data.org @ 5

data.org is proud to celebrate five years of data-driven social impact. Since our launch at the World Economic Forum in 2020, we have invested in innovative applications of data and AI for good, fueled workforce development of purpose-driven data practitioners, and supported digital public goods in collaboration with a global community of domain experts.

As we enter our next chapter, we are committed to harnessing the power of the AI revolution alongside our partners in the social sector to tackle the world’s most pressing challenges.  We look forward to working with you to drive measurable social impact and empower a growing ecosystem through data and AI.

Global Innovation Challenges

Global challenges surface innovative and scalable approaches that leverage data and AI for social impact. See how data.org challenges are engaging organizations, and advancing the field.

See our Challenges

Capacity Accelerator Network

The Capacity Accelerator Network is developing a new workforce of purpose-driven data and AI practitioners through a global network of local partners from four-year institutions, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), community colleges, and innovation hubs.

Learn more about CAN hubs

Epiverse

Epiverse is a global collaborative working to develop a trustworthy data analysis ecosystem dedicated to getting ahead of the next public health crisis.

Learn more about Epiverse

Featured Thought Leadership

Opinion: Localizing AI Through Languages is a 2025 Imperative

In the Media Devex December 16, 2024

How Do We Unlock Data’s Full Potential for Equitable Financial Inclusion?

In the Media Devex November 18, 2024

Opinion: Women are Essential to Drive Data and AI for Impact

In the Media Devex October 17, 2024

The Data Ecosystem Designer: Designing the Future of Responsible Digital Public Goods

Thought Leadership November 9, 2023

Why a Million Brains are Better than One

Thought Leadership October 27, 2022

Putting Pilots Under the Microscope

Thought Leadership November 22, 2021

The Future

Fast forward five years, and the landscape is nearly unrecognizable.

In 2025, the field’s growth has soared, and data.org has fostered a global community of local leaders: cross-sector, purpose-driven data practitioners who are not just collecting and analyzing data, but developing innovative solutions. Solutions like an LLM that informs sexual and reproductive health, a mobile application providing smallholder farmers access to clean, efficient cooling, and an AI that reimagines credit scoring for entrepreneurs and small businesses.

Today, the meteoric rise of AI has made our work more urgent than ever, taking us from a moment to a movement. A movement that data.org continues to lead.

We are amplifying and scaling practical solutions and strategies through global innovation challenges. We are accelerating adoption of digital public goods to drive globally informed, locally led change. And we are training a new workforce of problem solvers through our Capacity Accelerator Network. A workforce that—with 2.6 billion people still offline across the globe—will bridge the digital divide and empower local leaders to navigate the seismic shifts of AI to serve people and planet.

We can’t afford to wait—the power and the peril are both exponential. Support for data.org is critical to prevent this alarming gap in knowledge and access from widening. When we leverage the power of data and AI for good, we have the opportunity—and the responsibility—to build climate resilience, improve public health, increase financial inclusion, promote gender equity, and tackle other emerging challenges for a stronger, more inclusive future.

data.org 5th Anniversary Booklet

Learn more about data.org’s achievements, impact, and its vision for the future of data and AI for social impact.

Download PDF

The post Celebrating 5 Years of Impact appeared first on data.org.

In 2023, data.org initiated a detailed exploration of the complex interplay between climate data and health outcomes within LMICs. This initiative, designed to create actionable digital public goods (DPGs), marked a significant step towards developing the Climateverse program. Central to this initiative is data.org’s commitment to leveraging data’s transformative power to tackle global challenges and enhance the field of data and AI for social impact.

Our research showed that the sector requires greater collaboration between scientists across fields and significant capacity building due to a lack of translational skills. This document presents the findings from our extensive landscaping efforts, which included examining initiatives such as SilverLining’s Safe Climate Research Initiative and the World Resources Institute’s analytical work. These efforts underscored the critical role of data in deepening our understanding of climate dynamics and formulating actionable strategies. Additionally, we recognized the need to democratize local access to tools, data sets, and infrastructure, which is currently concentrated in the Global North, by investing in open, cloud-based infrastructure to enable local modeling.

This landscaping document strives to propel a substantial leap forward in our collective endeavor to protect our planet and improve public health. It is designed to map the current landscape, identify critical gaps, and propose effective strategies to bolster global climate resilience, focusing on integrating climate data into health decision-making frameworks within LMICs.

Report

ClimateVerse: Making the Case for Climate Data Analytics

A new report exploring the complex interplay between climate data and health outcomes within lower- and middle-income countries

Download the report

Playbook

Gender Data and Climate

This playbook is a guide to understanding how climate change affects the lives of different genders and seeks to provide practical tools to address these issues. This playbook aims to empower individuals, communities, and policymakers with the knowledge and resources needed to create more equitable and sustainable solutions for a better future.

