Teaming up with InterAction to Map Global NGO Activity and Impact

We are excited to announce a partnership with InterAction to help coordinate member projects and map their impacts. InterAction is the nation’s leading advocate for international relief and development programs and the prime representative of U.S.-based international NGOs in forging alliances to further common objectives domestically and around the world. With 193 member organizations, they represent a significant group of humanitarian effort around the globe. We’ve always admired the work of InterAction and it is a privilege to partner with them on such an interesting and potentially impactful project.

One of the significant challenges in the humanitarian world is effectively aligning resources with need, while coordinating with a large number of disparate stakeholders. Geographic visualization and analysis are great tools to help facilitate both collaboration and effective resource allocation. Stakeholders can use maps to enable efforts by using location as a common pivot point across disparate data sources and actors. Over time stakeholders can correlate resources investment with need/impact to determine their return on investment.

The key to success is making the mapping and analysis accessible to all stakeholders. Contributing data and creating maps needs to a function that all members of an organization can perform in order to effectively collaborate and communicate across the community. This was a great fit with the mission of GeoIQ/GeoCommons to demystify the world of map creation and geographic analysis. The team is enthusiastic to see the data and maps the project will unearth for the humanitarian community and the potential to better optimize the investment of scarce resources to help those in need.