Resource: iuMAP: A Web-Based Directory to Track Social Enterprise Globally

Ayllu (pronounced ‘i-u’) in media partnership with NextBillion has launched a new resource for tracking social enterprise projects globally: iuMAP.

(iuMAP screenshot)

According to Melissa Richer, Founder and Executive Director of Ayllu, iuMAP will be the world’s largest directory of BOP social enterprises. She writes that iuMAP, in its current beta form, “lists 300 market solutions in 55 countries, and we aim to triple its size by year’s end!”

The Ayllu team developed iuMAP in response to what they saw as a lack of centralized information, a place where one could find easily digestible and “critical information to help the social enterprise community learn from successes, failures and challenges, so that decisions can be made more easily, quickly, and cheaply.” To that end, they developed iuMAP to be:

the public face of Ayllu’s internal database; it is a directory of market-based solutions to poverty, searchable by name, geography, and area of focus. It was built in partnership with OpenAction during the first semester of 2010, and it will continue to be updated in the months to come. We envision it as a valuable resource for practitioners, social entrepreneurs, funders (investors and donors), students, academics and generally those interested in social enterprise.

Additionally, Richer believes that iuMAP can become the missing link in information sharing in the social enterprise world and address the “big question about how to scale the impact of these brilliant ideas to millions more people.”

By this fall, Ayllu plans to have iuMAP:

feature more data and analysis tools. We will map geographies and industries, and topic-specific maps. The first two will focus on microenergy (analyzing data from 20 leading enterprises) and the market ecosystem in Brazil (scope and opportunity). Over time, you will be able to use iuMAP to filter data and best practices of social enterprise with tools similar to Hans Rosling’s Gapminder.

The iuMAP database is a collaborative venture and the administrators welcome your feedback. If you’d like to help them grow their database of social enterprises, please submit your ideas here.

(via NextBillion)

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(Posted by Amanda Reed in Resource – Community at 5:00 PM)

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