Data for Good Grants
The Nielsen Foundation seeks to bridge divides and enhance the use of data by the social sector to address key social issues and advance representation in media and technology. The Foundation aims to fund initiatives that use data to improve the work of the organizations that receive grants, and that move beyond the use of data for needs assessments or program monitoring and evaluation.
Data for Good grants support projects that use data in innovative ways and help bridge divides to catalyze long-term change by addressing one or more of the following goals:
- Increase access to skills, resources, and opportunities
- Influence public attitudes or behavior for positive social outcomes
- Use data to inform positive social change
Data for Good Grant Recipients
2017
African Leadership Academy: To support (via the African Leadership Foundation) the Data Fluency Skills Map + African Data Pilot Course to propel a Data for Good quantitative skills program.
Citizen Schools New York: To support systemic improvements that will help enhance capacity for data collection, elevate understanding of the impact on students’ high school success, and effectively communicate that impact to key constituents.
DataKind: To support DataKind to effectively and ethically deploy pro bono data science power on a project with a mission-driven organization to help that organization better target resources, scale services, save time and money, and get closer to achieving its mission.
Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media: To support expansion of the Geena Davis Inclusion Quotient (GD-IQ), a media measurement tool to analyze gender representation in television and film with the goal of impacting researchers, content producers and society.
International Rescue Committee: To support the Better DATA project to strengthen capacity to visualize data and to make decisions that promote accountable and transparent humanitarian actions in response to client feedback.
Results for America: To support the development, dissemination and piloting of a “What Works Toolkit” to help shift human services-focused government investments toward more effective, evidence-based practices.
United Nations Foundation: To support the Office of the UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth on Measuring the State of Youth in SDGs, a data monitoring instrument to track the progress of youth development in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals, as well as the Young Leaders for the SDGs initiative.
Women for Women International: To support a multi-year randomized controlled trial that rigorously tests economic empowerment programmatic variations with 1,000 women in Nigeria, to understand what drives the profitability and sustainability of women’s self-employment in fragile settings more effectively.
2018
Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media: To conduct and publish a major new comprehensive Impact Study, measuring the impact of the work of the Institute from 2004 to present, and to launch a campaign to amplify the reach and storytelling power of the Institute’s existing data and stories of impact.
Feeding America: To support the “Insights for Action” initiative, which looks to increase the application of cross-cutting data and research to increase awareness of and action to address issues of hunger and food insecurity, especially through the use of dynamic data assets and communication formats to demonstrate intersections with issues including health and employment.
Women for Women International: To continue support for a multi-year randomized controlled trial that rigorously tests economic empowerment programmatic variations with 1,000 women in Nigeria, to understand what drives the profitability and sustainability of women’s self-employment in fragile settings more effectively.
World Food Program USA: To support the proof-of-concept for the UN World Food Programme’s (WFP) Integrated Demand Analysis Platform (IDAP), to improve demand analysis for WFP programs.
2019
Citizen Schools: For a new Catalyst program designed to provide 6th-9th grade science teachers in underserved communities with the tools and resources they need to integrate high quality project-based learning with experts into the classroom. The model is designed to promote a set of social emotional and academic outcomes for students that serve as leading indicators of long-term social mobility.
Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media: To support the continued development of the Geena Davis Inclusion Quotient (GD-IQ), a media measurement tool to analyze gender representation in television and film with the goal of impacting researchers, content producers and society.
Girl Rising: To more effectively ascertain and incorporate program insights and data by developing and implementing a cohesive evaluation framework for Girl Rising’s programmatic and media campaign work; to share learnings to contribute to the larger body of knowledge on building positive gender attitudes in adolescent boys and girls as well as the use of media for social norm change; and to make the case for support of future projects in other geographies around the world.
International Rescue Committee: To learn and understand how client perceptual data can best inform their next organizational strategy and gain a broad understanding of key themes of importance to their clients; to support data interpretation, data visualization, and testing to ensure that the data are presented to be clearly understood and have maximum influence over organizational decisions.
National College Attainment Network: To support, through a collaboration with the Impact Genome Project®, a project aimed at increasing the usefulness of program evaluation data among their member organizations to inform positive social change in the education sector and build a community of like-minded organizations focused on increasing postsecondary access and success for low-income and first-generation students.
Public Knowledge: To conduct a study that examines diversity in technology policy organizations, to bring attention to the structures and practices that inhibit diversity in hiring, and to offer solutions; to provide best practices to increase the number of diverse early career advocates in policy making jobs, subsequently increasing the number of diverse policy makers in the years ahead.
Urban School Food Alliance: To harness the power of data through the creation of a procurement database, to identify the immediate needs to prioritize procurement activities and change the way food is sourced by member school districts, transforming the market to be driven more by the demand for healthier, higher-quality, sustainably produced products for students across the country.
2020
Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media: Support for the continued development of the Geena Davis Inclusion Quotient (GD-IQ) media measurement tool.
Polaris: COVID-19 Snapshot Initiative to provide data and insights on the specific ways the pandemic intersects with human trafficking.
StriveTogether: Support for the development of systems-level indicators and best practices for working with school districts to center racial equity.
SummerSearch: Supporting the organization’s Depth Mentoring measurement tool to understand how its mentoring program supports student critical consciousness and identity formation.
Urban School Food Alliance: Supporting data-informed activities to advance health and sustainability in the U.S. school food system.
Women for Women International: Year 3 of support for the “Improving Profitability & Sustainability of Self-Employed Women in Nigeria” randomized control trial (RCT) study for 2021 endline data collection.
2021
Aurora-St Anthony Neighborhood Development Corporation: To strengthen monitoring, evaluation and learning systems and upgrade technology, as the organization builds economic, housing and commercial development programs for local households and business owners in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Inclusive Action for the City: To strengthen organizational capacity and improve monitoring, evaluation and learning systems to better support their work to build strong, local economies in Los Angeles County by uplifting low-income, underserved entrepreneurs in urban communities.
Native American Community Development Institute (NACDI): To develop a Culturally Responsive Indigenous Evaluation model for NACDI programs in the Midwest, as part of their work to build community-led efforts and economic opportunities for Native people.
RespectAbility: To support focus group discussions and reporting to inform future programs and advocacy efforts for people with disabilities, toward their mission of fighting stigmas and advancing opportunities.
Young, Black & Giving Back Institute: To support their inaugural Benchmark Fundraising Report on Black-led and Black-benefiting nonprofit organizations, working to close the racial funding and capacity building gaps in philanthropy.
2022
Ghetto Film School: to support the organization’s comprehensive program assessment and evaluation project, to advance their work in educating, developing and celebrating the next generation of great storytellers in film and media.
PopShift (a project of Pathos Labs): to build a curated catalog of intellectual property from diverse creatives for distribution to writers, producers and executives, as part of the organization’s efforts to create more opportunities for representative co-authorship.
The Trevor Project: to support a research-driven marketing and advocacy campaign to uplift the stories of trans and nonbinary youth, advancing the organization’s mission to end suicide among LGBTQ young people.
The USC Norman Lear Center Media Impact Project: to support research on representations of fatness and anti-fat bias in medical dramas, as part of their work to advance understanding of the role that the media plays in changing knowledge, attitudes and behaviors among individuals and communities.
Wiki Education Foundation: to develop a free online portal that uses Wikidata to increase the visibility of diverse groups and topics on Wikipedia, as part of their work with students, scholars and scientists in representing the sum of all human knowledge.