Latest News

Stay in the loop with our free newsletters.

Get the latest Innovation Lab news in the Community Advocate:

If you're a grantmaker, Community Directors Intelligence is for you:


Archive
#

  • Awards nomination for SmartyGrants Outcomes Engine — May 4, 2023
    The Outcomes Engine has been shortlisted for a national social sector award, after being named as a finalist in the “technology for community impact” category of the Australian Not-for-Profit Technology Awards.
  • Centring dignity in algorithm development — April 6, 2023
    A peer-reviewed publication related to our CLASSIEfier dignity lens review. Against a backdrop of algorithms that disempower and discriminate, there are increasing calls to centre the human in AI development processes and to humanise AI development in practice; centring dignity in AI development could provide a way forward.
  • Working with data for good: give it a crack — June 18, 2021
    We're profiling data scientists who've used their skills within the social sector. Here, we talk to Áine Phelan, winner of the individual prize at Melbourne's first datathon for social good.
  • How trustworthy is CLASSIEfier? — May 5, 2021
    Our data scientists tested the accuracy of CLASSIEfier. The results of their research are summarised in a white paper: Ethical Considerations in Multilabel Text Classifications.
  • Datathon for Social Good Feb 22–Mar 1, 2020
    A recap and video of Melbourne's first Datathon for Social Good. Participants used data to explore the activities and impacts of Community Hubs Australia, a not-for-profit organisation that helps build social cohesion.
  • Datathon for Social Good — December 16, 2019
    We're excited to announce that we're holding Melbourne's first datathon with a social-good focus!
  • Roadmap for Not-for-Profit Governance — December 11, 2019
    We've released the 2020 ICDA Not-for-Profit Governance Roadmap, the result of a year-long research project into the workings of the Australian not-for-profit sector, and it comes with a data visualisation to boot.
  • CLASSIE-NZ released for comment — June 26, 2019
    The first draft of CLASSIE-NZ, the taxonomy for the social sector in New Zealand, was released for comment by the Our Community Innovation Lab yesterday.
  • Storytelling with data: lessons from a motley team — April 15, 2019
    Following the completion of the Innovation Lab's first data storytelling project, the team reflects on the lessons learned, and outline their new ways of working which facilitate collaboration with not-for-profit organisations.
  • Numbers prove LGBTIQ+ funding falls short — April 3, 2019
    A new report on LGBTIQ+ funding in Australia has been released by Our Community and LGBTIQ+ collective giving group The Channel. The report details how much funding is being distributed to LGBTIQ+ communities across Australia, providing the first comprehensive snapshot of the flow of dollars from government, philanthropy and direct donations to rainbow causes.
  • Gender Trends: The causes men and women prefer when donating through GiveNow — March 7, 2019
    To examine donor preferences by gender, we analysed all donations made through GiveNow, one of Australia's leading donation platforms, from March 2001 to August 2016, grouping donations by the category of the cause they were made to. We then charted the ratios of gender and donation types in an interactive visualisation.
  • Northern Territory donors among the most generous in Australia — February 11, 2019
    Following a recent inquiry by ABC News Northern Territory, we investigated (1) whether or not the average GiveNow donation value in the NT was not just larger, but also statistically significantly larger than the average donation in other states, and (2) the underlying reasons for the apparent generosity of NT donors.
  • Why those holding the purse strings must do data better — August 17, 2018
    Dr Lucy Bernholz, a world-recognised thinker on digital and data trends, says funders must take more responsibility for improving how data is handled and managed for the organisations they're helping, including how much information they're demanding in the first place.
  • Our Community data scientists follow a rainbow — May 21, 2018
    We're doing our bit to "grow the pot of gold under the rainbow", crunching data to help improve the flow of funds to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex (LGBTQIA+) groups.
  • Our Community powers up the Outcomes Engine — April 24, 2018
    Having built a system designed to make grantmakers more efficient, we now want to help you become more effective. Our "Outcomes Engine" will use modern data analytics, data visualisation and impact evaluation concepts and tools to help you analyse your funding patterns, compare them with your objectives, and track your progress towards your aims.
  • White paper: The bias trade-off for grantmaking algorithms — March 20, 2018
    This whitepaper explores a concrete example of a trade-off that can occur when developing a grantmaking algorithm. It is written for grantmakers, grantseekers and anyone else with an interest in grantmaking algorithms.
  • CLASSIE 2.1: new and improved — February 5, 2018
    Our Community recently released a new version of CLASSIE, the data classification system that underpins an exciting array of data analytics projects. The newest release of CLASSIE (Version 2.1), now available in the SmartyGrants online grants management system, incorporates feedback received by grantmakers and others since November 2016.
  • Research shows why your board lacks ICT nous — November 6, 2017
    New research undertaken exclusively by Our Community's Innovation Lab shows ICT expertise on not-for-profit boards is failing to keep pace with the digital world.
  • Data is the new oil, and we all need to start drilling — August 3, 2017
    There's a new currency powering social reform. Data is reshaping our world. Here's what Our Community is doing to make sure the social sector can grasp the possibilities presented by these new tools.
  • Grants in Australia Survey 2017: The quest for perfection continues — July 28, 2017
    The Grants in Australia Survey is the biggest research program of its kind. We set our data scientist loose on the 1200 responses to the latest survey, as well as data from all previous years. The resulting report digs deeper and offers more insight into Australian grantmaking than ever before.