Part 1 of 6 - Announcing the Nonprofit Data Scorecard

Check out the Nonprofit Data Scorecard here.

The Nonprofit Data Scorecard has arrived! Before the big unveiling (cue the celebratory trumpets!) here’s a little backstory: In May 2009, our all-volunteer team of nonprofiteers, technologists, journalists and social entrepreneurs set out to tell the story of the nonprofit community as it rode out the bumps and shakes of the still-unfolding economic recession. We wanted to convey exactly what was happening to the sector, where, why, and to whom.

Around that time, interest began to grow around interactive mapping as a tool for visualizing complex data in easy-to-digest ways. Mapping was experiencing a popularity surge in the Bay Area, as smart, semi-informal collaborations began popping up everywhere: from Open Street Map to Urban Mapping to Map4Change. And many of these, we’d noticed, were taking advantage of the web’s open source, participatory culture to build impressive and transparent data sets.

Our project began to take on shape: we’d use maps, social media, and an open source strategy to build the first up-to-date map of nonprofit closures as they happen. We imagined a map of the US, covered by a series of growing red dots tracking the self-reported closures of nonprofits across the country – a bit like watching a forest fire sweep through the hills east of L.A. Where is the epicenter? Can it be contained? Is it slowing down or speeding up?

But before we could call in the army of citizen reporters, we’d have to pull together a base layer of geographic and other data about the nonprofit sector to inform our map. For a crack squad of volunteers, shelling out thousands of dollars for nonprofit statistics at the traditional go-to spots – like GuideStar and Charity Navigator – wasn’t an option. So we went to the public records.

Here’s where things got interesting. While public records of nonprofit data do exist, they’re not at all comprehensive. We’re talking about basic data: organization name, address, description – and whether they still exist. It became clear that if the nonprofit data ball was being dropped at both the federal and state levels, there was a) a new need presenting itself, and b) no way we’d be making that nonprofit closure map without finding a way to get the data.

A new plan emerged: create a map and Scorecard of the quality of nonprofit data records across each of the 50 states. That’s exactly what we’re unveiling today: the first up-to-date and open source map of public nonprofit data set quality, nationwide.

But the larger story at work has to do with data’s relationship with the public. We aim to change the culture of data in the nonprofit and philanthropic sector. That is, we want to help push forward the movement to make basic and essential philanthropic, nonprofit and public data open source, so it can stay up-to-date and be put to more effective use in response to urgent concerns like an economic downturn. We believe that journalists, bloggers, and media organizations are major players and partners in these efforts – and can act as the wise crowd, the agenda setters, the social entrepreneurs, and the flag bearers of the transparency movement all at once.

Please join us! Go here to peruse the map and Scorecard, go here to read about how you can use the map, and go here to lend your support to our application to the 2010 Knight News Challenge Grant.

Thanks for your support!

The Nonprofitmapping.org team