Thriving in the Digital Age: Are You Ready to Be a Funder in 2030?

About

Around the world, the space for civil society to organize, agitate and advocate for rights and justice is shrinking. Governments and private companies are surveilling activists, collecting data about their activities, and developing tech policy solutions aimed at problems like “fake news” that end up restricting the space for free speech and association.

In this first of a series of conversations on what funders need to know in 2030, come hear experts, advocates and funders discuss how technology and the growing ubiquity of algorithms in society (code recipes that translate data into recommendations or decisions) may be restricting civic space and impacting the way we work.

Explore

• How we need to adjust our strategic thinking to account for shifts in power that:
  • Benefit data aggregators
  • Increase threats to the privacy, dignity and agency of marginalized groups
• How automated service delivery systems impact structural inequality
• How algorithmic amplification on social media platforms are increasing social polarization
• How to develop a fluency around technological impacts on social justice fields and movements without requiring deep technical expertise
• How algorithms are transforming our sector

If this sounds like a lot of jargon and buzzwords, this session is for you! We will demystify ongoing technology shifts, centering our discussion on social justice and the impacts on the fields in which we work.

Presenters

• Lucy Bernholz, Director, Digital Civil Society Lab, and Senior Research Scholar, Stanford PACS
• Joshua M. Greenberg, Program Director of Digital Information Technology, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
• Michelle Shevin, Technology Fellow, Technology and Society, Ford Foundation