Introduction

The third sector has had an impact on the lives of people, although which people, how much impact, and when did this impact occur, are still important questions that are left to be answered. Third sectors throughout the world are notoriously slippery subjects, where researchers are trapped by patchy data and different definitions of what falls within or outside the confines of a sector (Milosfsky 1988; Salamon and Anheier 1997; Smith 2000; Daly 2007). There continues to be uneven, although persuasive, evidence that third sectors are important in improving the lives of people in communities.

Philanthropists, whether they are individuals, the state, or private institutions, face the difficulty of knowing what organizations are available to provide quality service. This article argues for a more thorough understanding of sector maps. While previous generations of maps have included information about the location and basic organizational characteristics, here we argue that the next step is to link this information with an understanding of when organizations enter into and out of communities. The result is a model of the dynamic nature of the supply of organizational services coupled with the demand for those services.

The article has two goals: first, it applies this logic to a particularly spectacular example of human needs over the course of a 6-month period in Belfast, Northern Ireland by examining the Holy Cross dispute, whereby Catholic primary school girls were impeded by Protestant protestors from attending school without a police escort. The result is an example of ideal maps that could serve to help funders in resource allocation. Second, the case brings out the important concept of organization’s being important means for disadvantaged communities to voice their preferences to those in control of resources. Without the creation of important grassroots organizations, the demands of both communities would have been subsumed into the prevailing narrative that working-class individuals in Belfast solved their problems through violence. The Holy Cross Dispute serves to highlight the process through which voice becomes articulated over time.

The Challenges of Mapping

Mapping is an important exercise for researchers, policymakers, funders, and practitioners. Any success in providing accurate and compelling maps of third sectors have policy implications, as funding bodies could use them to better target resources to the right organizations at the right time. Borrowing from the analogy of a market, maps have typically focused on the supply of organizations and not on the demand for those organizations. Supply-side maps have valuable information as to what types of organizations exist in any given community. Much like a telephone directory is valuable to locate any particular organization, these maps do serve an important purpose as to understanding the scope and dimensions of the sector. At the same time, they do not help policymakers determine who to count onto deliver important services at different intensities of public problems. Given that not all organizations are equally proficient, a useful map would be one that could allow policymakers to steer funding to those organizations that are best positioned to help target communities.

In order to be compelling for policymakers and funders, in making programmatic decisions as to who to fund, it is argued here that maps need to: (1) integrate data on the full range of organizations involved in the given community, (2) provide information as to the nature of the services that the organizations produce, and (3) match measures of public problem intensity to charts of when different types of organizations decide to provide services. Funders, whether they are large foundations, national governments, or individual donors, ideally want to make sure that their funds are reaching organizations that are providing the services to a specific population at a time of need.

It can be very difficult for funders and policymakers to find maps on which they can base their funding decisions. This is not surprising in that creating maps that meet the three criteria require data not only on the voluntary sector in a given area, but also need information about the intensity of public problems. Over two decades, voluntary sector researchers have eagerly attempted to create common definitions upon which taxonomies of organizations could be built (Lampkin and Boris 2002; Grønbjerg 1989). In the United States, the efforts have resulted in the National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities, which is an effort to code every type of nonprofit organization that submits a tax return to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The result has been a massive longitudinal database of organizations that have at least $25,000 in annual revenue and are required to submit tax returns. Upwards of 90% of the American nonprofit sector, although, are not required to submit 901(c)3 tax returns because they either fall below the revenue threshold or are religious institutions (Smith 2000).

An international effort has sought to also create a common set of definitions needed to allow for cross-national comparison (Salamon and Anheier 1997). While garnering great attention and excitement, this effort has been hampered by continued definitional vagueness that inhibits researchers from comparing the strength of the French voluntary sector to that in Germany, not to mention the compounded issues of trying to measure the strength of sectors in the developing world (Heinrich 2005; Steinberg and Young 1998). Even within countries without comprehensive charity laws, such as the Republic of Ireland until very recently, researchers are unable to find consensus as to what constitutes the voluntary sector (or third sector, or community sector) (Daly 2007; Donoghue et al. 2006).

