CauseConnect aims to reduce inefficiencies in nonprofit-corporate partnerships by automating matchmaking and campaign management.
By Justin Horne
Non-profits and for-profit companies struggle to find effective ways to collaborate on social impact campaigns. The process is often inefficient, relying on personal networks for connection. Recognizing this challenge, a team of graduate students at the University of Washington’s Global Innovation Exchange (GIX) is developing a platform that facilitates connections—helping organizations find aligned partners, collaborate effectively, and launch impactful campaigns with greater ease.
The Problem: A Complex and Inefficient Process
The team of Master of Science in Technology Innovation students is leveraging the power of AI to enhance match quality while reducing time and effort. For nonprofits, securing corporate partnerships can be a daunting task. “Small organizations usually don’t have anyone who is a specialist in marketing, and they’re also often low on staff in general,” explained Yuetong Lu. “Some organizations may not have dedicated resources to focus on outreach, marketing, or fundraising, which can make it more challenging to secure partnerships that align with their goals,” added Axi Wu. Meanwhile, corporations are increasingly looking to engage in socially responsible initiatives; however, finding the right nonprofit partner can be difficult for them, too. “Many companies are eager to contribute to social impact initiatives but often find the process of selecting a well-aligned nonprofit to be complex,” Wu said. Currently, most people rely heavily on their own networks, limiting opportunities for many organizations. “A lot of partnership-building today involves reaching out through personal connections or cold outreach, which can be time-intensive and uncertain,” said Liu Yang.
The Solution: An AI-Powered Matching Platform
To address these challenges, the student team from GIX is building a digital platform that functions like a matchmaking tool, but for nonprofits and corporations. “There are two key goals,” said Lu. “First, we want to help nonprofits and corporations connect more efficiently, making it easier for them to explore collaboration opportunities. Secondly, we want to improve the overall partnership experience by reducing the effort involved and increasing confidence in the matching process.” The system they’ve developed uses a multi-layered tagging and a filtering process to improve accuracy in matching. “When an organization creates a profile, we categorize it based on focus areas such as education, technology, sustainability, or community development,” said Wu. “By structuring this data, we can use AI to refine the matching process and suggest the most relevant connections.” This tagging system ensures that companies are paired with nonprofits that align with their corporate social responsibility goals. “One of the key benefits of the platform is that it not only suggests potential partners but also provides insights into why they are a good fit,” Wu added.
Insights from User Research
The team from the MS in Tech Innovation program, which is an interdisciplinary degree in engineering, business and design, conducted interviews with over 20 executives, including CEOs and VPs of both large and small organizations. The findings were eye-opening. “At first, it was difficult to pinpoint exactly what organizations needed most,” Lu shared. “But after developing an early prototype and conducting usability testing, we were able to gather meaningful feedback and refine our approach.” Through these discussions, the team discovered that organizations often focus on specific campaigns rather than long-term partnerships, which led to a key adjustment in the platform’s design. “Initially, we concentrated on broad partnership matching,” Yuyang Qi explained. “However, we learned that many collaborations begin with specific initiatives, so we introduced a campaign-matching to better support this need.”
The Role of a Supportive Sponsor: Amazon
The team credits much of their progress to Pawan Gupta, an engineering manager representing Amazon, which sponsors their project. “He teaches product management and design thinking,” said Lu. “His guidance has helped us refine our research process and make meaningful industry connections.” Beyond direct support, Pawan has encouraged a flexible, iterative approach. “He always tells us not to define ourselves by one solution,” Wu explained. “Instead, we should explore multiple options and if something doesn’t work out, maneuver into another (or a combination of them.) This has helped us refine our platform and create a stronger solution.” For his part, Pawan says he has been impressed with the student team so far. “They come to our weekly meetings prepared with detailed updates on their progress and I appreciate their dedication and enthusiasm.” Pawan says the team’s early research into the market for such a product laid the groundwork for a substantive collaboration and their detailed design documentation of the user workflows as they’ve progressed has been especially well done.
What’s Next?
With a functional prototype in place, the next step for the GIX team is real-world testing.
“We are now focusing on testing the platform with actual users,” Wu said. “Gathering real-world feedback will allow us to further refine both the design and the AI-powered matching process.”
Expanding the platform’s database of organizations is also a priority. “A more extensive network will help improve the quality of our recommendations,” Yang noted.
Looking further ahead, the team hopes to continue developing the project beyond its initial scope. “This project has introduced us to so many inspiring people in both the nonprofit and corporate sectors,” Wu shared. “It’s been incredibly rewarding to work on something that can help make social impact collaborations more effective.”
Ready to work on projects like these? Learn more about the MS in Technology Innovation or apply to be a student.
Interested in sponsoring a project? GIX capstone projects offer corporate sponsors up to six months of access to international and interdisciplinary teams of graduate students in the University of Washington’s project-based Master of Science in Technology Innovation. Learn more here.
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