MapAgora: Civic Opportunity Datasets for the Study of American Local Politics and Public Policy

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

This repository contains datasets and source files used to produce the MapAgora civic opportunity datasets, developed for the study of American local politics, civil society, and public policy.

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Session Information

• R version 4.4.0 (2024-04-24)
• Platform: aarch64-apple-darwin20
• Running under: macOS 15.3.2

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Dataset Overview

This project provides three core datasets:

• Dataset 1: Organization-level dataset of de-identified nonprofit organizations
• Datasets 2-3: Aggregated civic opportunity counts at the county and ZIP code levels
• Datasets 4-5: Aggregated organizational type breakdowns at the county and ZIP code levels

Datasets 2-5 are derived from Dataset 1 using 01_dataset_generation.Rmd, which also generates Figure 1 and Supplementary Table S2 and Figure S1.

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Dataset 1: Organization-Level Dataset (De-identified)

This dataset includes 1,774,798 de-identified nonprofit organizations. To protect privacy and reduce the risk of misinterpretation, all identifying information (e.g., organization names and EINs) is removed.

Each observation includes:

• Unique identifier:

  • id: a row index used for reference; contains no identifying information.

• Geographic identifiers:

  • state: two-letter state abbreviation
  • city: city name listed in the IRS record
  • FIPS: county FIPS code
  • ZCTA: ZIP Code Tabulation Area
  • is_po: indicates whether the organization lists a P.O. Box as its mailing address (1 = yes, 0 = no)

• Civic opportunity indicators:

  • membership, volunteer, events, take_action: binary variables indicating whether the organization provides each type of civic opportunity (1 = provides the opportunity; 0 = does not provide it or information is unavailable)
  • opp_binary: equals 1 if the organization provides at least one civic opportunity; 0 otherwise
  • opp_mean: the mean of the four civic opportunity binary indicators

• Organizational type:

  • predicted: machine-learned classification of the organization (e.g., religious, political, professional)

• Federated indicator:

  • grouping_value: an anonymized internal identifier used to track federated organizations (e.g., national networks with local chapters)

• Financial attributes:

  • asset_amt: total assets
  • income_amt: total income
  • revenue_amt: total revenue

Dimensions: 1,774,798 rows $\times$ 17 columns

File Access and Format Differences:

Format	File Size	Available At
.parquet	41.9 MB	GitHub and Harvard Dataverse
.csv	125.4 MB	Harvard Dataverse only (not hosted on GitHub due to file size limits)
.rds	286.1 MB	Harvard Dataverse only (not hosted on GitHub due to file size limits)

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Datasets 2-3: County- and ZIP Code-Level Aggregated Civic Opportunity Counts

Derived from Dataset 1, this dataset aggregates civic opportunity indicators and socioeconomic characteristics at the ZIP code (ZCTA) and county levels. Each observation corresponds to a geographic unit and includes counts of civic opportunity types, a composite score and index, normalized indicators, and contextual variables from the American Community Survey (ACS).

Each observation includes:

• Geographic identifiers:

  • state: two-letter state abbreviation
  • FIPS: county FIPS code
  • ZCTA: ZIP Code Tabulation Area

• Organizational counts:

  • n: total nonprofit organizations
  • civic_org_sum: total civic opportunity organizations
  • membership_sum: total organizations providing membership opportunities
  • volunteer_sum: total organizations providing volunteer opportunities
  • events_sum: total organizations providing public event opportunities
  • take_action_sum: total organizations providing political or civic action opportunities

• Composite civic opportunity scores:

  • civic_opp_sum: total opportunity score

• Normalized civic opportunity indicators (per capita):

  • civic_org_sum_normalized: total number of civic organizations per capita
  • civic_opp_sum_normalized: total civic opportunities per capita
  • civic_opp_index: quintile-based civic opportunity index, derived by dividing civic_opp_sum_normalized into five equal-sized bins
  • membership_sum_normalized: total number of organizations providing membership opportunities per capita
  • volunteer_sum_normalized: total number of organizations providing volunteer opportunities per capita
  • events_sum_normalized: total number of organizations providing public event opportunities per capita
  • take_action_sum_normalized: total number of organizations providing political or civic action opportunities per capita

• Sociodemographic indicators:

  • TotalPopulation: total population
  • POV150: poverty rate
  • SNGPNT: single-parent households
  • BROAD: households without broadband access
  • NOHSDP: adults without a high school diploma
  • UNEMP: unemployment rate
  • REMNRTY: share of racial or ethnic minority residents

Dimensions:

• County level: 3,281 rows $\times$ 24 columns
• ZIP code level: 30,988 rows $\times$ 24 columns

County Level Files:

• cnty_counts_cov.csv
• cnty_counts_cov.rds

ZIP Code Level Files:

• zcta_counts_cov.csv
• zcta_counts_cov.rds

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Datasets 4-5: County- and ZIP Code-Level Civic Opportunity Provider Types

Also derived from Dataset 1, this dataset summarizes the types of organizations that provide civic opportunities at the ZIP code and county levels. Each observation corresponds to a unique geography-organization type pair and enables analysis of regional patterns in the composition of civic infrastructure.

Each observation includes:

• Geographic identifiers:

  • FIPS: county FIPS code
  • ZCTA: ZIP Code Tabulation Area

• Organizational counts:

  • n: number of civic opportunity???providing organizations of a given type in the geography

• Organization type classification:

  • class: predicted organizational type (e.g., religious, political, professional)

• Relative frequency:

  • freq: proportion of civic opportunity organizations in the geography that fall into the given class

• Primary provider type:

  • primary_org_cat: the most common civic opportunity organization type in the geography; appears once per unit

Dimensions:

• County level: 29,687 rows $\times$ 5 columns
• ZIP code level: 150,162 rows $\times$ 5 columns

County Level Files:

• cnty_civic_org_type.csv
• cnty_civic_org_type.rds

ZIP Code Level Files:

• zcta_civic_org_type.csv
• zcta_civic_org_type.rds

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Data Description and Validation

• Data description: 02_description.Rmd

  • Produces Figures 2-3 and Tables 4-5

• Data validation: 03_validation.Rmd

  • Produces Figures 4-7