Wilburforce Foundation Grant-Making History

Maps can be powerful and revealing tools for foundations interested in understanding how their grants are distributed. This presentation showcases both printed and online maps that have enabled the staff of the Wilburforce Foundation to visualize its grant-making history geographically.

Grantees and their focus areas were first mapped. Focus area boundaries were attributed with information about the grant such as grantee name, amount, purpose, and year. Resulting layers provide different perspectives on the foundation's grant-making activities. There are concentrations of funding and denser groups working in a particular area.

To support more thoughtful and widespread use of the information by staff and board members, the data is available as an interactive Web map. The funding density maps can be directly queried, allowing instant access to both the history of grants in a particular geographic area and the details of each organization working there. In addition, grantee data is summarized, which the foundation uses in considering its grants. The Web map, available for staff at board meetings or other venues, also enables users to overlay and query other layers, such as protected lands, and view relations to their patterns of funding.