Data as a Charitable Donation

It's amazing the degree to which digital technology is changing the charitable sector. We've talked on GrantStation about contactless giving, NFTs, and artificial intelligence, so it should come as no surprise that a growing trend involves donors giving away data. We constantly generate a trail of digital information—online most assuredly, but even offline via our bank card purchases, mobile phone tracking signatures, automotive GPS signals, and more. Some of the most profitable corporations in history, such as Google and Facebook, may soon be worth $1 trillion, and will have reached that previously unimaginable plateau largely by selling our data.

Who should actually own this digital residue we produce is an ongoing debate (in practice settled in favor of tech giants), but in cases where individuals manage to retain control over these byproducts, the information contained within gives it inherent value and makes it worth donating. Data is an umbrella term for all types of digital information, but we're going to look at two. First, there's data that has value due to the personal information it contains; and second, there's data that's valuable due to its carrying capacity within digital networks. Both types are sought, and both are donated.

Data as personal information

Consider your last vacation and the photos you shot, for instance an image of a bird. If you uploaded that photo to a travel site like Tripadvisor or a photo sharing platform like Instagram, you gave away data and helped the site generate revenue. But if instead of giving your photo to a for-profit travel or image site, you were to give its location data to a nonprofit that researches the distribution of birds in the wild, you would have mimicked a monetary donation by saving the nonprofit some of the tracking costs associated with its mission.

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology runs a program in partnership with Birds Canada that operates very much like the above example. Called Project FeederWatch, it asks participants to count birds on their property or in the wild in order to contribute to a survey of birds that visit backyards, nature centers, community areas, and other locations in North America. The counts occur during the winter, and the data passed back to Project FeederWatch is used to examine abundance, range, and distribution of bird species, with the goal of tracking changes in their wintering ranges.

Another example is the Center for Digital Health, which collects data about internet activity in order to research how online behavior impacts wellbeing. Social media activity can provide insights into mental health, search histories can reveal medical concerns not expressed during doctor visits, and Instagram usage can help track overall public sentiment and highlight focus areas for health authorities, such as the need to expand messages toward diverse audiences, or tracking methods and platforms used to disseminate incomplete or false health information. All this data would be expensive to collect without donors.

The terminology associated with the practice of donating data is still in flux. Stanford University research scholar Lucy Bernholz coined the word “dataraising.” While the vocabulary is new, the concept isn't completely novel. Similar giving has long occurred in medical research whenever people allowed their health data to be used in clinical studies. Today, thanks to the spread of digital technology, people can participate in dataraising in a multitude of research areas, from worker protection to water quality.

Research has shown that people are generally willing to donate data—with a caveat. A 2019 study by the University of Bristol found that more than half of British respondents would donate personal data, as long as it was to causes designed to benefit the public. Earlier research conducted in the U.S. found that sixty percent of people held a similar view, and in one survey more than 90% of respondents were willing to donate anonymous medical information, if it could be used for scientific purposes such as curing diseases.

It's clear that under the right circumstances people can be motivated to act in ways beneficial to society. However, large percentages of people are still unwilling to share their data, no matter how good the cause may be. Fears about what happens to data are on the rise, but ethical data collection tries to ease concerns by establishing limits on how information can be used—unlike tech corporations, which generally demand across-the-board ownership of consumer data in exchange for usage of their platforms. Behavioral scientist Anya Skatova, who co-conducted the University of Bristol research, believes data donation that gives people control over consent can help redress the power imbalance between tech corporations and consumers. If she's correct, then it might even fuel more debate about who, ultimately, should own the data we produce.

Data as donatable bandwidth

There's another type of data that's being donated these days—broadband data, such as that within your mobile phone plan. Touted as a way to bridge the digital divide in places where internet availability is low, various mobile carriers allow customers to donate bandwidth to charity. One such initiative in Spain, where 16% of households lack internet access, is operated by the mobile carrier Orange in partnership with the nonprofits SOS Children’s Villages and Red Cross Spain. The data is distributed to families with children under 18, with priority given to people with disabilities or people who have been victims of gender-based violence.

Another example comes from Australia, where the telecom company Optus accepts data customers' donations, pools them, and distributes prepaid SIM cards to people in need. Launched in 2019, Optus claims that to-date the plan has resulted in the giving away of more than 28,371,456 gigabytes of data, and has helped connect more than 25,000 individuals to mobile networks. Other companies that have overseen similar initiatives include Sky Mobile and Vodafone in Britain, and Singapore's Singtel.

In general, U.S. companies are not as proactive as their overseas peers about enabling data donations from customers. They tend to directly give away internet service. For example, Comcast, which owns Optus, has made donations of bandwidth to American households and nonprofits running into the multi-millions of dollars, and it has also donated laptops to students, families, seniors, and veterans. Both its bandwidth donations and laptop programs are operated under the umbrella of a larger $1 billion low-cost internet initiative.

U.S. telecoms also tend to be stirred to action in times of emergency. During the 2011 tsunami in Japan numerous companies offered free texts and calls to the stricken country, and during the ongoing invasion in Ukraine several companies are waiving international calling, texting, and data charges. These one-time mobilizations are laudable, but the practice of funneling donated data from customers to individuals could contribute to general welfare on a steady basis. Several telecoms already run giving programs that address areas of social deprivation. Customer data donations would help narrow the digital divide, which is itself a major contributor to inequality.

For individuals in need, being deprived of data is akin to being deprived of a basic utility like electricity. It's probably impossible to reach one's full human potential without a reliable supply. Of course, since utilities are actually services for raw materials, it may be more useful to think of data that way. Like other raw materials, it's mined, transported, packaged, and sold. Some have even called it the oil of the digital age. Without it human progress—at least in the direction it's aimed at the moment—would certainly stop in its tracks. But there's always a price for progress.

It's impossible to deny that data has brought about marvelous advances, but using it merely to supercharge our civilization without careful thought about long term goals for good could cause damage that we won't be able to clean up or repair. Data’s importance, and its recent emergence as a source of giving, represents yet another new frontier in the charitable sector, and another chance to exert influence for the benefit of society.