One of our promises to you, as an integrated organization, was to build a hub for the future of data, information, and knowledge for the social sector. Candid search aims to synthesize answers to your questions about the social sector all in one place, bringing together key features of our flagship products such as Foundation Directory, GuideStar/Charity Check, Seals of Transparency, 990 Finder, Philanthropy News Digest, Candid Learning, Foundation Maps, and more. As we gear up to launch Candid search this year, we’ve been rolling out market-changing features and gathering feedback to refine them along the way. New and longtime users alike can look forward to the ultimate hub of data, information, and knowledge that informs better decision making and deepens our understanding of the social sector. And this is just the beginning—we will continue enhancing the experience. Here are three highlights from our work this year:
Making it easy for existing users to engage
Input from our current users is crucial to building a successful product. Many have used GuideStar, Foundation Directory, and other tools already but were accustomed to those offerings being separate and distinct. We started 2024 by inviting users to experience a pre-release of a unified experience of our basic tools and services. Our objective was to understand how our product users understood and engaged with the new combined tools and services. We’ve had 14,000 users try Candid search and received lots of useful feedback that helped us direct our product strategy and tactical delivery. For example, we learned that when users are looking for a specific nonprofit, they want to see name matches at the top of results, while those who want to discover new nonprofits want to match other data in the profile and easily filter results. Change is never easy, but we want to ensure that we’re making the transition to Candid search as seamless and straightforward as possible.
More robust storytelling with Candid profiles
We want to make it easier for organizations to tell their stories, so the sector can better understand who they are and what they do. Much of what our users already know is still featured on Candid profiles, and we’ve added more fields to support organizations’ evolving needs. For example, the demographics section will now include veteran status, and organizations can use video to show potential donors their work in action. We’ve also streamlined and better organized the profiles to make it easier to understand the data at a glance. To round out the experience, we’ve created guided tours that make it faster for organizations to claim and fill out their Candid profiles, as well as earn Seals of Transparency. We expect to dedicate considerably more time and focus next year on automating profile efficiencies.
Developing new tools
Nonprofits already do the heavy lifting. We’ve been working on three powerful new tools designed to make it easier for them to succeed.
- Funder recommendations: Candid search will deliver a dynamic list of recommended funders based on alignment with a nonprofit’s programs, requiring little more than a need statement. Included in the recommendations is an explanation of why it suggests a funder, with space for the nonprofit to provide feedback on whether they are a good fit so we can continue improving our model. Candid’s uniquely expansive dataset allows for unmatched pairing of funders to programs, reducing the time it takes for nonprofits to identify prospective funders.
- AI writer: Candid’s new AI writer uses content from an organization’s Candid profile to generate a first-class letter of intent (LOI). Our tool applies the decades of experience we have guiding organizations through the grant proposal process, which makes our LOI generator uniquely suited to shape a nonprofit’s narrative the best way possible.
- Personalized dashboards: Our new dashboards are at the heart of Candid’s personalization strategy. For registered users, the personalized dashboard is their homepage, housing the data they collect. This includes collections of a nonprofit’s funders, favorited organizations, grantee cohorts, saved searches, and more. As a user searches, saves, and creates projects, the platform learns from the queries and content to deliver more of the context they need. By simply providing their organization and role, we provide default content to jumpstart their work.
Powering everything behind the scenes is Candid’s data. We’re adding millions of grant transactions to the tens of millions that our datasets already support, further solidifying Candid’s commitment to offer the most comprehensive view of the sector.
By creating a single destination to distribute data and insights, we are fulfilling the promise we made to develop a new generation of tools designed to champion the causes, organizations, and knowledge that support society. Candid search will strengthen the social sector’s capacity to address pressing social challenges and ultimately help create a more efficient, effective, and equitable ecosystem.
The post The new Candid: A year of progress and what’s on the horizon appeared first on Candid insights.
