United Nations Foundation Project 8

Project 8 is a collaboration between the United Nations Foundation and The Demand Institute, a not-for-profit think tank jointly operated by The Conference Board and Nielsen. Project 8 is a digital commons where researchers and practitioners can share and compare information on the evolution of human demand. The platform is powered by Salesforce and was built through the implementation expertise of Accenture.

The United Nations projects that there will be 8 billion people on earth by 2024. As the population grows and changes, the demand for basic human needs such as food, water, and energy is rapidly changing as well. Yet our collective understanding of evolving human demand is highly fragmented, variable, and challenging to access.

Beginning in 2014, the Project 8 founders teamed up with Salesforce and looked to Einstein Analytics to make big, diverse datasets on population and basic human needs more accessible to researchers and practitioners across the public and private sectors, in hopes of helping organizations make better sense of evolving human demand and craft strategies to better meet human need.

In 2015, with the implementation support and expertise of Accenture’s cloud and nonprofit practices, the team has built a digital commons that combines Einstein Analytics and Salesforce Chatter. This will allow the world’s leading experts on food security and agriculture to quickly discover and manipulate key data on global food and agriculture and to discuss that in a first-of-its-kind digital environment. With Einstein Analytics, Project 8 is able to

• Share data more broadly: Users don’t need experience with statistical software packages, and they can access data that may previously have been released only in PDF tables or statistical files
• Achieve a new level of scale: By using a cloud environment Project 8 can meet the demands of the immense scope of a global, cross-sector project
• Make insights available where the global development community needs them: Users can access critical data not just in their offices, but also on their phones, in the field, and in some of the farthest-flung places on earth

Working with Salesforce Volunteers to Innovate Faster

Building a tool to project the needs of 8 billion people is no small feat. Thanks to the donated pro bono time and expertise of a team of Salesforce employees, Project 8 has been able to realize their vision more quickly. The first version of the Digital Demand Commons was demonstrated and launched at The United Nations General Assembly in September 2015 (less than a year after the project began), earning the support and endorsement of the US State Department and other world leaders.

More about Salesforce Einstein Analytics:

Einstein Analytics was built for the modern nonprofit. Faster, more powerful, and more accessible than any intelligence tool to come before it, Analytics Cloud is built on the Einstein Analytics platform, allowing nonprofits to turn information into insight and understand their constituents like never before. Nonprofits in all issue areas are winning with Einstein Analytics. There’s nothing between you and the answers you need. See what Einstein Analytics can do for you.