Dataiku’s AI-for-Good Program launched in 2019 to enable better adoption of AI, positively impact our community, and contribute to AI education.
In 2024, the program counted 18 NGO partners across the world, enabling them to embrace the potential of data analysis and AI to advance their respective missions. The NGOs were accompanied by Dataiku data scientists, sales engineers, and analysts volunteers to help them scope and move forward on use cases.
Dataiku Sales Engineer and AI-for-Good EMEA Geo Lead Nathan Bry shares, “I meet many of our partner NGOs to discuss and understand their data challenges and needs, and then I put them in touch with volunteer Dataikers willing to help them. It's a very rewarding experience, both personally and culturally.”
This blog post highlights two of our NGO partners: Les Restos du Cœur and Aspire Institute.
Dataiku and Les Restos du Cœur
In France, the program partners with Les Restos du Cœur, an NGO which provides help and assistance to the most impoverished, by delivering meals, providing social support, and enabling socio professional reinsertion. In 2022-23, they delivered 171 million meals and welcomed 1,3 million people.
Les Restos du Coeur leverages Dataiku to determine the right quantity of meals to distribute every week, using Machine Learning Time Series forecasting models, which helps volunteers order the right quantities and therefore optimize the supply. Forecasting meal quantity usually takes 1 hour per week per volunteer. Using Dataiku enables them to save 110 hours per week, for their warehouses in France.
Damien Labrousse, Pôle SI — Data Lead shares, “It is much faster to build and easier to maintain data projects with Dataiku. We can now more accurately determine the right quantity of meals to distribute every day.”
Currently they are developing a basket recommendation system based on their previous orders to save volunteers’ time. The system would support improving the accuracy and scalability of meal selection. This would enable them to save 1000 hours weekly for the volunteers in all centers in France.
Dataiku and Aspire Institute
In the U.S., Aspire Institute uses Dataiku to screen over 100,000 applications to empower low-income first-generation students to grow their careers.
The Aspire Leaders Program welcomes low-income, first-generation college students and recent graduates worldwide to participate in a free online immersive leadership journey including professional skills training, an exclusive course designed and delivered by Harvard faculty, and interactive seminars led by world-class educators. The Institute aims to reach one million young leaders by 2027. At the core of this ambitious goal is the innovative use of data and AI, facilitated by Dataiku through the AI-for-Good Program.
One of the projects undertaken by Aspire involves data extraction from their CRM system and normalization of projects for application screening. This project has seen impactful results, with over 100,000 applications screened from more than 160 countries. Until 2022, the NGO manually reviewed applications to predict and rank candidates. Using machine learning modeling has reduced the workload for their team.
Aspire Institute’s use of Dataiku exemplifies the power of AI and data analytics in education and career advancement for first-generation college students.
Dataiku’s AI-for-Good program has demonstrated remarkable success in empowering NGOs like Les Restos du Cœur and Aspire Institute to leverage AI and data analytics to optimize their operations and amplify their impact. By providing volunteer data experts and advanced AI tools, Dataiku is not only accelerating the missions of these organizations but also fostering a culture of data-driven decision-making within the nonprofit sector. As the program continues to expand and evolve, it stands as a testament to the transformative power of AI in creating positive social change worldwide.