Beyond issues of definition, creating accurate maps is very costly. The United States in many ways represents the best of circumstances when it comes to creating maps due to clear definitions of what constitutes public-serving nonprofit activity. Organizations meeting these criteria and exceeding the $25,000 threshold must submit a host of data regarding their finances and governance, which then is digitized and easily available to researchers. Discounting the fact that a great many organizations fall outside these criteria, there continues to be questions as to the reliability of the tax data (Froelichet al. 2000).

Efforts to provide maps of entire sectors are difficult and costly. Perhaps, one of the most comprehensive efforts, the Indiana Nonprofit Project combines IRS records, records from the Secretary of State, telephone directories, community informants, as well as a hyper-network survey of community members to create a map of 55,000 organizations in the state (Grønbjerg and Paarlberg 2001). This effort has resulted in maps of the types of organizations in operation throughout the state, their activities, the involvement of volunteers and donors, as well as information about holes in sources of organizational information. Unfortunately, resources continually must go into keeping the database of organizations updated.

The second element of an ideal map of the sector would be a measure of intensity for public problems. The sector is involved in any host of public problems running the range from youth truancy, anti-social behavior, unemployment, mental illness, and homelessness, just to name a few. Each of these public problems could require a different measure ranging from the easy to the hard. Tracking unemployment rates in a region could be fairly easy given government-provided labor statistics, whereas having an understanding of its effects at the neighborhood-level could be much more difficult. The amount of information needed, and concomitant costs, makes these types of maps very difficult and resource-intensive to create across large geographic areas.

Even local maps of this type can provide a great deal of value for funders and policymakers. The greater depth of local maps arguably has more value than light treatments of large geographical areas. For example, the Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action (NICVA) has engaged in a series of five State of the Sector reports over the past decade. Relying on survey data of voluntary organizations throughout Northern Ireland, NICVA has been able to determine trends in a sector of 4,500 organizations. The limitations of the studies come from the fact that without a Charities Law to govern the formation of charities in Northern Ireland, there is no way to understand whom to survey. Even with the heroic efforts of the NICVA staff to sample as many organizations as possible, only a small proportion respond in any given wave of the project (Personal communication, October 1, 2007). The data gleaned from this project are substantial as it have allowed NICVA to follow issues of financing, turnover, and resource dependency in responding organizations over a period of a decade.

For a foundation looking to invest in organizations that are making particular strides in service provision for a community, the State of the Sector series would provide little information. Being supply-side driven, it could tell the funder the location of respondent organizations, their size, and their primary beneficiaries, but there would not be information as to where organizations provide services and at what time. By contrast, a project focusing on a smaller geographic scope could survey all of the organizations that have provided a particular service in a neighborhood or community over time. Whereas this type of study would not provide information about the larger changes in the voluntary sector as a whole, it would be helpful for that same funder looking to invest in organizations providing services in the community of interest at a certain intensity of the public problem.

Efforts to map voluntary sectors are very important, with each type of map contributing a different piece of information to a larger understanding of what is going on in a community (Grønbjerg and Paarlberg 2001). Here, it is argued that maps that provide the most information to potential funders and policymakers are ones that include both the supply of voluntary organizations in an area, but also provide the context as to the demand for services. The assumption is that funders, whether they are in the state, foundations, or individuals, want to put their resources to organizations that are providing services of interest to communities when those communities need those services. Following is a map of one particular community that faced an acute public problem over the course of 6 months, which highlights the dynamics of service demand and organizational supply as problem intensity fluctuates over time. This example highlights the need to invest in ideal maps of the voluntary sector.

The Setting for a Better Map: The Holy Cross Dispute

The community of interest for this map is a set of two neighborhoods in working-class North Belfast. Ardoyne and Glenbryn have the physical barrier of the Alliance Avenue peaceline, a 10-m steel wall, to protect each community from bricks and stones; the psychological barrier between Protestant Glenbryn and Catholic Ardoyne is perhaps larger than the peaceline. Over the course of the Troubles, 25% of fatalities occurred within one mile of Alliance Avenue (Shirlow and Murtagh 2006). The conflict was both rooted in, and perpetuated by, working-class decline. Both of these communities have become isolated from the so-called peace dividend following the Belfast Accords of 1998; both feel that the state has forgotten their plight. This is a case of the voiceless developing and using nonprofit organizations as a means to effectively communicate with political leaders indifferent to a community’s plight.

