Google for Nonprofits Blog: Google Maps and giving season

For Nonprofits Blog

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As giving season arrives, we know that many of you are thinking about how to communicate with your donors. Perhaps you’d like to let potential donors know where they can drop off their donations or you’d like to demonstrate where their monetary gifts go. To do this, we’ve seen more and more organizations opting to use visually compelling maps. Check out these stories on how other organizations are using Google Maps to effectively communicate with their donors and make the most of giving season!

Alameda County Community Food Bank has been using Google Maps to help potential donors find out where they can donate non-perishable food items to help alleviate hunger in their community. Through this interactive map, donors can see which drop-off location is located closest to them, find out the hours they’re open, what types of donations are accepted and more.
Alameda County Community Food Bank’s donation drop-off locations

The Shanti Project assists breast cancer patients in coordinating all stages of their care between low-cost medical services, health education classes, emergency funds and nutritional support so they don't have to figure it all out alone. Shanti is using maps to help its donors visualize the need for the navigation services it offers to their patients.

Shanti’s map of care coordination services

If these examples have given you inspiration for creating your own maps for donors, then we’ve got the perfect tool for you. Earlier this year, Google made it easier to create maps with the launch of Google Maps Engine Lite. With Google Maps Engine Lite, you do not need to be a trained cartographer or computer programmer to make your own beautiful, interactive map for your website. In a few simple steps, you can have a map displayed on your website that shows your donation centers, soup kitchens or volunteer locations.

You can start by heading to Google Maps Engine Lite and logging in with your Google account. To add locations to your map, you can either search for and add them one-by-one, or you can upload a spreadsheet of your locations with relevant information. Google Maps Engine Lite will help you map those locations quickly. Next, you can choose from different icons and base map styles to make your map more readable and appealing to your donors. You can add and edit information about each location directly in the map as well, so it’s very easy to add more locations down the line, or remove locations you no longer use. Once you’re happy with your map, simply click the “Share” button to get a link or the folder icon to get the HTML embed code to put it on your website. You can find the detailed instructions to walk you through all these steps in our tutorial.To learn more about Alameda County Community Food Bank, Shanti and how to create maps with Google Maps Engine Lite, check out our Hangout on Air. Happy mapping!
Posted by Allison Lieber and Raleigh Seamster, Google Earth Outreach team