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The Canadian advantage in non-profit data

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Michael Lenczner-2

The Canadian advantage in non-profit data

I wrote a blog post for the federal Open Data blog that I wanted to share here. It was just published today. Any feedback is welcome.

Michael Lenczner
CEO, Ajah
http://www.ajah.ca
514-708-5112

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"Canada - a World Leader in Non-profit Data"

By Michael Lenczner (Guest blogger)

In 2010, I started Ajah to use data to help fundraisers identify likely sources of funding. Because I had been active in the Open Data movement since 2005, I knew that the information that they needed was out there. We worked hard for several years to build our service, Fundtracker.

Fundtracker required combining many data sets: government spending data at both federal and provincial levels, charity financial information and granting records, corporate social responsibility information, and even charities’ annual reports. We launched our most recent version of the service last fall and our clients have been responding enthusiastically.

By 2013 we were receiving recognition from outside of Canada for building a successful business using open data, and developing insights into the funding ecosystem that we offer our clients. At first we chalked up our success to our abilities as expert technologists with a deep understanding of the non-profit sector. As we continued to learn about non-profit sectors in other countries we realized none of them had anything approaching the amount of data available in Canada. That was the principal reason for our lead in this space.

----snip----

http://data.gc.ca/eng/blog/ajah-and-fundtracker

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James McKinney-2

Re: The Canadian advantage in non-profit data

Thanks for sharing. I just noticed that Colin Lachance of CanLII also has a blog post up: http://data.gc.ca/eng/blog/law-first-open-data-set

James

On Jul 4, 2014, at 4:10 PM, Michael Lenczner <[hidden email]> wrote:

I wrote a blog post for the federal Open Data blog that I wanted to share here. It was just published today. Any feedback is welcome.

Michael Lenczner
CEO, Ajah
http://www.ajah.ca
514-708-5112

------------
"Canada - a World Leader in Non-profit Data"

By Michael Lenczner (Guest blogger)

In 2010, I started Ajah to use data to help fundraisers identify likely sources of funding. Because I had been active in the Open Data movement since 2005, I knew that the information that they needed was out there. We worked hard for several years to build our service, Fundtracker.

Fundtracker required combining many data sets: government spending data at both federal and provincial levels, charity financial information and granting records, corporate social responsibility information, and even charities’ annual reports. We launched our most recent version of the service last fall and our clients have been responding enthusiastically.

By 2013 we were receiving recognition from outside of Canada for building a successful business using open data, and developing insights into the funding ecosystem that we offer our clients. At first we chalked up our success to our abilities as expert technologists with a deep understanding of the non-profit sector. As we continued to learn about non-profit sectors in other countries we realized none of them had anything approaching the amount of data available in Canada. That was the principal reason for our lead in this space.

----snip----

http://data.gc.ca/eng/blog/ajah-and-fundtracker

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CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
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http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss

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[hidden email]
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