Human trafficking claims an average of 21 million people a year, and reports as much as $50 billion to criminal enterprises.

GEN’s⁵ mission is to fight this threat by facilitating communication and technology-sharing initiatives between anti-trafficking stakeholders. The organization found itself stuck in a game of “whack-a-mole”, shutting down websites that would shortly re-emerge under a different guise.

To overcome this problem and tackle full networks instead, GEN built a tool called Minerva, an investigative analytics platform that monitors open data and the dark web. It also connects information like facial recognition and reverse image searches. When the data points start building up, GEN uses Minerva to monitor traffic flow and know where to concentrate their efforts.

According to Executive Director Sherrie Caltagirone, “it doesn’t take any more than a Google search to look at an adult website. You can pull up thousands. And hidden in the noise of consensual sex workers is usually sex trafficking.”

Using data analysis techniques, GEN was able to identify nearly 1,000 traffickers in two months and 100,000 victims in 2017 (twice more than in 2016).

In each of these cases, the nonprofit succeeded by sharpening their focus and showing willingness to rethink their approach. Career starters in nonprofit operations should be looking for ways to apply these characteristics of successful nonprofit organizations and trigger change from the inside.