Glenbryn and Ardoyne residents fear the other. Glenbryn is only 1/10th the population of Ardoyne; the residents of the area feel that their shrinking population, due to Protestants moving to suburban Belfast, is due entirely to the insecurity in the face of an ever-expanding Ardoyne population. Stories of pensioners being emotionally and physically harassed on their trips to the Ardoyne Avenue shops indicate the level of fear (Shirlow 2003). By contrast, Ardoyne has a younger, expanding population. Given the unique politics of housing in Belfast (Murtagh, 1999), the narrative in Ardoyne was that the empty houses in Glenbryn should be immediately filled by the expanding population. This narrative serves to exacerbate the feeling of Glenbryn residents that the Catholic families of Ardoyne are looking to storm into their neighborhood.

The siege mentality plays into the episode of interest for this map: the Holy Cross Dispute of 2001. Holy Cross Girls Primary School, a Catholic primary school situated several 100 m in the Glenbryn neighborhood, has existed in relative peace for decades. As in any other primary schools, parents would walk their children to school every morning and pick them up in the evening. In June 2001, this routine was abruptly changed. On June 19, in preparation for the summer season of Orange parades, a group of Protestant men was hanging the ubiquitous Union Jack from the light poles on Ardoyne Avenue leading to the Holy Cross School. While the events have become convoluted in the minds of residents in each community, there is agreement that a car, driven by an Ardoyne resident, knocked a Protestant from a ladder on a street pole while hanging flags (Caddwallader 2004). Glenbryn residents poured into the streets seeing this as an attack on their own people; Ardoyne residents likewise reacted feeling that the car driver was in grave danger. Like many conflicts in the interface areas of North Belfast, a singular incident gave rise to a violent street protest.

The parents of the Holy Cross children were panicked as their girls were trapped in the school, with an angry mob blocking the path. This was the beginning of a 6 month protracted conflict that became an international crisis; images of young schoolgirls crying, angry mobs taunting, and police in full riot gear served to create a situation where the third sector would become a major service deliverer in the absence of the Northern Irish state.

Element One: A Chart of Service Demand

The Holy Cross Dispute provides an interesting case of the voluntary sector service provision because there can be simple measures of the intensity of need of services over time. A natural measure of need in a physical conflict would be crime statistics, such as assaults that occurred in a specific area. This measure is not particularly applicable in this case as members of the Ardoyne community had poor relations with the police of Northern Ireland, leading to the potential for under-reporting of assaults. Given the visceral power of this particular conflict, a measure of media coverage of the event provides a particularly powerful measure of intensity over time.

From June through December 2001, any newspaper article with a significant mention of the Holy Cross dispute was included. As this measure of intensity needs to be related to the ability of different organizations in the voluntary sector to engage in the public problem, newspaper articles from three different media markets were coded: the local Belfast media market, the larger Irish and British media market, and the American media market. The logic is that as different media markets are activated through coverage of the event, different resource niches will also be activated.

The count of newspaper articles portrays a public problem that varied widely in intensity over 6 months (Fig. 1). An initial spike of interest occurred in late June before the summer school holidays meant a hiatus for the school blockade. Over the course of the summer there was no media coverage as the story fell into the larger narrative of a particularly unsettled and violent summer for Belfast. With the collapse of the Northern Ireland Executive and the related drama regarding the decommissioning of IRA weapons, the Holy Cross Dispute was no longer of interest to the media. As the school term neared at the end of August, media interest slowly increased as all signs pointed to the fact that the blockade of the school would restart. The first week of term provided the dramatic and iconic images for all three media markets: crying schoolgirls being shielded from projectiles fed directly into comparisons with American desegregation in the 1950s and 1960s. A bomb thrown into the parade of children that first week only heightened the frenzied media coverage of the conflict.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Article count related to the Holy Cross dispute in three major media markets

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The occurrence of the September 11 attacks at the height of the Dispute explains the rapid decline of media coverage, especially with American newspapers. This lower level of intensity through the rest of the year reflects the agreement of the Glenbryn residents to tone down violent confrontation, which in turn made the conflict less interesting to media outlets. There was a general feeling that this would be a long-term, low-intensity conflict. It was not until the end of November that the Glenbryn protesters lifted their blockade and the Holy Cross students were allowed unfettered access to their school.

