Integrating network analysis and data mining techniques into effective framework for managing charities and donors: from data repository handling to recommendations

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Charities form an essential component of a healthy society where people show their willingness to help, donate and contribute. Charities need support in order to achieve their mission of serving people in certain domains. The support may come from government agencies, private sector, or individuals. The more individuals and private sector are involved in the support, the better it will be for government agencies who will not feel the pressure to invest more in charities; instead they may shift their focus towards handling other issues which are not covered by charities. To get a balance of involvement in support to charities, there is a need for a comprehensive framework which covers all the scope from data collection and cleaning to repository construction and maintenance in order to guarantee that the data included in the repository is consistent, well integrated and up-to-date. There are various sources for the data, including government repositories, the Web, collecting data directly from charities and potential donors, among others. Donors need to know charities who are in most need. They will be able to watch the performance of specific charities over time and the level of trust in the charities. This is all possible based on the feedback mechanism that allows donors to post their reviews about charities. Further, donors may be interested in some automated recommendations which are produced based on the analysis of existing data related to others donors with similar interests. On the other hand, charities want to closely watch various donor groups as well as potential best donors to target seeking some support. Charities will also learn how other charities working in the same domain are performing. A charity will use the outcome from news and social media analysis to predict what could be the next focus, i.e., to help shifting the attention where there is more need or where the need is anticipated to emerge soon. For instance, the uprising conflict between Russia and Ukraine may require charities to add this to their agenda in order to reach people who will be directly or indirectly affected. All these aspects are to be tackled in this research project leading to an integrated framework.