Region Map

With GivingData Version 2.2 comes our newest map visualization, the Region Map. Using Google’s map technology, grantmaking totals by region are available, including a world view that displays dollar totals for each country, as well as individual country views showing totals for each subdivision/region within each country.

World Map

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Country Map (U.S.)

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The Region Map visualization is fully interactive, with a simple mouseover of a country to see total amounts (grants or payments made) in that country. Also, clicking on a country shows totals for the regions/subdivisions (ex., states in the U.S.) within that country.

And not only can grantmaking be viewed in various regions, but totals and regional allocations of grantmaking dollars can be viewed at the program level. The below example shows Climate Change funding activity across the United States, with aggregate totals for each state.

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And just as with the Cluster Map visualization, the Region Map utilizes GivingData’s revolutionary geocoding engine, enabling all of your grantee addresses to be automatically assigned a latitude and longitude.

Under the Hood – System Enhancements

We just took a huge step forward towards making GivingData not just a grantmaking analytics and business intelligence tool for working with GIFTS data, but to becoming a data management tool in its own right, allowing organizations to supplement their GIFTS data with data stored and managed in GivingData. You can see examples of this capability in the geocoding of grantee addresses and the integration of this geographic data in our map visualizations. In the future we will be adding the ability to track evaluation and outcome data to provide the full view of the grantmaking cycle. Stay tuned!

Last year we added our first map-based visualization, the Cluster Map, to GivingData. At the time, we promised more maps, and now we’re happy to announce the Regional Map. The Regional Map will show grant and payment amounts in aggregate by country as well as by subdivision within countries (ex., states within the United States, provinces within Canada, etc.). Below is a screenshot of what these maps will look like.

World Map

U.S. Map (Sample Country)

Stay tuned for an upcoming announcement about Version 2.2 soon!

In the future we’ll be adding more personalization features as well as more functionality around role management and levels of access.

For current clients, to inquire about deploying this new feature, contact us at info@givingdata.com or 617.500.3399.

We were excited to see so much discussion around data visualization, business intelligence, and just generally all of the talk about how philanthropic organizations are using data, both internal and external, to inform their strategic thinking as well as their operational focus. My favorite session was one led by the Ford Foundation where they talked about how they were using their grants management platform in combination with other dashboard applications, and even their website, to communicate and better manage their strategic grantmaking initiatives. It was a clear example of how grantmaking strategy, technology, and design can combine to improve clarity of mission and drive internal and external communication.

In a meeting with MicroEdge’s CEO Preston McKenzie and CTO Benny Melumad I got an up close look at new GIFTS Alta, the next generation of MicroEdge’s flagship product. Alta is a big step forward for the product, introducing a customizable dashboard for users with charts and report widgets. While not a complete Business Intelligence (BI) solution, it provides some richer views of the data in GIFTS that were not previously available in the product. We’re excited to see the GIFTS platform evolving and stepping up to meet the more demanding data needs of grantmaking organizations, which only helps further our work with GivingData and our clients using GIFTS.

Like 2010, the TAG 2011 Conference was informative and engaging event. We’re looking forward to the 2012 conference. See you next year!

-Alf Gracombe

The session is titled Data Driven Innovation and promises to be a fruitful discussion about the trajectory of data use in the nonprofit sector — how the abundant amounts of data can be used to reflect and project, inform decision-making, and tell stories. Gracombe will be showing examples of GivingData and talk specifically about how the data visualization tools embedded in the platform are being used by grantmakers to better understand and work with their grants data.

GivingData will also be present at one of the breakfast roundtables on Tuesday morning at the conference.

Learn more about the 2011 TAG Conference.

We’ll have more information when we officially release this new version. But it’s an exciting development and one we’ll be building on in the future. We have plans to increase personalization capabilities, as well as improve grant portfolio management based on user accounts in GIFTS. More to come . . .

View a short video demo of this new functionality below:

Our commitment to our clients who use GIFTS is to stay abreast of developments on the GIFTS platform. And we’ve done that and a little bit more. Not only can individual grants be seen with their code allocations, but aggregate views of grants data reflect the allocation values as well. If you’re viewing your grants made to your Education program, the total grant amount sum will reflect partial amounts for grants where less than 100% of the amount is allocated to the Education program.

So, all of our modules work seamlessly with this new functionality. All list displays of grants or payments will show grants or payments with an allocation in italics. Therefore, you always know if what you might be looking at is a partial grant or payment amount and not the whole thing.

Existing clients receive this update for free. Please contact us at info@gracombe.com for more information.

Read more about GIFTS version 6.4.