Element Two: Organizational Supply in the Holy Cross Dispute

The voluntary sector has played an important role in service delivery throughout Northern Ireland. The sector has grown for several reasons. The direct-rule administration of Northern Ireland (1974–1998) created a series of quasi-governmental organizations as a means to deliver services, being especially mindful that members of the Catholic/Nationalist community viewed the state as inherently Protestant and biased (Birrell and Williamson 2001; McVeigh 2002; Murtagh 1999; Morrow et al. 2003). This community also set up a vibrant sector of community organizations designed to deliver services, such as health care, education, and youth services, which would more often be delivered by the state in Protestant/Unionist communities. Finally, the European Union over the course of 13 years has injected over €2 Billion into the sector in the hopes of building a sustainable peace for the region.

All of these factors have led to the perception, especially pronounced amongst working-class Protestants, that the Catholic community has a sophisticated voluntary sector that is adept at articulating the needs of community members. In this narrative, the sophistication of the Catholic organizations always comes at the detriment of Protestant organizations (McVeigh 2002). As the Holy Cross Dispute indicates there is some support for the idea that the Ardoyne community was very well organized to articulate the needs of the Holy Cross students, whereas the Glenbryn protesters had no organizations in place to provide necessary services.

An ideal map demarcates clearly not only the public problems to be addressed, which in this case surround the Holy Cross Dispute, but also lays out the services of interest. This case focuses on the service of providing voice to the protagonists in the conflict. Given that both communities had felt forgotten in the post-Belfast Agreement world, there was a distinct need from both sides to voice their problems to the media and to the state.

Population ecology models would indicate that there are two major factors influencing when groups of organizations decide to enter and exit from providing services in an area. The first factor relates to an organization’s structural complexity (Hannan and Freeman 1977). Organizations with very simple structures have little organizational inertia. There are few structural impediments, such as rules and regulations, to acting quickly to address a public problem. At the same time, a simple structure cannot buffer an organization from difficulties in the environment, such as when resources dwindle. Therefore, whereas a simple structure would allow organizations to be early movers in times of need, they would also be early to exit when faced with scarcity.

The second factor that impacts on when organizations engage in providing services relates to resources. Population ecology, drawing from ideas of biotic ecology, holds that organizations rely on resources (Hawley 1968). When resources exist, organizations can enter that resource niche. When the resources leave, organizations must cease to provide services. There are two different types of resources: financial resources and institutional resources (Baum and Oliver 1992). Whereas financial resources are simpler to conceptualize, institutional resources relate to the legitimacy that an organization garners by connecting to certain communities. For the case of Holy Cross, the fact that the Ardoyne Focus Group had existed in the community for decades meant that it had gained the trust of the Ardoyne community; at the same time the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission was suspect, in the minds of Ardoyne residents, as it was in their eyes linked to a Northern Irish state that they inherently distrusted (Caddwallader 2004). With both institutional and financial resources, it is important to identify the location of the niche. An organization such as Save the Children has an international resource niche, gaining resources by being publicly involved in providing services in some of the most high-profile arenas of need. By contrast, an organization such as the Concerned Residents of Upper Ardoyne gains all of its resources from the Glenbryn neighborhood (Racioppi and O’Sullivan See 2007, p. 363).

These considerations lead to a framework whereby one can conjecture as to when different types of organizations will engage in providing services in a specific area (Table 1).

Table 1 A framework of voluntary organization involvement in service delivery
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There are four different types of organizations, each entering and exiting in providing services based on their structure and source of resources. Type I organizations have a simple organizational structure and have a local resource niche. For example, the Concerned Residents of Upper Ardoyne (CRUA) did not have paid staff and derived all of their resources from volunteers in the Glenbryn area. Type I organizations will engage early, as they have little organizational inertia, but will also leave early when the intensity of public problem is so great that they do not have adequate institutional or financial resources to remain. In the case of Holy Cross, the first week of school term in September was the most intense in terms of media coverage. Members of CRUA found themselves in front of news cameras from the BBC and CNN, asking to provide voice to a group of protestors who in the eyes of the media had thrown projectiles and bombs at innocent school girls. CRUA quickly found itself overwhelmed and briefly had to disengage to better organize when the intensity of media coverage decreased.

