One day Keith Seel had a revelation that proved transformative, inspiring the design of an initiative that would greatly impact his work as well the work of charities across Canada. Director of the Institute for Nonprofit Studies at Calgary’s Mount Royal University, Seel noticed that, while charities had huge data “diamond mines” at their disposal – T3010 data sets held by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) and census data – they weren’t being accessed. In fact, after contacting the CRA to retrieve the data, he was told the Institute was one of the first, if not the first, that had requested full data sets for research purposes.

It wasn’t hard to see why. “If you look at them, they’re monster Excel spreadsheets, massive columns and lists and data,” Seel explains. “And they don’t really tell our sector very much.” But he and his colleagues were determined to change that. They pondered the easiest way for the information to be shown. More specifically, they asked themselves: how could they help charities understand the communities they serve and vice versa, all the while making efficient and productive use of the information at their fingertips?

From whence it began

Welcome to the Atlas of Alberta Charities, an unprecedented project providing charities and funders with proficient tools that are user-friendly and practical. The seed of the idea was first conceived in 2007 when Seel and colleagues were working on a research project with the CRA on small and rural charities. Trying to determine where exactly those charities were located, Seel knew charts and graphs wouldn’t cut it. They were more interested in manipulating data that comes with postal codes, eventually producing a mapping function from which to view the distribution of charities by characteristics, income and any other variable found on the T3010 form.

When looked at from that vantage point, the results were shocking, said Seel. Whereas many believed small and rural charities were evenly distributed across the nation, the research demonstrated they were, in fact, centralized in a triangle around Winnipeg, Edmonton and Lethbridge and a strip from Niagara up to Montreal.

That surprising outcome proved mapping could play an invaluable role in future research. “We said, ‘Wow that’s a huge takeaway. I wonder if we could do bigger, more intense maps?'” recalls Seel. Next came a pilot project, what he calls a proof of concept. Using postal codes once again, Seel and his team mapped the cities of Calgary and Medicine Hat, producing detailed reports as well as broader summaries of the province of Alberta.

What it teaches us

The project was intensive, its potential effect profound. For one thing, on a provincial level, it offers a better understanding for a sector and how to reach it. When you look at a province as a whole, explains Seel, the tendency is to think the best way to reach its charities is by approaching the towns. But as the first map of the Atlas indicates, the most effective route may, in fact, be the highway system since that’s where charities are ultimately distributed, along the highway. “That’s a pretty important insight,” says Seel.

Municipally speaking, mapping charities can sometimes allow you to see relationships of proximity. When it comes to immigrant services, for example, the logical approach would be to place them in parts of the community with the highest concentration of immigrants. But that’s not always the case. If, after an obviously subjective assessment, one feels a charity with a certain purpose needs to be close to its audience, the map will demonstrate whether and how that can be accomplished.

“If you think children’s services should be more situated in communities that have, by percentage, more children and you start to look at the distribution and see that they’re not in fact placed that way, that would lead to some questions around service and so forth,” Seel further explains. One caution, however. Since the CRA data only provides each organization with one “dot,” a charity with multiple offices may not be fully represented. With enough resources, Seel hopes to rectify this problem in the next version of the Atlas.

Who can benefit?

Both charities and funders can make good use of the Atlas. If recent feedback is any indication, funders are already applauding its use. When receiving grant proposals, decision-makers don’t always know if the proposed service of the applicant charity is situated within proximate distance of the audience it’s meant to serve. And funders are not likely to navigate the murky and oft-complex census data, maps and the like. The Atlas solves that problem in a precise, simple way. Funders only need to flip to the page outlining the distribution of that particular audience and voila, they’ve got the answer. “They can then have assurance that it’s well-situated,” says Seel.

What’s more, Seel has already received a request from an interested funder for a more in-depth mapping report, one focused strictly on the distribution of agencies they fund and where they’re situated. The question they’re hoping to answer is: are we funding preferentially in one quarter of the city or are the agencies well-distributed?

Charities, meanwhile, can use the map to confirm the whereabouts of their intended audience, while getting a good look at competing or cooperating agencies in their geographical area. “It should raise a question if there are three or four similar agencies already in one area,” advises Seel. Charities may decide to move somewhere with less concentration. “It allows for more precision,” he adds.

Intelligent interface

And there’s an added benefit that Seele considers “even more exciting.” In producing the Atlas, the team created an interface, combining the CRA data with the 2006 census data, soon to be moved into the public domain. Exactly how can that benefit you, you ask? “It means that sitting at your desk, you can produce any map you want of almost anything,” Seel explains. Of course, since the interface uses Geographical Information Software (GIS), it’s not exactly intuitive, so some help may be needed, say in the form of a tutorial or some background training. But bottom line, with this new interface, people should be able to produce maps that work for their needs, whether of a charity or a particular community. It will have the greatest utility in urban settings, adds Seel, since in rural areas census blocks are huge and the number of charities small, meaning less information is available.

Next steps

So what now? With such a powerful tool at his fingertips, no doubt Seel wants to expand its reach. “My intention is to go for additional funding to replicate the Atlas for all the provinces of Canada,” he says, adding, “As a research tool, we’ve learned there’s an absolute value in this. If nothing else it should be replicated in the major urban centres of this country.” So far, Edmonton has already put in a request and others are sure to follow.

With the Greater New Orleans Data Center as the initial motivator for his own work, Seel continues to view it as the model to meet. He also has high regard for United Way of Toronto‘s work mapping immigrant populations. “I’d like to understand them better to see how we may link these two ideas,” he says. Hoping to combine the Institute’s big picture map with the detailed data of the United Way initiative, he adds, “The time has passed for standalone [work].”

One thing’s for sure; more resources are needed before any further steps can occur. Seel is hopeful that the Atlas’ advantages of precision and expediency will generate funds as well as requests. And thanks to an intense learning curve provided by their pilot project, this proof of concept, the Atlas team is sure the next edition will prove to be even better than the first. For one thing, Seel hopes it will have larger maps and fewer errors (pay attention to the website version, he heeds, for that’s where any corrections are made). No question about it, he says emphatically, “The next edition will blow your socks off.”

Elisa Birnbaum is a freelance journalist, producer and communications consultant living in Toronto. She is also president of Elle Communications and can be reached at: info@ellecommunications.ca.

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