User Guide

1. Start with the demo or your own file

Open the app and you'll find the demo dataset already on the map: 450 synthetic members of a fictional NYC-area organization. Every name, address and email is invented, so explore freely.

For your own data, click + Add New Data and upload a CSV or Excel file with one row per person. Addresses are placed on the map for you. If your file already has latitude and longitude columns, that step is skipped and no address leaves the tool.

Without an account (Explorer), you can map one file of up to 100 addresses or 500 rows with coordinates, and see districts shade by your count. A free Grassroots account adds the district breakdown, charts, CSV export, saved datasets, and higher limits.

2. Your data and privacy

Before anything is stored, District Mapper shows which columns look like personal information and asks what to do with each one:

• Keep: stored as it is.
• Discard: used for this session only, then thrown away. For an address, that means it places the point on the map and only the coordinates are kept.
• Encrypt: stored in encrypted form and shown normally to you in the app and in exports.

You can save your choices as a standing policy for your organization on your account page. Columns that look like Social Security numbers or bank account details are always removed, on every plan, with a clear notice. Detection can miss things, so check the review screen.

What encryption does and doesn't protect. Encryption protects against a breach, not against us. The application holds the key so it can show your data back to you. A stolen copy of our database would be useless to an attacker, but encryption does not put your data beyond North Arrow's technical reach. Our commitment not to look at it is a policy promise, set out in the Data & Privacy Policy.

Small numbers are protected by default. In what you share (one-pagers, links, PDFs, map images) a district with fewer than ten of your records shows a total only, never a breakdown. You can turn this off in Account settings.

What leaves the tool. Personal information never reaches the AI features and never appears on a one-pager. The weekly Policy Pulse email lists bill numbers, titles and statuses only.

3. The map

• Boundaries. Turn on congressional and state legislative districts, school districts, counties, ZIP codes, tribal lands, and council districts in 15 cities from the sidebar. Every district shades by how many of your records fall inside it. Type into Look up an address… to see every district an address is in.
• Your own boundaries. Advocate and Coalition accounts can use + Add custom boundary to upload GeoJSON files, with no limit.
• The breakdown. The analysis panel counts your records in every district. It also names the representative for congressional and state districts, and the council member in New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles.
• One district. Click a district, then Zoom In & Analyze, to chart your own fields for the people inside it. Names and emails are never charted.
• Colour by. With one dataset selected, shade the map by a column's total, average, max or min instead of the count. Districts with fewer than ten records show the count only in what you share, unless you've turned small-count protection off. Advocate accounts.
• Filters and segments. Filter by any field, combine conditions with AND or OR, and use Save current filters to keep a segment for later.
• Export. Download your spreadsheet with every district added as new columns (any signed-in account). Advocate accounts can also save a PDF report.

4. Policy Pulse

Policy Pulse is an Advocate feature. Open it from Policy Pulse in the top bar. It has four tabs.

• Scan. Choose a legislature: Federal (the U.S. Congress), State (any state or DC) or City (the New York City Council). Describe your organization and add keywords if you like. District Mapper suggests up to five search terms for you to confirm, then scores current bills from 0 to 100 for relevance and shows those scoring 40 or more. Your past searches are saved, and any results page can be shared as a link or downloaded as a PDF.
• Tracked. Click Track on any bill, then mark it Support, Oppose or Watch, and add notes. When a tracked bill's status or latest action changes, it shows the next day under Status changes, with a count on Policy Pulse in the top bar. Every Monday, your organization's email gets a summary of changes and new matching bills; it isn't sent in a week with nothing new. To stop it, write to us.
• Find by representative. See the bills a legislator sponsors. The representative links in the map's breakdown open this tab.
• Paste a bill. Enter a bill number or a link to the bill to open it directly.

Each bill has its own page with its summary, sponsors and history. Where our people are shows, for each sponsor, how many of your records live in their district, one column per dataset; counts under ten show as “<10”. Map sponsors' districts opens the map on that chamber’s districts alone, with those districts selected.

Congress and the busiest statehouses are refreshed nightly. Other states are searched live, which is slower and returns fewer bills, and the page says so when that happens. The New York City Council comes from the Council's own records.

5. One-Pagers

One-Pagers is an Advocate feature; other plans can build a preview. Open it from One-Pagers in the top bar.

• A district one-pager. Pick up to four datasets, a set of districts and a district. Then choose a template for a legislator, a funder or your board. A one-pager can include your counts, charts, the district's representatives, a map, notes or an ask, and the bills you track that its representatives sponsor. Export a PDF.
• Every district at once. Press Make one for every … to make one per district. You get a hosted gallery and an optional ZIP of PDFs with a summary spreadsheet. Districts with no records are skipped.
• Shareable links. Share a one-pager as a link instead of an attachment. A link is a snapshot: it doesn't change when your data does until you update it. Links can expire after 30 or 90 days, or never, and you can revoke them any time from the Shareable Links tab.
• Bill one-pagers. On any bill's page, make a one-pager for that bill. Coalition accounts can make one for every tracked bill at once from the Tracked tab.

6. Plans

Everything above is labeled with the plan it needs. The full comparison, with row limits and prices, is on the pricing page.

Questions?

Write to charles@north-arrow.org — a person reads it.