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2025-08-16 06:00:00| Fast Company

Businesses have long leaned on cutting-edge technology to maximize profits, while the nonprofit sector has traditionally been slower to incorporate innovations such as AI. But if we want to tackle the worlds most pressing social problems, that must change, says philanthropist and MacArthur Genius grant recipient Jim Fruchterman in a new book.   In Technology for Good: How Nonprofit Leaders Are Using Software and Data to Solve Our Most Pressing Social Problems, out September 2nd, Fruchterman highlights social good organizations that are using technology to solve real-world problemshomelessness, mental illness, climate change, child abuse, and more. Fruchterman is a tech-for-good leader and the founder of the nonprofit Benetech, which created Bookshare, an online library for people who are blind or visually impaired. He spoke with Fast Company about some of the ways technology is being used to make the world a better place and what he hopes readers glean from his book.  Its refreshing to talk to a business leader about how to use technology for social good instead of how to use it to drive profits.   [Laughs.] I call it moving from money to meaning.   What are the challenges that nonprofits and social-good organizations face when it comes to technology?   One is a lack of money. Funding is tight. And while tech is often cost-effective, if you have a hard time coming up with the money to buy the tech, it’s hard to use. There are also often low levels of tech capacity among the staff. People are used to using the telephone as opposed to going on a Zoom call. The social sector also prioritizes different things than the for-profit sector. Its not just about efficiency. People are still pretty important in the social change sector. Saying, Hey, you can get rid of a bunch of people (by implementing a new technology) may not be the best sales pitch for a charity that is trying to help people.   What are some social problems that technology could help solve?   I spotlight in my book TalkingPoints, which helps teachers communicate with kids parents who dont speak English. If you can get the parents more engaged, kids are a lot more successful in school. Thats a great example of a technology that fills a need for immigrant parents.  Community Solutions Built for Zero initiative is trying to end homelessness. For years, we treated the symptoms: Lets build temporary housing, get people food and clothing. Theyre asking, Can we say that everyone who was homeless three months ago is now housed? The key tech innovation is a by-name list keeping track of everyone across community places that these people go into. When shelters say, Our beds have been 80% used this month, that measures output, but it doesnt say anything about whether were solving the homelessness problem.  So much of what the social sector does is move information aroundwell, thats what information technology is for.   What would you say to a nonprofit leader who feels overwhelmed by or unqualified to make decisions around technology?  Find people in your field who are ahead of you on the technology journey and learn from them. Talk to your peers. If theyre saying, Were writing a third more grants with the same amount of staff using ChatGPT or Claude, then thats worth paying attention to, because its not their business to sell you things.   In your book, you highlight some bad ideas in tech-for-good efforts. Which do you see repeated the most?   The cult of the custom. Its the idea that my nonprofit is such a unique snowflake that I need custom software built to solve my organizations problem. And businesses stopped writing custom software 20 years ago because no golf course, no restaurant, no dentist needs to be writing software to run their company. When you write your own software, youre the only customer. It means that every bug that needs to be fixed, youre the only one paying for it. You should look for a product that can be adapted to your needs. Also: I see lots of people building an app that no one will download. Or people following whatever the latest fad isfive or eight years ago, that was blockchain. That didnt work out. Three to five years ago, it was the metaverse. That didnt work out. Right now, its generative AI.  Im glad you brought up AI. Whats your take on where AI should and shouldnt be used in social impact work?   I think you shouldnt replace human empathy and understanding with AI that doesnt understand what its saying and have any empathy whatsoever. People in the nonprofit sector turn to human beings to help them. The best applications of AI in social good are around making the people on the frontlines of social change more effective. Lets say Im trying to automate a mental health counselor. Do I want to replace the counselor with a chatbot? Right now, its not a great idea. But if we can instead cut their amount of data entry time or paperwork time in half, then thats time they can spend with another person who needs their help. 


Category: E-Commerce

 

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2025-08-16 05:00:00| Fast Company

Coffee drinking has been studied for decades as researchers have aimed to answer one burning question: Is it good for you? Or is it better to stick to joyless drinks like, you know, tap water and mint tea? While there have been cases for just about every argument, one recently published study in The Journal of Nutrition just added another check in the “healthy” column.  Of course, there’s a catch. You have to drink your coffee in a specific way. For the study, researchers at Tufts University analyzed the coffee-drinking habits of 46,332 Americans from 1999 to 2018. They found that drinking a cup of coffee each day has some major effects in terms of lowering mortality rates.  One cup of joe per day was linked to a 16% lower risk of death, not just related to cardiovascular disease, which has been well-documented, but from any cause. More coffee is better, toobut not too much more. Drinking two to three cups per day showed a 17% lower risk of mortality. More coffee than that didn’t offer any additional health benefits. However, these benefits didn’t apply to all coffee drinkers across the board. The benefits were most pronounced in those who drank theirs sans cream and sugar (or with a very little amount of sugar). The ones who added cream and sugar had the same rates of all-cause mortality as those who tended toward non-coffee drinks. Essentially, the more cream and sugar added, the lower the benefits.  Coffee is among the most-consumed beverages in the world, and with nearly half of American adults reporting drinking at least one cup per day, its important for us to know what it might mean for health, said Fang Fang Zhang, senior author of the study and a professor at Tufts. The health benefits of coffee might be attributable to its bioactive compounds, but our results suggest that the addition of sugar and saturated fat may reduce the mortality benefits.  Given that there is so much research around coffee, we always have to take findings with a grain of salt (and sans sweetener), but the good news does seem to be adding up for regular coffee drinkers. A study earlier this year similarly found lower rates of premature death for morning coffee drinkers. Another published in June 2025 found that coffee drinking is linked to healthy aging, particularly in women.  So, while tons of added cream and sugar won’t add years to your life (did we really think it would?), coffee on its own actually might. Yet with so many kinds of coffee add-ons these days, like collagen creamers, milk alternatives, even creamers marketed as “super foods” that claim to also be good for energy, longevity, and more, our burning questions remain. Until we have answers, the collagen creamer stays.


Category: E-Commerce

 

2025-08-15 21:30:00| Fast Company

Theres one less excuse to skip the flu shot this season.  Pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca is out with a new version of the flu vaccine, and it makes getting vaccinated easier than ever. The drug can be administered at home, giving you one less reason to trek to the doctors office. And even better for the needle-averse: You dont need a jab to get itthe vaccine comes in nasal spray form. The drug, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration last fall, is available now and can be ordered online. While it will cost $70 out of pocket, AstraZeneca says that anyone with insurance coverage will only need to pay $8.99 for shipping. FluMist Home ships in a special cooling container and needs to be stored in a cool environment. So if you order the vaccine, you’ll need to pop it in the fridge until you plan to administer it. Flu vaccination rates are on the downswing in the U.S., a phenomenon linked to pandemic fatigue and vaccine misinformation. While the flu is an endemic virus that comes back around every year, it can still be dangerous for unimmunized kids, older adults, and people with compromised immune systems. The flu vaccine isnt the only shot that Americans are skipping. From 2019 to 2023, measles vaccination rates fell from 95% to 92%, dipping below the critical threshold for population-level protection. Anti-vaccine activism is rising in the U.S., and that movement now has Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent ally, running the Department of Health and Human Services.  On Thursday, HHS announced that it will bring back a task force aimed at scrutinizing the safety of vaccines for children. The Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group founded by Kennedy, called for the task force to be reestablished in a lawsuit filed against its former leader in May.


Category: E-Commerce

 

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