Show Your Story With Maps
Ali Levine, NTEN Special Projects Fellow
Storytelling is one of the oldest and most powerful communications strategies, but many nonprofits become so focused on providing facts, figures, and statistics that our communications and marketing becomes dry and tedious. We forget that what we really need to do to get people excited about our cause is to start with a compelling story. One session (materials here) at the NTC focused on the art of storytelling and how to do it well. Although many of the same rules apply, not all storytelling techniques are in a text-driven, once-upon-a-time format.
For example, there is something about maps that makes sense to the human brain. A good map has the power to get across a huge amount of information in just a few seconds, quickly and effortlessly giving a sense of scope and context. Interactive maps create a visual story and give an easily accessible starting place from which users can explore at their own pace based on their own interests. Many nonprofits have caught on and are telling their stories with online mapping tools like Google Earth.
The Jane Goodall Institute has done an amazing job of using Google Earth to tell stories of the chimps they are fighting to save. By clicking on the Gombe Chimpanzee Blog icon in the Global Awareness layer of Google Earth, you are taken to Tanzania, the starting point of your journey. And it’s amazing how journey-like it really seems. There is something incredibly engaging and fun about virtually flying over the globe. After “arriving” in Tanzania, you can read the story of a particular chimp or the story of an event or activity that took place at the particular site. Each not only tells the story in text, but through pictures, videos, and links to more information about chimps, their habitat, and the work of the Goodall Institute.
ILoveMountains.org, a coalition of seven nonprofits working to end mountain top removal mining, also uses interactive maps to tell their story. From the same Global Awareness layer in Google Maps, the “Appalachian Mountaintop Removal” icon zooms you over to West Virginia and Kentucky, where you can see how many mountains and communities have been destroyed by this radical form of coal mining. While reading that there are 474 mountain top removal sites throughout Appalachia seems bad, there is something about seeing them clustered on a map that really gives you an understanding of the scope of the problem. Clicking on particular mine icons shows you before and after photos and tells the story of the environmental and human costs of mountain top removal, often in a resident’s own words.
The Goodall Institute and ILoveMountains.org aren’t alone in using maps to tell the story of their cause. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has mapped out the crisis in Sudan, showing the villages that have been damaged and destroyed in Darfur. The United Nations Environment Programme is chronicling our changing environment, and the World Wildlife Fund has put information about many of their conservation programs around the world on Google Earth as well. Organizations are also using interactive maps to show where their supporters live, enabling people to get a sense of their role in a larger network (although care should be taken not to reveal people’s actual addresses), and to provide easy searching for services like soup kitchens and homeless shelters.
Many nonprofits can use interactive maps to personalize their stories and give their mission context. There are, of course, some technological considerations. For example, Google Earth is an incredibly powerful, and, in my opinion, moving resource, but it may not be accessible to your supporters. According to its website, desktop computers more than four years old and laptops more than two years old may have trouble running Google Earth (though my old laptop did just fine). Of course, Google Earth isn't the only mapping tool out there.
Mapping tools have been a hot topic in the NTEN Discuss affinity group this past week, and they've recommended several other mapping tools:
Johanna Bates from Community Partners built a map of public health enrollment sites in Massachusetts and claims to be a CommunityWalk map convert. Here's why:
“They have customizable URLs and map markers, and you can bulk upload data and then edit each data point by clicking. You can also export data. Also, they emailed me right back when I had questions. They are also free if you will tolerate ads on your map, and very affordable if you want to be ad-free--they use a subscription model, starting at $5/month for 1 map.”
Whatever mapping tool you use and however you share your story, just be sure to keep your audience in mind and make sure it resonates with them, no matter how you chose to tell it.
Hi - I'd like to add another mapping site to the list - MapBuzz at http://www.mapbuzz.com. Like the other sites you can create and share maps. You can also create communities, which are users that work together to jointly create maps.