Google.org Making Tech For Good A Reality

Jacquelline Fuller manages Google.org, the Internet giant's philanthropic arm.  Google reportedly doles out more than $100 million each year in grants and donations, $1 billion in products, and roughly 80,000 volunteer hours.  She recently had a quick chat with me about the organization's projects and the challenges the impact space faces -- turns out, it's not all about lack of funding.

Fuller is not a pure technologist.  Rather, she graduated with a degree in Political Science from UCLA and did a MPP at Harvard.  Before arriving at Google in 2007, she worked at the Gates Foundation as the Deputy Director of Global Health for 8 years and was based in Delhi for a year.

She says she's fully aware of the disconnect between funders and the grantees - the realities on the ground and the expectations of desk-based donors.

Esha Chhabra: Did your experience in Delhi give you an insight on that disconnect?

Jacquelline Fuller: Oh yes. All funders should be required to have been on the other side of the table.

I remember, in India, you would fly on this budget airline. Go out to a remote area by an 18-hour bus ride. Get there to do HIV prevention work.  And then get back to the office and get an email from your funder saying, We need this detail.  But it's not so easy to get back to the field to get that detail.

Once, for example, the Seattle office sent us a template form to fill out with results.  But the document had so many graphics that it took us half-an-hour to just download it because our connection was weak.  Some times it's just simple things like that that can make a difference.

Silicon Valley can certainly bring technology to development but we need to make sure that we're working hand in glove with the people on the front lines. That's why we do those Impact challenges at the local level because we don't just want to fund ideas that we hear at conferences.

Chhabra: How do those local Impact Challenges work? 

Fuller: We work where Google has offices.  That's why you'll see us doing these challenges in the Bay Area, India, Brazil, Japan, Australia.  We ask, 'How would you use $500,000 and innovation to make the world better?' Small NGOs can come forward with their ideas and get support.

Chhabra: But you also work with larger nonprofits like charity: water in the US?  How do you determine who you want to work with?

Fuller: We look at how technology and deep innovation could help create a major step forward on a humanitarian issue. With charity: water, we did a $5 million pilot project to place sensors on wells to see if they were working.  It's not enough to just put a well; you have to see if it is functioning months, or years, later.

The project was risky -- technology risk and execution risk.  But we needed a partner that was willing to take on that role and be willing to deploy it at scale to test it out. Given that charity: water has over 7,000 wells, we thought that would work well.  And it has.

Chhabra: How deeply do you get involved in these projects?

Fuller: We look at it as, grants plus Google.  We can make the project happen not just with our money, but also access to Googlers.  We supply these NGOs with our staff who volunteer their time.  For charity:water, we had engineers working with their team on the prototype and rollout. Some non-profits say they need marketing or finance help.  So, we cater to each ones needs.  For example, we give to Girls Who Code.  But we also host Girls Who Code sessions in our offices.

Chhabra: Given that you know how challenging data collection can get in developing countries, what do you ask for in your reporting requirements?

Fuller: We want to have the most streamlined reporting collection.  We want to be clear on deliverables.  We agree with partners upfront on metrics.  They share that data with us.

I'm sympathetic to grantees when it comes to really burdensome reporting requirements.  We want to tread lightly as possible. We ask questions like, did it work, what did we learn? What can we relay back to the field?

Chhabra: There's been a growing trend of pushing non-profits to have revenue streams or even, transform into social enterprises?  What do you make of that?

Fuller: Google.org only funds non-profits.  But we encourage our partners to come up with revenue models.  Some of these things are not going to be done with just grants. Samasource is an example, which we've given grants to but they have a revenue model as well.  

There's a scrappy little non-profit in Seattle, Equal Opportunity Schools, which does the same thing.  They use data to find students that could be in AP classes, but aren't because of barriers.  They're able to identify them. There are so many underrepresented kids. They then charge schools a fee to get that info.

Chhabra: What trends in 'tech for good' are exciting you these days? 

Fuller: I get excited when I see technologies that can help you find the best pizza place or brewery be adapted to solve our biggest problems.  For instance, GiveDirectly, uses Google Earth and M-Pesa in Kenya.  With Google Earth, they find thatched roofs, which is an indicator of a low-income household. They then send cash payments through mobile phone so it dramatically reduces corruption.  And they measure those results with randomized trials which produced really useful data.  They started in Kenya but now operate in Uganda as well.  So, Google Earth might not be new but the way they've used it to help people is.

When it comes to new technologies, I'm really intrigued by drones.

We've been doing a project with WWF to save rhinos and we're testing out drones.  We realized we can't just keep doing little bits to help; we need to do something more radical.  So, we're trying drones to see if that helps us track and monitor the rhinos.  Who knows if it's going to work?  Who knows if governments are going to impose regulations on where we can and can't fly the drones?

Chhabra: Previously, you were running a program with WWF using Google Glass.  Will you still be offering Google Glass given that it's no longer going to be on the market for retail?

Fuller: Yes, for that project, we asked organizations to tell us how they would use Google Glass.  We didn't want to hear from the head of a non-profit.  We wanted to hear from a staffer.  So, we heard from Sabita Malla of WWF in Nepal who showed us how they could help researchers in the field take notes on wildlife.  

If people tell us, this is how I would use it in very specific and real ways, we're going to continue to help them.

Chhabra: What are your thoughts for Google.org's future? 

Fuller: We've realized that we're good at finding teams to invest in. We consider ourselves almost as a venture capital model, where you look for strong teams who have the power to execute.

However, we would like to do a better job of leveraging all of Google. With the Ebola grant, we decided to ask our users to donate -- something we've never done in the past.  Rather than doing it reactively, in the future, we'd like to do it proactively.  Pick a theme, an issue.  Get users behind it, get Googlers behind it.  It's just an idea though, right now -- wet cement, really.

Chhabra: Lastly, tech for good has been around for a while now.  What do you think is still holding it back from becoming a commonplace idea? 

Fuller: The challenges that we see is that a lot of non-profits don't have strong technologists on staff.  Part of it is that they don't pay enough to attract top-tier talent and compete with private firms.  For instance, charity:water had to go out and hire an engineer to manage the well project. But that engineer was enthusiastic about the cause and agreed to a lower salary.

But it's more than just funding. It's a funding and cultural issue.  Here at Google, we work in launch and iterate mode, which is really fast-paced.  You can't do launch and iterate when you're dealing with humans.  It's just not possible.  You have to think about the implications of everything, if something doesn't go right, or as planned.