In the future we’ll be adding more personalization features as well as more functionality around role management and levels of access.

For current clients, to inquire about deploying this new feature, contact us at info@givingdata.com or 617.500.3399.

We were excited to see so much discussion around data visualization, business intelligence, and just generally all of the talk about how philanthropic organizations are using data, both internal and external, to inform their strategic thinking as well as their operational focus. My favorite session was one led by the Ford Foundation where they talked about how they were using their grants management platform in combination with other dashboard applications, and even their website, to communicate and better manage their strategic grantmaking initiatives. It was a clear example of how grantmaking strategy, technology, and design can combine to improve clarity of mission and drive internal and external communication.

In a meeting with MicroEdge’s CEO Preston McKenzie and CTO Benny Melumad I got an up close look at new GIFTS Alta, the next generation of MicroEdge’s flagship product. Alta is a big step forward for the product, introducing a customizable dashboard for users with charts and report widgets. While not a complete Business Intelligence (BI) solution, it provides some richer views of the data in GIFTS that were not previously available in the product. We’re excited to see the GIFTS platform evolving and stepping up to meet the more demanding data needs of grantmaking organizations, which only helps further our work with GivingData and our clients using GIFTS.

Like 2010, the TAG 2011 Conference was informative and engaging event. We’re looking forward to the 2012 conference. See you next year!

-Alf Gracombe

The session is titled Data Driven Innovation and promises to be a fruitful discussion about the trajectory of data use in the nonprofit sector — how the abundant amounts of data can be used to reflect and project, inform decision-making, and tell stories. Gracombe will be showing examples of GivingData and talk specifically about how the data visualization tools embedded in the platform are being used by grantmakers to better understand and work with their grants data.

GivingData will also be present at one of the breakfast roundtables on Tuesday morning at the conference.

Learn more about the 2011 TAG Conference.

We’ll have more information when we officially release this new version. But it’s an exciting development and one we’ll be building on in the future. We have plans to increase personalization capabilities, as well as improve grant portfolio management based on user accounts in GIFTS. More to come . . .

View a short video demo of this new functionality below:

Our commitment to our clients who use GIFTS is to stay abreast of developments on the GIFTS platform. And we’ve done that and a little bit more. Not only can individual grants be seen with their code allocations, but aggregate views of grants data reflect the allocation values as well. If you’re viewing your grants made to your Education program, the total grant amount sum will reflect partial amounts for grants where less than 100% of the amount is allocated to the Education program.

So, all of our modules work seamlessly with this new functionality. All list displays of grants or payments will show grants or payments with an allocation in italics. Therefore, you always know if what you might be looking at is a partial grant or payment amount and not the whole thing.

Existing clients receive this update for free. Please contact us at info@gracombe.com for more information.

Read more about GIFTS version 6.4.

But what if we looked at funding per person in each state? That is, what if we divide the amount of grant dollars by the population size to get a “per capita” funding amount — the amount of grant dollars per person in each state? That’s a much more interesting and more useful piece of information and one that would tell us which states are really receiving the most grant money from foundations.

Below is a map showing just that. Lighter shaded states on the map are states that have a lower per capita amount of funding and darker shaded maps have a higher per capita amount.

Grant Dollars Received Per Capita by State from Foundations (2009)

More than a few interesting observations can be made from this data. Massachusetts ($168/person) and New York ($154/person) are clearly the states with the most amount of funding. Why might this be? Both states no doubt have vibrant nonprofit organization cultures, but you might think that would be true of other states with big cities like Illinois ($50/person) and California ($79/person).

One reason might be that both New York City and Boston are two cities with nonprofit organizations doing a lot of international work, as well as work on the national level. But can that account for all of it?

The data poses many questions — more questions than it answers, actually. Here are a few more:

• Are many states and populations getting left out of receiving grants?
• What populations, within these states, are benefiting from these grants?
• Do some states require assistance in developing their nonprofit organizations?
• Why does Rhode Island receive the third highest amount of per capita funding?

For this data visualization, we took the data from 2 sources:

1. The Foundation Center’s Geographic Distribution of Grants Awarded and Grants Received by State, circa 2009 report.
2. The 2010 U.S. Census.

You can view the full data set here.

GDv2 offers up a few notable enhancements, including the following:

• New Map Visualizations and Geocoding Services
• External Grantee Data Integration
• New Look and Feel
• Performance and System Architecture Improvements

Our focus in these areas can be attributed to the evolving needs of our clients as well as the exciting developments we’re seeing on the data and data visualization landscape. Specifically, the integration of map technologies and publicly available datasets is sparking our development efforts in ways we couldn’t imagine when we first began. Additionally, the field of data visualization and business intelligence continues to evolve and inspire our ongoing development of the GivingData platform. It really is exciting to be working in this arena. And it’s exciting to deploy these new capabilities for grantmaking organizations and see the value that they can bring to the field of philanthropy.

Below are details on the key feature upgrades in GivingData Version 2, which is available immediately, free of charge, to all clients.

New Map Visualizations and Geocoding Services

Our first map-based data visualization is the Cluster Map, now available in the Visualizer module. This innovative new feature provides unprecedented geographically-based views of your grants and grantee data, indicating the location of the grantee and the size of the grant(s) made to that grantee in a given date range. Grants are displayed in color as well, allowing for different programs, for example, to appear as different colors on the map. So for instance, if you want to see which programs are being funded where and how much within a state, city, or even neighborhood, you could get a very clear picture of all of that grantmaking activity on a map. And as with all visualizations in the Visualizer, you can drill down into any program or code to see sub code data as well.

Click to View Larger

Integrated External Grantee Data Integration

Grantee data is some of the most important data a grantmaking organization has. A full picture of a grantee consists of past grants made, requests up for consideration, contact and location information, financial data, tax returns, and much more. GDv2 introduces links to external grantee data by providing a link to the grantee’s profile on GuideStar as well as our revolutionary new geolocation context-aware map. This map shows the grantee in the context of a whole host of different boundaries, be it postal code, census track, legislative district, or many other geographic zones.

This integration with external data puts a whole new set of tools at the fingertips of grants management and program staff. Whether for due diligence activities or learning more about the geographic context of grantees, access to this external data puts a great deal more power and knowledge in your hands.

Click to View Larger

New Look and Feel

How could we resist putting out a new version release without some design improvements? And in this case, the improvements are quite significant. With GDv2, we’ve redesigned the navigation areas of the application to make it easier to move from module to module and from feature to feature, as well as putting front and center your organization’s visual identity and logo. Also, we’ve completely changed the way we present information on the Organization/Grantee Detail page, incorporating the new map views (described above) as well as reorganizing the page to make it more readable and easier to use. And site administrators will like the improved and more intuitive ways of managing budget and program expense data.

Refining the design is something we’re always working on in GivingData. Without an emphasis on design and usability, we would not be able to present complex data in such easy to read formats.

Click to View Larger

Performance and System Architecture Improvements

Under the hood, so to speak, we have continued to make tremendous strides in improving GivingData’s speed, as well as improving the underlying systems architecture of the platform. This is the work that you as the end user never fully see, but no doubt appreciate by having content and data that loads quickly and reliably.

And it’s not just speed where gains are realized. We have been working on implementing GivingData in the nHibernate framework, improving the quality of the software platform as well as making it more extensible for integrating data from and into other applications.

Learn More