Case study – relationship mapping

If you were with us a few weeks ago for our summer workshop, you might have participated in a very lively discussion about Relationship Mapping tools and methods.  The idea for today’s post came to me from Maria Mutmansky, who was the moderator of that group discussion.  This case study appeared in the Chronicle of Philanthropy last fall and highlights the way that the Henry Ford Museum has capitalized on their relationship mapping product.

Of course these tools cannot replace the kind of individual research and verification that a staff member can perform.  But they can help to dramatically increase the amount of work one staff member can accomplish.  And if you are one person working with a data base of 500,000 constituent records, that’s a huge benefit!

Click on the image above to read the original article.

Bookmark this – How America Gives {Interactive}

More of us are tracking constituent and donor densities by state and city in an attempt to better understand concentrations of opportunity, and that’s smart business.

 

But there’s another side to the coin too, what about pockets of human behavior outside of our data bases?  Shouldn’t we maintain some awareness of that too?

 

Yes, we should!  That’s why The Chronicle of Philanthropy publishes “How America Gives.”  And now it’s online too!  At a glance it’s easy to see pockets of population densities where Americans have higher (or lower) than average charitable giving patterns.

 

Drilling into the populations to learn more is simple and the color coding makes it easy to quickly view the cities or counties with the highest giving densities (hovering does the trick).

Click on the image to add this valuable tool to your bookmark inventory!

Bookmark this — Interactive index of data viz resources

298 resources all in one place!  You can select by tool categories like charting, mapping or web-based.

 

Thanks to the creative folks at Visualising data!

Bookmark this – Houston real estate development deals

This incredibly awesome interactive map highlights current real estate development projects throughout Houston.  A savvy prospect researcher would not find it difficult to discover the developers who are behind the big deals.

Here’s a quick example of one of the construction projects highlighted.

A huge thanks to APRA-GH member & friend Will Elliott for sharing this information!

Case study – map view of the donor data base

One of the most frequently viewed posts on the old APRA-GH blog was this Southern Illinois University case study produced by Grenzebach Glier & Associates.

SIU contracted with GG+A to assemble an interactive tool to query their donor data base using parameters like wealth, giving level and giving designation (college) to produce results across a map.

This implementation is amazing.  It clearly required a commitment to a development methodology to achieve the results shown.  But it is truly impressive.  Click on the map image above to access the link to the webinar.  Fast forward to about 40 minutes to see the demonstration.

 

Community foundation atlas

Every once in a while I run across a website that aggregates information in a really great way and I assume that since it’s so awesome, everyone else must already know about it.

But just in case you don’t already know about the Community Foundation Atlas, let me introduce you to this fabulous tool that drills down to community foundations located around the world.

When you start exploring, you can find out more about the impact of community foundations as a group, or explore facts about particular community foundations.

The purpose of the Atlas is to promote the investment and good work of community foundations, including a collection of impact stories from some of the foundations that underscore their commitment to philanthropy.

Enjoy!

 

 

Bookmark this – free demographic data source

Who doesn’t love a free data source?  This particular data source, from the National Association of Counties, is both easy to use and beautiful to behold.  For the casual user, a wide variety of population, age distribution and employment/industry measurements are easy to access with a single click on the color-coded map.

Here’s an example for Harris county.  I selected population group 65 years and older.

 

The color coded counties give a visual frame of reference for the indicator I selected – 65+ years old.  The dark blue counties have the highest population percentages in that age range.

There are quick reference lists of county populations by state and the data can be downloaded, if you want to put on your analytics hat for a while.

 

But wait, there’s more.  A lot more!  Almost hidden at the bottom of this page is another link to view economic status, at the county level with respect to recovery from the recession.  Again, selecting Harris county, this is the summarized report available for the economic indicators.

Can I just say I’m amazed?!