It has been two months since the 2nd NetSquared Conference (N2Y2), and we've been checking in with the 21 projects who attended to hear about how their work is going, and what kind of support they can use from the NetSquared community to accelerate their work.

Today's interview is with Dan Newman, the Executive Director and Co-founder of MAPLight.org, a non-partisan non-profit that illuminates the connection between money and politics. At the end of the Conference, each attendee voted for the project(s) that they thought would have the most impact. MAPLight was the first place winner.

You can listen to the original interview, and a live recording of MAPLight's 5-minute pitch at the NetSquared Conference, on the NetSquared Podcast.

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Dan Newman: I'm Dan Newman, the co-founder and Executive Director of MAPLight.org. MAPLight.org is a website that brings together all the money given to politicians with how every politician votes on every bill. So, you can see patterns of money and politics that you could never see before our website.

Britt Bravo: Where did the idea for MAPLight come from?

DN: Well, as a volunteer in politics, I noticed that any citizens' group trying to get something done really had the deck stacked against it. Whether you're interested in health care, or free trade or environment -- or no matter what the issue, conservative or liberal, that it's very hard to get something done if you're fighting against entrenched interests that have a lot of money to spend on politicians.

I noticed, as I would try and explain this to people, that a lot of people thought money and politics was a second or a third tier issue. They didn't really recognize the central importance of it in social change.

I created this website to show people how the money lines up with how politicians vote to help educate people about the connection between money in politics, and show them that if people want the country to better attend to citizens' needs, that we first have to address the systemic issue of money in politics.

BB: Can you talk a little bit more in detail about how MAPLight works?

DN: Well, you can start with a legislator; let's just say your legislator. You can see the top 10 industries that donate to their campaigns, like the pharmaceutical industry, or the securities industry, or whatever. You can see the top 10 individual donors.

Then you can see how they vote on specific bills. And you can look up any issue, find out bills that were voted on -- either in Congress or California, and coming soon to more states as well, -- bills about that issue, and it'll show you what group supported and opposed each bill, and you'll see bar graphs showing...

For example, if you look up a bill that was in the U.S. Congress last month, the U.S. Senate voted to prevent prescription drug imports from Canada. So this is a real pocketbook issue to a lot of people who pay a lot for drugs and maybe are living on fixed incomes.

The Senate voted to prevent imports, just like the drug companies wanted. On our website, you can find out that the senators who voted to block imports -- like the drug companies wanted -- got about three times more money on average than the senators who voted the other way.

It's all there in bar graphs and charts. It's very easy, appealing and useful. You can also drill down and see how your particular legislator voted, and how much money they got from the pharmaceutical industry.

BB: Can you give an example or tell a story of how MAPLight has created positive change?

DN: Yes, here's an example. So, this guy, Norman Block, from Southern California, he's the president of a small non-profit called the Santa Margarita River Foundation. He wrote an Op-Ed in the newspaper there, called the North County Times, and he was opposing a quarry that was going to be built right by their community.

He wrote a whole article about why a quarry is bad for the environment and bad for the neighborhood. Then he closed saying, "It's no wonder that these three legislators are eager to support the development of Liberty Quarry, after all, they accepted major campaign contributions from builder's associations according to MAPLight.org," and he goes on to cite information from our site.

That's exactly the use we aim for this to be put. When activists and citizens are researching interests that they care about, they can take information from our site, put it into their stories, and make it useful. At the same time they're educating their audience about the underlying dynamic of politics. It's not just about issues, but it's also about money.

BB: What is the next step for MAPLight? What are its goals and challenges?

DN: We started two years ago as an organization, in March 2005. And then after a year and a half of technical work and research we launched our site half a year ago for the state of California. Then in May we launched for U.S. Congress, our flagship product. We want to take it out to do all 50 states.

We are looking for volunteer programmers who are willing to adopt a state and work with us to write some programming code that takes data from Ohio and Pennsylvania and New York and Washington and Oregon, and every state, to take the money and votes data from those public databases and help us put it into MAPLight.org so we can rapidly expand to all 50 states.

In fact, as you know, we won first prize in the NetSquared innovation awards contest for non-profit projects from all over the world. It was announced on a local radio station here in San Francisco that we had won. A programmer heard that announcement, it was the first he had heard of us, called us up the next week, and said I'd like to help. Right now, he's the first volunteer, getting the Ohio data into our system.

BB: What was the positive impact for MAPLight of going to the NetSquared Conference?

DN: We had a huge outpouring of support from people that wanted to help. The first prize award was a real validation of our efforts. It really showed me how much people care about the central issue of money in politics. Sometimes people think of it as a dry issues, but it's really not when you realize how much it affects the real dollars and cents issues and health issues in people's lives.

Other nonprofit groups that were there at the conference saw how our work could help their issues. In the same way as that environmental example I gave. So it was good. We aim to be a resource that helps nonprofit groups around all issues be more successful. To be able to be there at the conference and meet everyone across these different issues was a real good opportunity to show people that our tool can help them.

BB: How can listeners help to move your work forward?

DN: There are several things one could do. If you're interested in a particular research area, like in Congress, you don't have to be an expert on it, you can find a particular bill on our site, and if you find an organization that supports it or opposes it, there's a little button on our site called, "Add an Organization.:

You just click that and you can send us a note saying, "I was reading in Banker's Monthly," or whatever magazine you were reading, you can send us a note that you found out that the American Bankers Association supports "X" bill.

Our research team validates it and adds it to our database. It's kinda of like the best of the wiki model. We get community contributions from people who want to help keep our site up to date, but at the same time our research team checks and validates everything to make sure it's accurate.

BB: Is there anything else you want people to know about MAPLight?

DN: We're going to be rolling out some terrific features that let you put data about the issues you care about, and the legislatures you care about right on your own website. That's going to be coming in a few months. We're going to be using the funds from our NetSquared award to pay for that.

What I'd like people to do is go to MAPLght.org, if you're interested in this, there is a subscribe button. If you put in your email address then I'll send you a note when that feature is ready to launch. Then you can help us by spreading the money in politics message and putting these things on your site in ways that make sense to you.