Charity: Water, like other nonprofits, often uses infographics to help attract new donors but typically does not
include direct appeals with the images.
Nonetheless, when a piece goes viral,
the result can be an influx of gifts.
For Earth Day last year, Charity:
Water created “Water Changes Everything,” an animated infographic that
describes how access to clean water in
developing countries affects not only
health but also education and the economy. The three-minute video was viewed
more than 500,000 times, and the organization saw online donations rise.
Another water group, A Child’s Right,
is using an infographic to solve a tricky,
if enviable, fundraising challenge: explaining to donors that a $10-million
gift from the investor George F. Russell
Jr. and his wife, Dion, doesn’t mean the
charity has all the money it needs to
fulfill its mission.
The Russells’ contribution, which
Continued on Page 9
INFOGRAPHICS are a powerful way for nonprofits to tell their stories, but interactive visualizations let
people interested in a charity’s work
explore the data and find their own stories.
Working with scholars, the antihun-ger charity Feeding America developed
county-by-county estimates of how
many people were unable to get the food
they need, figures that in the past were
available only at the state level. Rather
than publishing a report, the organization created an online map that allows
people to look at the data at the county, state, and national levels. Since the
map went online last March, the estimates have been cited in Congressional
debates more than 100 times, according
to the group.
People really respond to maps, says
Elaine Waxman, vice president for research and partnerships at Feeding
America, who says visualization lets
people have conversations about concrete places rather than abstract concepts.
“You can say ‘food insecurity,’ and
people kind of glaze over,” she says.
“But if you show them, ‘Wow, that coun-
ty is dark, and the reason that county
is dark is it means that 30 percent or
more of the population is struggling to
put food on the table,’ that means some-
thing to people.”
Less Expensive
The cost of creating interactive data
presentations has been dropping, says
Suzanne Kindervatter, a vice president
for InterAction, an alliance of more
than 190 international aid groups.
Over the past three years, the organization’s NGO Aid Map project has created interactive maps that detail its members’ relief work in response to the global food crisis in 2008, the earthquake
in Haiti, and the famine in the Horn
of Africa. InterAction spent roughly
$150,000 on technology that now lets
the group quickly create a map on its
own.
But a charity starting a mapping
project today wouldn’t have to pay as
much, says Ms. Kindervatter: “We were
developing this at the same time the
technology was developing.”
sualization, because it wants to be more
transparent about the information it’s
using.
“People want to know
that we haven’t just picked
out one specific data point,
and that’s all
we talk about.”
Too Many Choices
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
has used static infographics for several
years to help call attention to hot top-
ics in public health, international de-
velopment, and education, but foun-
dation officials say the fund is moving
increasingly toward interactive data vi-
Green, who oversees media grant mak-
ing at the foundation.