Type II organizations have a complex organizational structure, yet derive their resources from the local niche. In the case of Holy Cross, many of these organizations fell within the definition of quasi-NGOs. The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, organized in 1998 as part of the Belfast Agreement, was officially sanctioned by the Northern Ireland Executive to ensure compliance of the state to existing human rights legislation. This organization did not enter into the Holy Cross Dispute until October as there was concern that its involvement could jeopardize its role as a neutral watchdog. Only after several weeks of public questions to the media by both the Ardoyne parents, interested in the health and well being of their children, and the Glenbryn protestors, concerned about their right to unfettered free speech, did the Chief Commissioner arrive on the scene. Unfortunately, the Commissioner chose to first speak to the protestors in plain view of the parents. From that point on the parents would not cooperate with an organization that they felt to sympathize with “bomb-throwing protestors.” Its institutional resources, being goodwill from both sides in the conflict, were immediately extinguished. The NICHR exited from providing services that very day only to briefly enter when considering the lawsuit of a parent to the European Court of Human Rights later in the conflict. Type II organizations arrive later to provide services, but given a more complex organizational structure, are theoretically able to buffer themselves from environmental disturbances. In the case of the NICHR, the determination was that it did not want to further damage its standing with the Catholic community by engaging in public, face-to-face meetings; rather, its role was to remain outside the immediate conflict.

A Type III organization has a simple structure, yet receives its resources from the international community. Examples in the Holy Cross case would be international envoys and mediators such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu or the Liberal Democrat Shadow Secretary for Northern Ireland. These organizations have little organizational inertia, yet rely on resources from an international niche. For example, the Liberal Democrat Shadow Secretary for Northern Ireland engaged in the dispute several weeks following the start of school term. One would imagine that only after intense media attention would a political figure, one whose party receives no votes from Northern Ireland, become a figurehead in a difficult situation. The framework would assert that Type III organizations would also rapidly disengage when the international resources were no longer being activated.

Type IV organizations have an international resource niche and differentiated organizational structures. They are activated only after a public problem receives international attention and they have overcome their organizational inertia. While late movers, they also have sufficient resources and structure to remain in arenas of intense problems for as long as international resources are available. Two organizations in particular were active in children’s issues in Northern Ireland, Save the Children and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), yet neither engaged in the Holy Cross Dispute. Even though parents and community leaders questioned why they were not engaged, one could conjecture that the short period of intense media coverage was too short to activate these organizations that faced significant inertia. These organizations may have also been concerned about jeopardizing their work with other communities in Northern Ireland, and hence their institutional resources, by committing to support the Holy Cross Students.

Element Three: Matching Organizational Supply to Service Demand

Both Glenbryn and Ardoyne residents had felt long forgotten by their state and society. Glenbryn residents had seen the young and employed leave the area (Murtagh 2002, p. 53); the Northern Ireland Housing Executive had moved a new group of potential troublemakers, members of Loyalist paramilitary gangs, into the neighborhood in trying to keep houses occupied (Personal communication, November 1, 2007). The people of Ardoyne saw both empty houses as well as a change in the Glenbryn community makeup as upsetting a tenuous stalemate between both sides of the Alliance Avenue peaceline. The resulting conflict tested the ability of a whole host of voluntary-sector organizations in their attempts to give voice.

The initial protest of late June, resulting in the premature closing of Holy Cross for the summer, fit the pattern of many other conflicts in Belfast that season. The parade season, frustration over a peace that had yet to deliver a dividend, and communities who continued to rely on paramilitaries for protection, all meant that the Holy Cross crisis was little different from any other conflict. Both sets of protagonists sought means to articulate their demands to the state. The Holy Cross parents started the Right to Education (RTE) Group, meeting in the local community center. Likewise, the Glenbryn protestors formed the Concerned Residents of Upper Ardoyne (CRUA). Each of these two groups faced the daunting task of articulating a message out of many voices. While Ardoyne as a community had a rich tapestry of Type I organizations, the challenge for the RTE was to articulate the parents’ message without being tainted by other messages from the other organizations (Personal Communication, November 19, 2007). By contrast, CRUA was the only organization in Glenbryn; its leaders had no experience in organizing (Caddwallader 2004).

