Community Indicators for Your Community

Real, lasting community change is built around knowing where you are, where you want to be, and whether your efforts are making a difference. Indicators are a necessary ingredient for sustainable change. And the process of selecting community indicators -- who chooses, how they choose, what they choose -- is as important as the data you select.

This is an archive of thoughts I had about indicators and the community indicators movement. Some of the thinking is outdated, and many of the links may have broken over time.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

PolicyMap Releases New Widget

Introducing the PolicyMap 'Widget'!
PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- PolicyMap.com, a national online data warehouse and mapping application, now offers subscribers an exciting new tool: the ability to embed fully interactive maps on their own websites. PolicyMap provides a wealth of neighborhood data through fluid online maps, tables and reports.




This new offering -- The PolicyMap Widget -- is a customizable instance of PolicyMap that displays interactive maps on your website in just a few, simple steps. Like PolicyMap, the widgets can display data at a variety of geographies -- from an address to a block group, zip code or congressional district. PolicyMap widgets are fully interactive -- giving both the visualization of a thematic or heat map and the underlying information for any place you click. 


"When Mercy Portfolio Services (MPS) partnered with the City of Chicago to design, implement and report on the City's $55M Neighborhood Stabilization Program, we created a system called Community Central. Integrating Community Central with the PolicyMap widget takes us to a new level of data capacity and presentation," said Bill Goldsmith, President of MPS. "It allows stakeholders to analyze our work more strategically. With our data and PolicyMap's, we track projects and identify trends affecting our communities. PolicyMap's data warehouse and technology is unmatched in today's marketplace."



PolicyMap uses cutting-edge technology to display sophisticated, fast, interactive maps in ordinary Web browsers. "These are not maps that give you driving directions or help you find the nearest cafe," said Maggie McCullough, PolicyMap Director. "But if you want to track unemployment or home sales in communities nationwide, this is where to go. The ability to dynamically render and customize thousands of shaded maps sets this technology apart, making it especially suited to interactive research and data analysis."



To see a widget in action, check out TRF's charter school investments.

Or embed PolicyMap’s first FREE widget: a national map of county unemployment data. As the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases new monthly unemployment data, your widget automatically updates. 



About TRF and PolicyMap
A CNET Web100 award-winning online mapping tool that makes it quick and easy to gather and analyze geocentric information, PolicyMap is a service of The Reinvestment Fund, a not-for-profit leader in the financing of neighborhood revitalization. PolicyMap empowers decision makers with credible market and demographic data in an easy-to-use geographic information system. For information, visit www.policymap.com or call 1-866-923-MAPS.

CONTACT: Margaret Bradley, +1-267-304-5397 margaret.bradley@trfund.com

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