Recently in our company newsletter we announced a new partnership with TechSoup Global – a nonprofit organization dedicated to making technology and technology education available and affordable to other nonprofits worldwide – to offer  a new Cicero API account type (5,000 free credits to be used for any of Cicero API’s address-based district matching or elected official data lookup web services) through TechSoup’s product donation program.

Why would we choose to give Cicero API credits away for free?  There are several very good reasons for this decision (it’s not just the fresh spring air getting to our heads).

As a company, our mission is to apply geographic data and software to promote more dynamic and sustainable communities.  Our B Corporation status is part of this commitment and we are dedicated to working with nonprofits to meet their unique spatial analysis and mapping needs.

We created Cicero several years ago for a local nonprofit arts advocacy organization who needed to quickly mobilize their members to contact their own city council member to advocate for preserving much needed funding for the arts. Based on their need for an inexpensive and rapid way to match constituents to local elected officials, we created the Cicero API which they were able to easily integrate into  their website to be used during the member sign up process and into their contact management system.

Additionally, we wanted to provide a way for smaller nonprofits to explore the use of the API on a small scale so they could evaluate the value of district matching prior to making the decision to purchase a larger batch of credits at our nonprofit rate.  Currently, our nonprofit clients use the Cicero API to meet a wide variety of goals:

• Stamp their member records with their elected officials’ contact information in order to conduct automated ‘Contact your legislator’ campaigns by email, phone, fax or snail mail.
• Segment their address records by legislative district to better understand their constituents/members, advocate for a particular issue, better target their outreach campaigns, etc.
• Provide website visitors with an address-based district matching and elected official lookup tool

A couple details about the Cicero API account through TechSoup:

• Nonprofits can request a donation of Cicero for a basic administrative fee of $25.
• Each batch of credits is good for one year from date of purchase.
• If the organization uses all 5,000 credits before they are eligible for another account through TechSoup, they can purchase additional credits directly from us at a reduced nonprofit rate.

As a reminder, the Cicero API not only provides easy access to address-based district matching but also to maps of each legislative district, contact information for local, state, and national elected officials in the United States and data for legislative officials and election events around the world.  The service includes coverage in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.  The Cicero team of GIS Analysts and political data researchers continue to add foreign legislatures to the data collection based on client requests.

The database also includes district matching for U.S. police districts, school districts, and watersheds.  All told, the Cicero system now holds over 10,000 legislative boundaries and information on nearly 13,000 elected officials.  The API currently provides data to public and private web applications for newspapers, election watchdog groups, philanthropic foundations, unions, arts organizations and private commercial firms.  Azavea also operates an off-line batch service for organizations that have ad hoc district-matching needs.

Cicero’s purchase page on the TechSoup website: http://www.azavea.com/techsoupcicero

TechSoup Global is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization working towards the day when every nonprofit, library, and social benefit organization on the planet has the technology knowledge and resources they need to operate at their full potential. It provides technology information to organizations all over the world. TechSoup Global continues to innovate with a goal of bringing increased resources and capacity to organizations working diligently on their social missions. In addition to the Cicero API, TechSoup Global has a network of more than 40 corporate donor partners including Microsoft, Cisco and Symantec. For more information about technology donations and resources, visit www.techsoup.org