Explore this playbook

The post Climateverse: Making the Case for Climate Data Analytics appeared first on data.org.

About the Generative AI Skills Challenge

Reimagining what is possible when we empower the right people and accelerate the best solutions was the motivation behind the Generative AI Skills Challenge. The Challenge called for best-in-class organizations training and upskilling teams on generative AI to drive social impact and advance socioeconomic mobility. Led by data.org and Microsoft, with support from EY, the Generative AI Skills Challenge sought out fair and community-led integration in low- and middle-income countries and contexts (LMICs) to accelerate digital inclusion and skills advancement for workers from historically marginalized populations around the world.

Selected from a pool of nearly 600 applicants across 93 countries, the five awarded projects celebrated in this report represent a variety of locally-driven solutions to train teams with the skills necessary to successfully use generative AI in an equitable and interdisciplinary way. Most notably, the awardees collectively trained nearly 5,000 people in generative AI through the challenge, with 87 percent of those trained identifying as women or non-binary and the vast majority—95 percent—at risk of exclusion from the digital economy.

Learn more

Skilling That Scales:

Generative AI Skills Challenge Impact Report 

Download the report

Related Articles

Latest updates and thought leadership posts about the Generative AI Skills Challenge

See all articles

Opinion: Women are Essential to Drive Data and AI for Impact

In the Media Devex October 17, 2024

Trust, Truth, and Technology: How Our Generative AI Challenge Awardees Are Leveraging the Power of AI

News September 13, 2024

Mississippi AI conference is all about Collaboration

In the Media WLBT July 30, 2024

The post Skilling That Scales: Generative AI Skills Challenge Impact Report  appeared first on data.org.

Since the Big Data age of 2012, people have begun imagining a data-driven social sector. In this vision, folks imagine a world where the social sector is capable of creating new data-driven digital products for accomplishing its goals. This yearning for a tech-enabled social sector has only grown as the hype around AI has accelerated post-2023. Many efforts focused on creating more digital products in the nonprofit space have launched over the last few decades. However, to date, most have focused on helping one single organization develop a digital solution to one challenge they face. Digital solutions that truly scale have proven to be more difficult to create, largely due to the complex network of stakeholders, data sources, and funding streams needed to achieve them. 

In their 2023 report “Accelerate Aspirations: Moving Together to Achieve Systems Change”, data.org noted that “improvement [to the use of data] lies in better coordination between diverse partners and actors, and long-term, well-resourced multi-sector (public, private, academic, SIO, philanthropy) partnerships based on honest and clear conversations about our diverse incentives.” (Mikhailov, 2023) This quote points to the unique challenges of creating scalable digital products in the social sector. If we need an entire ecosystem of actors, datasets, and technologists aligned around a digital product for it to scale, then how do we codify that practice? What skills are needed to do this? And who do we depend on to make it happen?

We hypothesize that a new role is needed for the social sector called the “Data Ecosystem Designer” that is charged with helping digital products thrive and scale by organizing and aligning players within a data ecosystem. Though this role is not yet formalized, we identified and interviewed a number of people in the social sector who are currently informally holding this role. These folks are often largely responsible for the success of digital products that serve a collective or disparate set of actors and often have to invent new, unique ways of sustaining and maintaining their work. The people we spoke with were effectively responsible for recommending, designing, and aligning the ecosystem within which their digital solution would live. Until we better define the set of skills needed and the career paths for this role, organizations will not plan for them, individuals will not train in them, and funders will not recognize the critical importance of funding them. We believe that better defining, training for, and funding this data ecosystem designer role could create a step change in how many digital public goods are available and sustainable in the space.

Report

The Data Ecosystem Designer: Designing the Future of Digital Public Goods

A new report defining the role of the Data Ecosystem Designer for social impact organizations.

Download the report

The post The Data Ecosystem Designer: Designing the Future of Digital Public Goods appeared first on data.org.

The post Harnessing the Power of Data: Inclusive Growth and Recovery Challenge Impact Report appeared first on data.org.

To solve our greatest global challenges, we need to accelerate how we use data for good. But to truly make data-driven tools that serve society, we must re-imagine data for social impact more broadly, more inclusively, and in a more interdisciplinary way. 

So, we face a choice. Business as usual can continue through funding and implementing under-resourced and siloed data projects that deliver incremental progress. Or we can think and act boldly to drive equitable and sustainable solutions. 

Accelerate Aspirations: Moving Together to Achieve Systems Change is a comprehensive report on the key trends and tensions in the emerging field of data for social impact.  

