With the release of lots of new decennial Census data, many organizations are realizing how powerful these data can be. Here’s the problem: the Census bureau has a complicated geographic hierarchy that can be difficult to understand. That’s where the Cicero API comes in. Our spatial data experts have mastered it all — we have compiled and aggregated the data for ease of use with our API and Batch Geocoding service. That includes Census blocks, block groups, tracts, metropolitan statistical areas, urban areas and voting districts. There are a lot of cool things you can do with this.

Let’s say you are a nonprofit interested in who exactly your constituents are. Rather than take the time to do a survey of your members which may or may not produce good results, we can perform address-based census tract or block group matching. That is, we’ll find out the census tracts or block groups your constituents live in. Then, you (or we!) build a demographic profile — based on the Census data for that tract or block group – of your constituents. This allows you to understand your members and reach out to potential constituents in other census tracts or block groups with similar demographic profiles where you might be underrepresented.

Recently, we used our Batch Geocoding service to append Census Tract ID’s to thousands of our clients’ members (shown as red dots).

Or, let’s say you are running an advocacy campaign and targeting specific media markets. We can match your members to their metropolitan statistical area — often used to define media markets. Then, you can effectively tailor a message targeted to where you need to reach an audience.

We’ve done similar work for clients before, check out our case studies. You can also follow our updates on Twitter.