MapAgora, civic opportunity datasets for the study of American local politics and public policy

The views expressed below are those of the authors and do not represent the views of the SNF Agora Institute or Johns Hopkins University.

Authors: Jae Yeon Kim, Milan de Vries, Hahrie Han 

Civil society plays a vital role in cultivating civic skills and democratic engagement. Yet studying it at scale in the United States remains challenging due to the decentralized nature of the nonprofit organizations that constitute civil society. We introduce MapAgora, a set of five new datasets that provide a comprehensive view of civic opportunity across America. Drawing on IRS tax records and the websites of over 1.7 million nonprofit organizations, we examine whether organizations offer civic opportunities, such as membership, volunteering, public events, or civic and political action, and classify them by type (e.g., political, professional, issue-based). The de-identified organization-level dataset includes indicators of civic opportunity, organizational type, and financial status. Four additional datasets aggregate this information at the ZIP code and county levels. We validate that civic opportunity is conceptually distinct from financial resources at the organizational level, while aggregate patterns align with traditional measures of socioeconomic inequality. These datasets offer new tools for understanding civic infrastructure, local democracy, and public policy.

View the article