The state did intercede in July by granting a contract to Mediation Northern Ireland, a Type II organization that had been used often to diffuse crises across Northern Ireland. Mediation Northern Ireland faced a daunting task: not only mediating in a seemingly intractable conflict, but also first helping the Glenbryn residents even articulate why they were protesting. Meetings with CRUA were notorious for disharmony: dozens of viewpoints would be advanced, oftentimes with members even disagreeing as to who was leading the group (Personal communication, November 19, 2007). This difficulty was juxtaposed with the narrative that Ardoyne organizations were highly organized; CRUA feared that they would be crushed in any mediation session. For 2 months in the summer, the protagonists did not meet face-to-face; when a last-ditch effort was made at the end of August to broker a meeting between RTE and CRUA, CRUA backed out, turning on Mediation Northern Ireland stating that they were one-sided in their support of the Catholics of Ardoyne (Heatley 2004). Rather risk further damage to their institutional resources as a Northern Ireland-wide organization, particularly one that must be seen as impartial, MNI left the scene.

School term began the first week of September without any dialog between either side. The lack of organization within CRUA was evident in the structure of the protest that first week. Jeering Glenbryn residents threw rocks, bottles, and reportedly urine-filled balloons at the school children, all in full view of the media’s cameras. The intense media scrutiny on CRUA led to its temporary dissolution. Protestors were granting interviews to reporters without a coherent message, only playing into the media story that “brutish Loyalists” were picking on innocent school girls (Ashe 2007). RTE was better able to stand the pressure, although struggled to keep local politicians from hijacking the event to serve their own purposes.

Local clergy members, representing their congregations and not their larger church organizations, also attempted to open the dialog during this intense crisis point, but met with similar problems. They ran the very real risk of being ostracized by their own communities if they were seen to be working with the other side (Personal Communication, November 1, 2007). Only after the conflict had begun to subside were they able to dialog with the clergy from across the peaceline.

As the media coverage began to wane near the end of September, CRUA was able to rethink its protest strategy. Learning on the job, its leaders created a set of rules for the protest, such as remaining silent when the children were escorted up to school, but then verbally protesting the parents walking back home. Unfortunately, the damage was already done in the eyes of the media. The media pressure was enough to push CRUA into negotiating with RTE; they knew that the protest could not continue forever.

In November, the Northern Ireland Executive, a power-sharing arrangement between the dominant Protestant and Catholic political parties, was reinstated. Whereas political leaders previously used the Holy Cross Dispute to highlight the particular plight of their constituents, when they were back in the position of governing they faced the task of finding a solution to the problem. CRUA saw this as a time to push their security demands such as a lengthened Alliance Avenue peaceline as well as funds to improve housing in the area (Caddwallader 2004). RTE sought funding for counselors for their traumatized children as well as assurances that this would not happen again. Through 6 months of difficult conflict, both protagonists developed a coherent message for the state. While residents of both Glenbryn and Ardoyne are deeply ashamed of this event in their lives, the lasting effect has been increasing the organizational capacity of the local voluntary sector. RTE and CRUA were both able to secure long-term funding from the state to diversify their activities in the area.

The Power of Maps: What They Can Tell Us

The Holy Cross Dispute was much more than the media headlines. Two communities felt voiceless, forgotten by their elected leaders and state. The voluntary sector played an important role in developing and delivering the message of Catholic Ardoyne and Protestant Glenbryn to the world. At the same time, only certain organizations were able to fulfill this function at different intensities of the public problem. By using a map that identifies (1) the area of interest, (2) the organizations in operation there, and (3) a chart of public problem intensity, it is possible to identify those types of organizations that are present at different intensities of problems.

Northern Ireland, and Belfast in particular, has a dense network of voluntary-sector service providers. An event, such as the Holy Cross Dispute, was not unique or uncommon at the time. Yet, the state and interested funding bodies were unable to direct the resources necessary to those organizations most able to deliver an essential social service when the public problem was its most intense. While the inertia inherent in any funding body is an important consideration, the lack of a map of the organizations able to deliver the essential services at a scale that fit the public problem partially explains the inability to address the problem in a timely fashion.

This article has illustrated that mapping is important for several reasons. Voluntary sectors now form a vital part of social service provision, yet our understanding of them is vague and ill-defined. By providing a map, we provide legitimacy not only to the entire sector, but especially to those organizations that slip through the formal taxonomies of those who belong in the “official” sector. Maps identify the dark matter (Smith 2000), the holes in our social service nets. With maps being so important, it is imperative that we create maps that are useful to the funding bodies that inject the financial resources necessary for organizations to continue to be viable service providers in their communities.