The National Science Foundation has awarded $1.8 million over four years to a team of researchers from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York to develop a platform for nonprofits to share resources.
“We are using technology to not only impact the world, but to shape and transform it. Major social media and e-commerce companies have transformed profit-maximizing applications; we are designing cutting-edge technologies for nonprofit organizations that are devoted to increasing social value and human welfare,” WPI Associate Professor Andrew Trapp, who is leading the school’s team, said in a Monday press release from WPI.
The team will design and implement a new algorithm-based tool nonprofit organizations can use to find and share resources such as event space, transportation for supplies, donations for clients, or even a staff member experienced in grant writing or a volunteer lawyer to review documents.
“We are at an historical moment where the values and culture of the workplace are shifting, and there is an opportunity – and a popular demand – to redesign and repurpose work-related technologies to support workers, not just private companies,” Yunus Telliel, WPI assistant professor of anthropology and rhetoric, said in the release.
