We write articles on an occasional basis about philanthropy, grantmaking, nonprofits, technology and our systems features and usage.
Data Sharing Systems - What Has Been Tried? | Part 4 of 7 - Jeff Lawrence - July 2026
There have been many attempts to make data sharing work for over 15 years. Most have failed. What's striking about this history is there doesn't appear to be any public systematic effort to document what went wrong, what was learned, or why momentum stalled.
Data Sharing Systems - Why Is Data Sharing Hard? | Part 3 of 7
Even a well-intentioned data sharing system faces a long list of technical, operational, governance, policy, and organizational challenges. The technology is often the easier part.
A Small Experiment Using AI - Part 2 - Jeff Lawrence - June 2026
We had a grantmaker that had an evaluation process underway, and wanted to periodically download a new report during the evaluation process and identify changes from report to report, and use criteria from the first report to tag fields in subsequent reports. This white paper further highlights the power of combining our exportable custom reports with external AI tools to do complex data maniuplations and visualizations.
Data Sharing Systems - What is Data Sharing? | Part 2 of 7 - Jeff Lawrence - June 2026
Data sharing in the nonprofit world can take many different forms including: self-curated information, reusable application information, and combined self-curated and reusable application information. Data sharing should save time and money but it also requires substantial scale to deliver real value.
Data Sharing Systems - An Introduction | Part 1 of 7 - Jeff Lawrence - June 2026
First of a 7 part series about data sharing in the nonprofit world including: what it is, why it's hard, what's been tried, why it has failed and what do nonprofits really want?
A Small Experiment Using AI - Jeff Lawrence - April 2026
We had a grantmaker that wanted to extract and process some inforamtion for evaluations that wasn't avaiable in our built-in reports. They were going to export the information using our custom evaluation reports, but they got stuck on how to take that information and turn it into what they wanted to see. As an experiment, we exported the custom evaluation report and AI to generate the information they needed. This white paper describes the steps we took and points out some of the privacy issues that must be considered when using AI.
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG): Overview & Support - Jeff Lawrence - April 2026
We recently received a request from a government agency that uses our system for grantmaking to provide information about the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and how we support them. We put together an overview and thought some of our other customers might find it useful. It is a fairly technical read, but if you ever have to deal with WCAG compliance, this white paper provides a high-level summary of what the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are, why they exist, how we support them, and how they may apply to your website.
Game of Philanthropy - Jeff Lawrence - April 2026
Many years ago I was asked to give a presentation at a philanthropic giving conference. I was invited because of my own family foundation. They asked me to think about philanthropy as a game. This resulted in the attached presentation, which looks at philanthropy as a game with its playing board, players, rules, strategies and outcomes. It follows my own evolution as a philanthropist and technologist and looks at some of the challenges in the industry from a grantmaker and nonprofit perspective. Many of the learnings and lessons from my personal experience have helped form the perspective that we've using to build the Common Grant Application.