Why Map Grants?

Obviously, not all grants are place-based. GuideStar estimates that 40% is a reasonable figure for the number of place-based grants. Community development, housing, public health, and the environment may have a large number of place-based grants, while other foundation program areas (medical research, advocacy, social action) seek outcomes that may not be limited to specific geographic areas.

Most foundation program officers can locate, and hopefully will have visited, the headquarters of nonprofits that are being considered for place-based grants by their programs; however, very few can accurately describe the geographic boundaries of the area in which the grant money will be spent (the service area of the grant, illustrated on the next page). They might be able to tell you that it is Baltimore’s Patterson Park neighborhood but won’t be able to locate it accurately on a map. Even fewer will be able to tell you which other foundations are funding programs in the same or overlapping geographic areas. Why should this be a concern?

With perhaps 40% of foundation grants going to specific geographic areas that we, as a sector, can’t describe, we lose a tremendous opportunity to harvest and display information that could make us much more effective at using our scarce financial resources.

If a program officer can see on a map:

* where her money will be spent,
* where other foundations are spending their money,
* which foundations have spent money in the specific area in the past,
* who is spending money in adjoining neighborhoods or communities,
* economic and demographic conditions in the area where the grant is being made,

there is a tremendous opportunity to:

* communicate and collaborate with other grant-makers,
* leverage one’s investment,
* avoid redundancy and waste,
* make intelligent use of up-to-date census data,
* and ultimately to gain a better understanding of the effectiveness of one’s grantmaking.

This is not cutting-edge, unproven technology. It is not expensive technology. For years maps have been used in the for-profit world in combination with marketing and census data to provide an analysis of business opportunities under the name of “business intelligence”. This is how real estate developers decide on “anchor stores” for shopping malls and the “best” place to put a big box store. It works for their purposes; it can certainly work for ours!