Google.org Offers Geo Challenge Grants

November 7, 2008

Google.org has launched a new grants program that includes Geo Challenge Grants for nonprofit organizations around the world. The program will help NGOs working with global development, climate change, and global public health to create projects using online mapping tools, such as Google Maps and Google Earth. The program is an open application process that will award grants up to $100,000.

According to the sponsoring company, well-designed maps can help organizations operate more effectively; they can convey the importance of a cause in a visual, compelling way; and they can give individuals from around the world a chance to experience the work that NGOs do. For example, the Dreaming New Mexico initiative seeks to encourage adoption of clean electricity and to move New Mexico away from dirty, polluting power plants. Using the Google Earth API (browser plugin), Dreaming New Mexico shows some of the choices available to the state as it considers a move to sustainable clean energy.

There are three levels of funding. A $5,000 grant is enough to complete a small mapping project or a prototype of a more ambitious map project. Examples include maps such as the Women for Women project locations. A $25,000 grant is enough to complete a substantial mapping project using one or more data sources. The map will typically still use a fixed data set, as opposed to a dynamically updating data source. Examples include maps such as the Appalachian Voices Mountaintop Removal Layer with associated "Are You Connected?" interactive Web site, as cited in this case study. A $100,000 grant is enough to complete a more dynamic mapping project, or a system that will enable the production of maps across a number of scenarios. Such a project might include tools that the grantee, as well as other organizations, could use to quickly create maps of a certain type.

Applications, which are open to NGOs around the world, will be accepted until December 22. Google.org hopes to continue with further application rounds next year.

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