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buzzword2009

Buzzword (buzz tool?) 2009.6 Maps

Lucy Bernholz

• 2 min read


(Photo by Annie Mole, Flickr Creative Commons license)

(I posted this on July 14 and edited it slightly on July 15, 2009)

In the last few months maps of grant data have started popping up everywhere. Here are a few - launched and in process. I'd appreciate your help in locating more.

  • Philanthropy Insight - shows grant and foundation data from The Foundation Center on easy-to-use map interface. 1.6 million grants and 90,000 foundations - it is a heckuva data set. (Now live, paid subscription needed)
  • Charity Navigator - lets you click on a country to find US based Charity Navigator rated nonprofits doing work there. (Live, free)
  • Changemakers - will be posting maps soon - something more than this world map that lets you find Ashoka items, issues, projects, and competitions by place. (Live, free)
  • SocialActions map - this won the grand prize in the ChangeTheWeb contest and was part of NetSquared also. (Not yet live)
  • GlobalGiving - uses a map interface as one way to find a project (live, free)
  • Kiva - lets you map lenders, lenders can embed maps of their portfolio in their blog or social network page, and KivaFriends have several discussion boards about maps and mapping tools. (Live, Free to Kiva lenders)
  • Tides Center Project Maps (Live, free)
  • Others (please add in the comments section)

This is some distance from where we were in 2007 when maps of change were much harder to come by. Have maps proliferated because we finally have large enough data sets to make mashing them up worthwhile? Have we reached such a point of data overload that any data visualization tool is helpful?

Now that we have them, how will you use them? Do geographic maps of funders or grants data help you do your work better? (If so, I'd love to know what you are doing and how they are helpful). Are geographic maps of raw data the most useful? Do tools like GapMinder - which maps data by time, place and issue - fill the same need in a different way? Fill a different need? Provide a fun distraction but don't really help you do your work?

Can we guess what will come next once we get used to seeing and using data presented in this form? What else do you need? What's next beyond maps...GPS?

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