Use Interactive Map to Understand Flow of On-Line Donations to Different Zip Codes

I've just been introduced to a web page hosted by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, which hosts an interactive map that you can use to look at donations made in different cities, and/or different zip codes within a city, to charities in different categories. Here is the link.

I zoomed into the Chicago region, then clicked on different zip codes. For instance, when I click on zip code 60623, the Lawndale area of Chicago, I see $500 in human services donations and $465 in youth development donations.  The map below shows that the North Lawndale area has 4717 youth between age of 6 and 17 living in high poverty.  $465 in donations do not pay for many tutor/mentor programs for that many kids. 

The 60657 zip code, located along the Chicago LakeShore, between Irving Park Ave and Diversey Ave,  shows $30,173 in donations for youth development programs and $110,105 for human services programs.  Look at the map on page 7 of this presentation.  It shows that there less than 650 youth, age 6 to 17, living in the 60657 zip code, representing a low percent of all the youth age 6-17 in the zip code. My maps plot the number of youth by community area. Thus you'd need to look at this zip code map to know which zip codes cover which community areas. 

Keep in mind, this only shows one source of donations, so I'm hopeful that there are more funds going into high poverty zip codes than this platform might show. What I'm interested in is the potential to gather information on philanthropic and government funding from many sources, and focus it on individual zip codes, and individual categories of non profits, and then teaching people to use this data to tell stories that help improve support of organizations in high poverty areas.  

Last week I posted a story on the Tutor/Mentor blog, following the high profile shootings of a 9-year-old boy and a 20-year-old girls. In that story I showed maps of political districts, illustrating that preventing youth violence was the responsibility of many layers of government. Take a look. 

My goal is to teach leaders, volunteers, youth and community activists in different neighborhoods to create their own map stories, following my examples, and using platforms like the Chronicle of Philanthropy to show how poverty neighborhoods are under funded by government and philanthropy, and to work together to try to change this over a period of years and constant story telling.

I feel that more people, with diverse talents that are  much more creative than mine, are publishing these map-stories on a regular basis, we'll begin to influence a better distribution of resources into all poverty neighborhoods, and thus the growth of more and better programs helping young people and families overcome the challenges of poverty.

If you're creating such stories, share your link. If you'd like me to give a talk or coach you to take this role, I'm available for a small fee.

2-27-2017 update - the links to the Chronicle of Philanthropy site no longer work. I'm not sure if they have discontinued the site, or not. If it's been discontinued, that would be too bad. It shows how difficult it is to build and maintain data mapping.