Nonprofits
The hardest part is not publishing the map, it is the map still being true in March.
Publish your branches, drop-ins and collection points so people can find help nearby, and let local volunteers keep their own entry right.
Bring your location data
CSV import, Google Sheets sync or dashboard edits.
Shape the visitor journey
Search, filters, hours, directions and custom actions.
Match your site
85+ available settings, markers and provider map styles.
What your network looks like
Branches, food banks, drop-in sessions, warm spaces and collection points run largely by volunteers, many of them in borrowed premises: a church hall on Tuesday mornings, a library corner on alternate Thursdays, a bin inside somebody else's shop.
Why a generic map falls short
No other network's data rots this fast. The volunteer who ran the Tuesday session moved house, the hall changed its lock, nobody told the website, and someone in need travels to a closed door. Tools built for a paid marketing team assume a person whose job is the list, and here the list is kept by whoever remembers, so editing has to take thirty seconds and be safe to hand out.
What visitors need to do
- Hours that are two hours a week, not nine to five, and sessions that run fortnightly
- Say what a site actually offers: food, clothing, advice, a warm room, a place to leave a donation
- Let a regional coordinator correct their own entries without an admin account or a web developer
- Keep the running cost small enough that it is defensible on a grant report
How Handled covers it
- Team roles of owner, admin and editor, so coordinators can fix their own sites without reaching billing or design
- Google Sheets sync with change review: volunteers keep the sheet they already keep, and every create, update and conflict is previewed before it applies, with a missing row never silently deleting a site
- Opening hours per site with live open and closing-soon status, which is what a fortnightly two-hour session needs
- Filterable tags for what is offered on the day, and a service radius for outreach that travels rather than sits at an address
- Bring your own Google or Mapbox key, so map usage sits in your own account at provider cost rather than being resold to you
Not every nonprofits business is the same
Food banks and pantries
Two hours on a Tuesday in a church hall, sometimes fortnightly, sometimes term time only, and at many of them a referral voucher is needed before anyone can be helped. Someone arriving without one, or on the wrong week, has spent a bus fare they did not have, so the session pattern and the referral rule matter as much as the address.
Advice and crisis services
Debt, housing, immigration and domestic abuse services, where some addresses must never be published at all. The entry has to work as a phone number and a general area rather than a door, and the detail that decides whether someone travels is whether the service covers their situation and whether an appointment is needed.
Donation and collection points
A bin inside somebody else's shop, a locker in a supermarket foyer, a collection box at a leisure centre. The hours belong to the host, not to you, and the host can move or remove the point without telling anyone. What a donor needs to know is what is accepted there, because the wrong donations cost the charity money to dispose of.
Outreach and mobile services
A van on a weekly route, a nurse covering a district, a warm bus in winter. There is no fixed address to publish, so the entry is an area with a radius and a schedule in plain words. These are also the entries most likely to change at short notice when a volunteer, a vehicle or the funding for it disappears.
Setting it up
1. Find who actually holds the list
It is usually a spreadsheet, sometimes three, and often the newest one belongs to whoever last did a funding report. Merge them and mark each entry with the date a real person last confirmed it. Anything unconfirmed for a year should be checked before it goes on a public map rather than after someone travels to it.
2. Put the session in the hours, the pattern in words
The weekly slot goes into opening hours so the live open and closing-soon status works. Anything the hours field cannot express, alternate Thursdays, term time only, closed during August, goes in a custom field or the description where the visitor reads it before setting off.
3. Tag by what is offered on the day
Food, clothing, advice, a warm room, somewhere to leave a donation, and whether a referral is needed. These are the filters that turn a map of pins into an answer for someone in difficulty, and they cost nothing to maintain once the vocabulary is agreed across regions.
4. Give coordinators the editor role
Editors can fix their own entries without reaching billing, plan or design, so keeping the map true becomes a thirty second job for the person who already knows. Write one short page telling them what to change and what to leave, and hand it out with the login.
5. Set a review rhythm and keep it cheap
Run a quarterly pass where each coordinator confirms their entries, through the Google Sheet they already keep if that is easier than logging in. Sync change review previews every create, update and conflict, and a missing row never silently deletes a site, which is the failure mode a volunteer-kept sheet produces most.
What to prepare before you publish
You do not need a perfect data system to start. A clean first list is enough to test the visitor journey, then you can keep it current from the workflow that suits your team.
- Location name and address
- Phone, website or booking link
- Categories, products or services
- Opening hours and special hours
- A map provider key
- The page where the locator will be embedded
Questions we get asked
Can a refuge or crisis service be listed without publishing its address?
Yes. Place the entry on a town or district rather than a doorway, leave the street address out of the published fields, and let the phone number and description carry the service. Someone in danger gets a way to make contact and a sense of the area covered, and the building stays unlisted. Decide this service by service before importing, because a spreadsheet full of addresses will otherwise publish one by default.
Can volunteer coordinators fix their own entries without an admin account?
Yes. Give them the editor role, which reaches locations but not billing, plan or design, so a correction takes half a minute. That is the only way a volunteer-kept map stays true. Roles cover the whole account rather than one region, so hand the login out with a short page saying what to change and what to leave alone.
How do we show a session that runs fortnightly or only in term time?
Put the weekly slot in opening hours so live open and closing-soon status works, and put the pattern in words the visitor reads first: alternate Thursdays, term time only, closed through August. That goes in a custom field or the description. Someone arriving on the wrong week has spent a bus fare they did not have.
Is there a charity rate for a location finder, and what does it cost otherwise?
There is no separate charity rate today. Plans start at $19 a month for up to 200 sites, with a 7 day trial that takes no card and no free plan afterwards. The saving worth knowing is that the map key is yours: Mapbox or Google bill your own account at their rates, including whatever allowance they give you, rather than the map being resold with a margin on it.
What stops a mistake in the volunteer spreadsheet wiping a site off the map?
Google Sheets sync previews every create, update and conflict before it applies, and a row that has gone missing from the sheet never silently deletes a site. You read the diff and approve it. That is the failure mode a shared, volunteer-kept sheet produces most often, so it is the one the sync refuses to perform quietly.
Can a donation point show what it accepts and whose opening hours it keeps?
Yes. What is accepted goes in as filterable tags, and the hours belong to the host rather than to you, so load the shop or leisure centre hours and say in the description who runs the building. Wrong donations cost a charity money to dispose of, which makes the accepted list the most useful thing on the card.
If you need something that is not here
Handled is small enough to build to order. If your trade needs a field, a filter or a behaviour the locator does not have yet, say so and we will tell you honestly whether it is a week away or not something we will do.