The post Accelerate Aspirations: Moving Together to Achieve Systems Change appeared first on data.org.

Overview

data.org, the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation (PJMF), and Dalberg believe in a future in which people everywhere can use data to solve society’s greatest challenges and improve lives around the globe. But to realize this potential, building the next generation of diverse data talent for social impact is essential. 

Workforce Wanted: Data Talent for Social Impact is a first-of-its-kind report on global data talent in the social sector. Confronting systemic challenges and highlighting both immediate and big-picture opportunities, this report delivers the current landscape and reveals four pathways forward for building purpose-driven data professionals. With the values of inclusivity, diversity, equity, and accessibility (IDEA) core to this work, Workforce Wanted  identifies an opportunity to shape and support a pool of 3.5 million data professionals focused on social impact in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) over the next ten years. 

No one can do this work alone, but together, we can build a diverse workforce of purpose-driven data professionals advancing social impact. Join us. Download the report today.  

Dr. Ronda Železný-Green introduces Workforce Wanted: Data Talent for Social Impact

Report

Workforce Wanted: Data Talent for Social Impact

A new report on the current state of data for social impact professionals

Download the report

The post Workforce Wanted: Data Talent for Social Impact appeared first on data.org.

Overview

The RECoDE (Rising Equitable Community Data Ecosystems) project team—made up of curious and committed learners from data.org, Data Across Sectors for Health, Health Leads, and the National Alliance against Disparities in Patient Health—set out to better understand how to undo antiquated and dangerous data systems and build in their place an ecosystem that provides all communities power over where, when, and how their data is used to improve individual and community outcomes. 

Inside the Report

Why  

“We need to do a better job of engaging in the communities that we are trying to connect to, about what the purposes are for our own data collection, and how we’re using that to improve services and really drive towards policy change“

– RECoDE Workgroup Member

Across communities, organizations, governments, and industries, data is increasingly looked at as a powerful lever for change. However, data systems built to track housing, health, education, and employment are largely rooted in racist systems and discriminatory assumptions. Platforms and solutions for data collection and distribution have rarely taken deliberate measures to counter those truths, and community voices are seldom at the center of decisions about how data creates value. The RECoDE project sought to center community voices in this work and heard directly from the people who know best how data can be used to create value within the communities they represent.  

How 

“I think that our solutions have to be really paper and pencil, person to person before we build the tech solutions that are actually going to be responsive to the actual day-to-day data needs in our communities.“

– RECoDE Workgroup Member

Through a year-long learning journey built around the principles of trust, humility, and authentic collaboration, the RECoDE team convened a series of conversations focused on answering fundamental questions about how we access and leverage resources to ensure that data ecosystems are accountable to the community – hearing from nearly 500 people representing communities across the United States.

Now 

“If you’re really trying to change people’s way of thinking, if you’re really trying to change the social context, if you’re really trying to change entire paradigms, a two-year project is not going to do it.“

– RECoDE Interviewee

Informed by a national survey, interviews, and working groups, the RECoDE project team shares their key findings. The insights examine the current failure points within the data lifecycle, including who is actively engaged and making critical decisions, the impact of funding requirements on sustainability, and the essential need to invest in developing a more diverse technical workforce.

RECoDE Learning Council Spotlight

“I wake up every day understanding that I am my parent’s daughter and my daughter’s mother; with this comes awesome responsibility to create a more equitable world. We can dismantle racism person-by-person, but more significant impact is created when systems are pro-actively re-engineered and policies amended—that is my aim.”

DeAnna L. Minus-Vincent, MPA, Executive Vice President, Chief Social Justice & Accountability Officer, RWJBarnabas Health

RECODE Learning Council Spotlight

“I enjoyed this process of truthful dialogue and willingness to interrogate our own practices as researchers. On one hand I was thinking like a researcher and on the other hand I felt it necessary to speak up as a Black women (if for no other reason). At the end of the day the taboo and often forbidden act of centering one’s self in consideration of scientific inquiry felt like professional self-care. We need to do it more often. For us, and for everyone else that will be impacted by the work.“

– Jasmine Ward Ph.D., MPH, CHES, Founder of Black Ladies in Public Health

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Our global outreach yielded 1,263 applications. We received a wide range of proposals at different stages of development, from a budding idea to an established methodology seeking international replication. The diverse group of applicants—researchers, entrepreneurs, doctors, and government representatives— included and reflected levels of experience from newcomer to household name. Applications addressed many important topics, such as reimagining credit scoring, providing better farming knowledge, and preparing urban landscapes for extreme weather.

