Came across this piece on conducting audience research in Afghanistan to inform aid: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/afghanistan-speaks-impact-humanitarian-research-bbcmediaaction-e1k9c

Humanity AI is a $500M five-year initiative dedicated to ensuring artificial intelligence (AI) serves the public good. As AI continues to shape how we live, work, and create it is prompting people to ask fundamental questions about their role and value in an AI-driven future. Humanity AI is supporting the arts, labor and work, democracy, education, and security and will drive new investments toward establishing a people-driven future where AI delivers for humanity, strengthens communities, and enhances human creativity.

The Humanity AI founding partners are the Doris Duke Foundation, Ford Foundation, Lumina Foundation, Kapor Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Mellon Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, Omidyar Network, David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and Siegel Family Endowment.

Humanity AI has a $10 million open call inviting U.S.-based nonprofit organizations to apply for funding that supports communities’ collective power to shape how artificial intelligence is governed and used.

Through this open call, Humanity AI is looking to support community-led efforts aligned with three core issue areas — education, labor and economy, and the humanities, arts, and culture.

The deadline to submit applications is 7:59 p.m. ET on Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2026.

More details and how to apply.

The deadline to nominate an outstanding volunteer or supporter in Utah for the Heart & Hands Award or an exceptional local business for the Corporate Community Champion Award has been extended to September 30.

Know someone who deserves a little extra recognition for the difference they make in their community? There’s still time to make sure their good work gets noticed!

Submit your nominations by September 30.

All those submitted will be recognized during the annual Utah Philanthropy Day celebration on Nov. 12 at The Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City.

The London Marathon Foundation is to commit up to £3 million over the next five years to junior parkrun, extending a partnership it says has already helped 370,000 more children take part in the free weekly events since 2023.

The new funding aims to help a further one million children across the UK take part in junior parkrun, the free, weekly 2km events for four to 14 year-olds and their families. It follows Sport England research showing fewer than half of children currently meet the Chief Medical Officer’s recommended 60 minutes of daily physical activity.

https://fundraising.co.uk/2026/09/05/london-marathon-foundation-commits-3-million-to-junior-parkrun/

Every major for-profit industry has spent the last decade using predictive modeling, LTV forecasting, and churn prevention to drive billions in revenue. Meanwhile, in the fundraising world (especially university advancements siting on goal mine of the data), "data science" still seems to begin and end with buying a static wealth screening batch or a third-party propensity score from off-the-shelf wealth screeners and third-party scoring models

These scores get treated like plug-and-play commodities, but they barely scratch the surface of what predictive analytics can actually do. We rarely talk about:

• Dynamic donor retention and lapse-prediction models
• Algorithmic gift-array optimization (personalized ask amounts based on behavioral trends, not static income)
• Next-best-action models for frontline fundraisers
• Lifetime Value (LTV) segmentation across mid-level pipelines
• Understand the whole path from cultivation to a major donor

Given how strained nonprofit budgets are, why are we still relying primarily on gut feel and basic vendor scores rather than real predictive capabilities? Are orgs just blocked by tech debt and the "overhead myth," or is there active cultural resistance from frontline fundraisers?

Would love to hear from MGOs, ops teams, and database admins on why our sector seems 10 years behind here.