NetSquared recently followed up with the N2Y3 Featured Projects to develop these short case studies, with the goal to expand the knowledgebase of best practices for applying social media in the nonprofit context. We interviewed participants from the N2Y3 Featured Project teams to gain a better understanding of the way they used social media to increase their reach and carry out their missions. We are very happy to bring you their stories!

Today's spotlight: MAPLight!

Project Details:

• Name of Organization: MAPLight.org      
• URL: http://www.maplight.org      
• Location:  Berkeley, CA

Project description:

The Presidential Money Race Widget, which we launched in August 2007, displays campaign contributions received by all Presidential candidates.

In January 2008 we released our Congressional Money Race Widget. Similar to our Presidential Money Race Widget, the Congressional version can display campaign contributions received by all 1,500 candidates running for Congressional office in 2008.  

Social media tool or tactic used:

Bloggers, interest groups and citizens can post these widgets on their own websites, and they are updated automatically with timely contribution data. The widgets are customizable in content and appearance to fit in with any website or blog. We published their source code, making them freely available for anyone to modify and use for any purpose. We also created free, open APIs making available FEC summary data for each Federal candidate.

How was it used?:  

The widgets lets web users encounter MAPLight.org's data on other web sites, so they do not have to visit our site directly to see our data. In addition to raising awareness about Congressional and Presidential race fundraising, the widgets steer web users to the MAPLight.org website to use other functions of our site.

Outcome:

The Presidential Money Race Widget and the Congressional Money Race Widget have both been a tremendous success. The widgets appear on more than 4,000 different web pages and are viewed more than 300,000 times per month  

Lessons Learned:

• Bloggers and activist citizens are hungry for tools that they can manipulate and use on their own blogs and websites.
• The visibility of MAPLight.org can be increased by extending their data beyond our website.

For more information:

• See the full list of N2Y3 Featured Projects here.    
• Read all of the N2Y3 Case Studies as they are published.

The work to create this case study series was funded by a grant from the Packard Foundation.