A pool of expert and over 400 volunteer judges, coordinated by technical partner DataKind, evaluated applications based on the Challenge’s five principal criteria: their potential impact, replicability, scalability, practicality, and breakthrough ideas. After 3,500 reviews, we selected eight outstanding awardees:  

• Aalborg University, Department of the Built Environment (BUILD) – Denmark 
• Basel Agency for Sustainable Energy (BASE) – Switzerland, India 
• Community Lattice – USA  
• Fundación Capital – Panamá, Mozambique 
• GiveDirectly & Center for Effective Global Action – USA, Togo 
• Solar Sister – USA, Nigeria, Tanzania  
• University of Chicago, Center for Data and Computing (CDAC) – USA 
• Women’s World Banking – USA and Switzerland, with partners in Mexico, Nigeria, and India  

Identifying and lifting up these exceptional awardees as an ongoing cohort was the primary Challenge goal. But, as this report reveals, a significant secondary benefit is the unique snapshot of organizations using data for social impact around the globe. A few of the key insights:

Six prevalent topics emerged.

After an expansive review of proposals and analysis of the application trends, data.org and DataKind identified six prevalent topics that are critical to inclusive growth and recovery and that have tremendously exciting applications of data science. Each of these topics addresses a form of inequality, and underscores that inclusive growth issues are shared by different individuals, groups, and communities worldwide – and merit continued exploration.

• Smallholder farmers and agriculture
• Affordable housing and neighborhoods
• Micro, small, and medium enterprises and entrepreneurship
• Gender inequality
• Urbanization and sustainable development
• Youth unemployment

Capacity is unevenly distributed.

Anecdotally, individuals and organizations seeking to achieve social impact with data science frequently identify capacity as an obstacle. In order to learn more about strengths and needs, we reviewed over 100 applicants that scored highest in their data science assessment to understand their capacity for data, talent, technology, and partnerships. We learned that applicants rarely held all the key ingredients to deliver impact. A common thread among university applicants, for example, was higher data capacity and lower partnership capacity: stronger resources for theoretical approaches than for fully-fleshed out plans. While the sample size evaluated is too small for sweeping generalizations, it did reveal that even high-functioning data organizations have uneven areas of capacity, showing the need for tools like data maturity assessments and talent evaluation to know where to double down and where to shore up efforts. This capacity benchmarking, and potential remediation and partnerships will ensure potentially strong players are not hampered by capacity gaps.

Economic growth – and particularly inclusive economic growth – is multifaceted and tied to all sectors.

When launching a global inclusive growth and recovery challenge, we anticipated applications that sought to tackle issues related to economic development. While the largest sector represented was economic development – at one-third of all applications – we also saw data applied to related social issues. For example, we saw applications of AI to support caseworkers in the child welfare system – where early intervention can fundamentally shift the life trajectories and economic outcomes of young people. We reviewed proposals to digitize and map the informal transportation sector, which a large percentage of the world depends on in order to access better job opportunities, yet ride times, reliability, and user experience remain a data black hole. We learned about organizations using data science for waste disposal and sanitation in informal settlements – with solutions that could impact health, the environment, and future investment in communities that have been left behind.  

Alignment with United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) reflected this breadth of solution. Each Challenge application touched on one or several of the SDGs, particularly those regarding the amelioration of poverty and income inequality (i.e., SDG 1, 68%; SDG 8, 74%; SDG 10, 77%).

We ultimately were expansive in our interpretation of inclusive growth – supporting more traditional inclusive growth strategies, like reimagining credit scoring, alongside structural issues like the digital divide, which too many people are experiencing acutely during COVID-19. The applications received and topics covered furthered our understanding that economic growth is inextricable from many other social issues.

There is appetite and incentive for cross-sector collaboration. 
Finally, as we built interest in the Challenge, we saw an outpouring of support from organizations offering technical assistance. Partners across the non-profit and private sectors are providing technical assistance, from pro bono data consulting to the donation of cloud computing credits, to awardees and a number of high-potential projects. Private sector partners recognize the importance of leveling up the use of data for social impact, and the fact that economic growth underpinning business stability relies on healthy, stable communities. The Challenge demonstrates the power of partnerships, and that cross-sector, interdisciplinary collaboration is essential for building the field of data science for social impact.  

We are grateful to our partners, the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth, The Rockefeller Foundation, and DataKind, for their intellectual engagement, hands-on collaboration, and willingness to extract and share these insights from the Challenge. This report is the first of many – part of our commitment to bring back to the community what we are privileged to see from our vantage point as a neutral platform for partnerships. We hope what we have shared here will inform our collective work of building the field of data science for social impact.

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