Non-profit community groups do not have the same research resources that governments and corporate entities do. As far as mapping and GIS data is concerned, the New York Public Interest Research Group is trying to change that with its Community Mapping Assistance Project. The project’s director, Steven Romalewski, wrote me a few days ago:

NYPIRG’s Community Mapping Assistance Project (a team of six people, part of a nonprofit organization) uses GIS to help other nonprofits achieve their missions. We’ve helped more than 300 groups since 1997, but recently have shifted our focus to online mapping services… .

For us, our mapping sites all part and parcel of an effort to “democratize” data and provide powerful new tools with a community-based focus. Each site uses GIS technologies that few other nonprofits have tapped into, but that government agencies and the private sector have used to great effect. The websites use government data in in new and innovative ways, often to provide services that most government agencies would never provide. And they give local neighborhoods and individuals a window on their world that would’ve been daunting, at best, and maybe impossible for the average citizen or block association to obtain. The sites have helped level the “playing field” in New York to a great extent, so public agencies and large companies don’t have a monopoly on information.

For links to some interesting sites that have been assisted by the project, I’ll point you to Social Design Notes’s post; Steven contacted them too, but they beat me to the punch. Have a look.