Dr. Jin Ai Receives RU-N Chancellor's Grant to Develop a Multimodal AI Framework for Digital Philanthropy
Dr. Jin Ai, assistant professor in the School of Public Affairs and Administration (SPAA) at Rutgers University–Newark, has received, along with Dr. Erya Ouyang, assistant professor at Rutgers Business School, one of eight $50K grants awarded this February from the RU-N Chancellor's Office as part of its Seed Grant Program for their project, "Transforming Digital Attention into Social Action: A Multimodal AI Framework for Digital Philanthropy."
This project will examine the growing “attention-action gap” in nonprofit social media campaigns, where high engagement (likes, views, shares) often fails to translate into meaningful real-world outcomes such as donations, volunteering, or advocacy. The research will develop a multimodal framework to measure how specific combinations of images, text, and other content features shape both online engagement and offline behavioral impact. Using large-scale data integration across nonprofit registries, Meta fundraising content, and real-world behavioral indicators (including donation and location-visit proxies), the project will apply causal machine learning methods to identify when and why attention converts into action. The significance lies in providing nonprofits, platforms, and policymakers with evidence-based tools to evaluate and improve digital fundraising effectiveness beyond superficial engagement metrics. A key deliverable will be the development of a domain-specific vision-language model capable of generating and optimizing nonprofit social media content to reduce the attention-action gap.
Dr. Ai studies the social architecture of science and technology innovation. Her research explains how funding systems, emerging technologies (e.g., AI), and civic actors jointly shape the direction, structure, and governance of public innovation. Using large-scale datasets, she develops computational and network-based methods to uncover hidden patterns in innovation ecosystems and evaluate how institutional design shapes scientific novelty, technological development, and policy outcomes. Her work advances theory on innovation systems while informing evidence-based science and technology policy. Her teaching complements this agenda by equipping public and nonprofit leaders with data and AI literacy for governing complex technological systems.
About The RU-N Chancellor’s Seed Grant Program
The Chancellor’s Seed Grant Program is a strategic investment designed to foster collaboration and innovation at the intersections of disciplines. By innovating at these intersections, RU-N creates and applies new knowledge and solutions that address complex societal challenges. This grant program reflects a commitment to community-engaged R1 ambitions, leveraging the collective strength of Rutgers University as a member of several Big Ten Alliances (academic, research, financial, staff, student success) while amplifying the distinctive contributions of the Rutgers University-Newark (RU-N) campus. Funding priority is given to research and creative works that position RU-N at the forefront of innovation and societal impact.