Starting a new nonprofit is a difficult process. Besides choosing a mission, developing a strategy and hiring employees, a new organization must figure out how they fit into the larger nonprofit landscape and find support. “How can I attract supporters?” “With whom can I partner?” “What are people saying about me?” These are just some [...]
Empty and full stations pose a major problem in the Divvy system. After all, bike share really only needs two things to work: a bike to ride and a dock to leave the bike. Chicago's commuting cycle (get it?) means that all the bike share bikes will end up under the butts of the workers [...]
In a previous post, we asked how the Cook County Land Bank Authority ought to decide which vacant and abandoned properties to acquire. Let’s illustrate this question with a hypothetical comparison of two homes in Chicago. 39XX W Van Buren St. is a typical two flat multi-family property in Garfield Park, a neighborhood on Chicago’s [...]
This fall, more than 2 million American high school seniors will apply to college. A growing body of research tells us that low-income students are at a disadvantage in this process. Even when they beat the odds and do well in school, they often don’t know that they’re qualified to attend selective colleges, or that [...]
In October 2012, when Hurricane Sandy raged up the East Coast of the United States, many people in the path of the storm turned to a relatively new communication channel: Twitter. Between October 27th and November 1st, as the storm hit New York City and surrounding states, more than 20 million Tweets about the storm [...]
Obesity is a rapidly growing epidemic in the US. More than a third of American adults are obese, and another third are overweight. If this trend holds, 42% of American adults will be obese by 2030, making obesity one of the leading public health challenges of our times. Excessive weight is bad for people’s health, [...]
Fellow Applications for Summer 2014 will be available December 1, 2013. Application Deadline is February 1, 2014. Watch this website for more details.
Program seeks fellows, mentors and partners After a successful first summer, in which aspiring data scientists from around the world completed innovative data and analytics projects with non-profit and government partners, the Eric & Wendy Schmidt Data Science for Social Good Summer Fellowship will return with a new class of fellows, mentors and project partners [...]
Due to a lot of interest from other universities (and cities) in running similar programs next summer, we are conducting a workshop to recap what we learned over the summer and to help others organize similar programs in the future. This workshop is meant to be small, focused, and targeted at groups who are seriously [...]
“Wow! What is that? Where’d you get it?,” the beach-going twentysomething asked me. I looked up from the map on my phone and steadied the powder-blue bike under me to answer his question. It was, of course, a Divvy bike - part of Chicago’s hot new bike share system. As a car-less visitor in Chicago, [...]
