This meeting between the State Changers covered intricate discussions over the problem about unstructured and messy data that nonprofits need to handle. The speakers shared experiences with using the Xano platform to process the data. The problem they discussed involved extracting meaningful data from different formats, mainly from IRS forms that nonprofits need to submit. A significant part of the solution is an API that finds keywords from the data, which can later be presented to frontend users.
One participant proposed a method to make nonprofits searchable based on their specific service through the use of these extracted keywords. The system aims to bridge the gap between people and the services they need. By also involving local artists to create premiums for donors, the participant noted how the platform could also serve as a tool for educating people about nonprofits and strengthening their fundraising and service capability. On the topic of data extraction, some problems with implementing deletions and keeping track of changes were discussed. There were also brief discussions over issues with data fields remembering previous responses, and the decisions of a browser being final were also touched upon. The meeting ended with suggestions about workarounds, translating document and data structures to improve user experience and on how APIs are central to their operations. Notably, there were hints towards a need to improve the documentation of the data structures and functionalities. The State Changers' intention to make things more feasible for others and engage with rich customers were also highlighted.
(Source: Office Hours 8/25 )
