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One Year Later: N2Y3 Featured Project, Open Green Map, Shares Success Story
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: Open Green Map!
Project Details:
- Name of Organization: Open Green Map
- URL: http://www.opengreenmap.org/
- Location: New York
Project description:
Open Green Map is a mapping resource designed to display green living innovation, nature, and social and cultural resources in [the user's] home. It was designed to collect from users information from their varied experiences. The overall goal is to help people green their own community while enabling them to learn from other successes.
Social media tool or tactic used:
Mapping (via Google API).
How was it used?:
While it's still a long way from launch, it has made possible 500 projects in 55 countries. Until now, emphasis has been on printed maps and this tool has been set up to see the site evolve with users. At present, they have 23,000 users working with 30-something maps. They have also created sizable database for all of this collected data.
Outcome:
The site has welcomed as many as 700 people in the day and it has been a finalist in various contents, where they've met many potential data-sharing or content partners. Further, they've seen 150 articles or blogs published about the project.
Lessons Learned:
They have learned from other groups met at conferences, and have had follow-up conversations with experts there. They've also learned from the various NetSquared sites, which house various resources. They've earned from the NetSquared blog and through them come into contact with a bunch of different people. The prize money, they claimed, has given them the intensive time to focus.
- 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.
- Amy Sample Ward's blog
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Clarifications
thanks Amy, for this nice post! Our story is complex, so a few clarifications:
Our organization is called Green Map System, and we're based in NYC, rather than DC. Our social mapping platform's launch will be celebrated June 5 on 5 continents, click http://GreenMap.org/ogm-launch to join the party! There are about 50 Open Green Maps on the platform now - we count over 550 locally-led Green Map projects in 55 countries since 1995 -
We also have not received a grant from Packard Foundation (yet!) but very happy to count the Surdna Foundation among our newest supporters, following the opportunity to meet Vince Stehel at N2Y3! Find more supporters at http://OpenGreenMap.org/sponsors - we'd love to hear from others interested in supporting and using this platform to connect with local green living sites worldwide.
Thanks!
Thanks for adding clarifying information to the overview! I've updated to reflect your proper location.
The note about Packard is to clarify that the funds used in creating this series of case study overviews of all N2Y3 Featured Projects was from Packard; not to imply that Project teams received funding from Packard. I've also made a slight change to hopefully make this more clear.
Thanks again!