By Sedora Tantraphol

If you’re in the nonprofit world, you’ve probably heard the big news that Foundation Directory Online and GuideStar — two leaders in the social sector known for their information, tools, and resources critical to fundraising — merged in early February to become Candid. This week, they hosted a webinar to talk through what users can expect from the merger, including what will stay the same and what will change.

We listened in so you don’t have to. Here are our key takeaways from the webinar:

What’s staying the same

● All the products and services we’ve come to use and love will remain available.
● There are no price increases planned at this point.

Planned service changes #TeamMoonsail is excited about

Increasing data efficiency through standardization: Candid is combining FDO and GuideStar’s technical power and vast informational reach to standardize data in the social sector (think: nutrition labels, which present the same information in a standardized way to allow quicker decision-making). Their goal is to decrease the time nonprofit organizations spend filling in the same data across different platforms. #TeamMoonsail hopes this will help the industry move toward a “common application” (or at least parts of it) for grantseekers.
Integrating data: Candid is committed to improving data integration from Facebook donations and AmazonSmile and is examining how more targeted data on donors (and on nonprofits) can increase donations. For example, they might begin to build out “lists” that are separated by issue area so potential donors can more easily search for an issue they want to support and see all available options. This provides more visibility to nonprofits (especially the smaller, lesser-known organizations), and makes it easier for donors to make informed decisions and connect with the organizations that best fit their interests.
Improving predictive analytics: Currently, nonprofits have to wait for annual reports about last year’s giving totals by issue area, and then make assumptions regarding the upcoming year’s forecast in order to adjust fundraising pipelines. With Candid, nonprofit executives will be able to more effectively forecast and plan for their organization’s financial sustainability, using improved predictive analytics. Candid plans to feed their data into new algorithms that can predict giving by sector in the upcoming year (based on trends in giving for the previous year, the current year, wider societal trends, etc.).

Still have questions about how this change might affect you? Contact us or share your questions with the Candid team on Twitter at @CandidDotOrg.