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Nonprofit Data Could Be The Missing Piece In Your CSR Strategy

Companies with ambitious social impact goals need robust and trusted nonprofit data. Learn why many are turning to this new database of more than 8.5 million nonprofits in 80 countries.


 

As corporations become more global, their employees and customers are asking them to engage more with nonprofits in their communities. Remote work is creating more widespread workforces, and employees want to support new places. Meanwhile, mental and family health are front of mind for many employees, surfacing a need for purpose that can often be fed by engaging in social good work. And consumers are demanding that boardrooms consider the impact of their entire supply chains, leading companies to take new responsibility in areas like disaster recovery.

But there are major barriers between registered nonprofit organizations, well-intentioned companies, and passionate donors that could collaborate to meet those needs.

To get a sense of the complexity involved in connecting these groups to make an impact, take three countries’ unique nonprofit data stories:

  • Organizations have a variety of registration types.

    In France, eight types of foundations are registered across multiple national registries. When you also consider that France is one of the oldest countries in the world and its nonprofit sector predates its for-profit sector, you can see the breadth of available information.

  • Nonprofit data is mixed with for-profit data.

    In Brazil, the Receita Federal holds nonprofit registrations in dense files alongside information about every taxable entity in the country. Additionally, the information on each of those organizations is stored in a 2GB file—the equivalent of a pile of 20,000 documents.

  • Local sources of data are decentralized.

    In Germany, there is no central registry at all. More than 100 individual courts house the registration data for their local nonprofit organizations. If you’ve ever spent a day in line at your local court, you can imagine what it takes to pull those records.

But what can we do with access to a new data repository about nonprofits?

  • Connect employees with nonprofits near them.

    Large multinational organizations can leverage this data to connect their employees with new organizations in the locations that matter most to them. Imagine the joy an employee might find in joining their team to volunteer for an organization in their parent’s hometown. Picture their excitement at getting approval to donate software to an inspiring nonprofit down their street.

  • Help your users recommend new nonprofit partners.

    Philanthropy platforms can build this data into their sourcing tools. That allows individual donors to save time while combing records to find organizations to support. And it multiplies impact immensely!

  • Learn the local philanthropic sector.

    A growing company acquiring a start-up in a foreign market can use this data to help research the giving landscape in their new location and help new employees bring their favorite organizations under their corporate social responsibility (CSR) umbrella.

GlobalGiving Atlas is an effort to simplify all these projects that would require innumerable hours of research, outreach, and data transformation. A CSR team might also need outside consultants or software developers to gather the same results. GlobalGiving Atlas includes everything from government ID numbers, mission statements, and organization financials. It combines government data, public information, and other reliable records to give the most comprehensive virtual map of nonprofits from Afghanistan to Yemen. For every country in GlobalGiving Atlas, nonprofit information is consolidated and streamlined so it is accessible via API, JSON, or CSV to fit individual use cases.

Companies like Blackbaud, Twitter, and Salesforce.org already leverage this data to fuel amazing philanthropic projects. As more creative minds engage with it, the uses will continue to evolve.

By simplifying hundreds of data sources into a single format through GlobalGiving Atlas and putting strong, core data at the fingertips of organizations and individuals, we can create more pathways to resourcing community-led change. Every project that engages with GlobalGiving Atlas can improve the data and develop our knowledge about nonprofits around the world. That multiplies the opportunities to make an impact on our companies and communities—together.

Learn more about how GlobalGiving Atlas can support your global nonprofit data needs.

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Featured Photo: Preventing Inter-Generational Prostitution by Apne Aap USA

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