The primary goal of this digital collaboration was to enable the nonprofit organization to efficiently review and ideate strategies to simplify and streamline their internal performance management business processes. It demonstrates how AI can enhance—not replace—human insight by surfacing shared perspectives within a nonprofit team, shifting their mindset from individual frustration to collective problem solving—and help democratize organizational decision-making.

A group of thinkers in the Sustainable Development Goals Thought Leaders Circle (SDG TLC)  were inspired by United Nations’ (UN) General-Secretary António Guterres’ call for “deep and rapid transformation.” The group wanted to leverage the UN and its member states’ openness to new ways of working to propose radically new approaches. They used CrowdSmart and one facilitator commented, “The technology lets participants observe the universe from a different place, to see what's happening in the world from a different perspective.”

As we learn and grow as an organization, we return to early collaborations to identify success factors and continue to improve our processes. This early case study is not a rigorous academic study, rather documentation of lessons learned based on key informant interviews.  When asked about how CrowdSmart helped bring participants to agreement around root causes, Dr. Garcia said, “this changed their minds… the term that comes to mind is empathy.”