To help you get up and running with a new GIS project or to complement your existing knowledge, we have developed a set of tutorials to help guide you through some common examples of tasks many nonprofits undertake using GIS technology. As we build these out we will begin to categorize them by areas, programs and issues, for now we have a few to get you going.

If you need additional support, have a lot of questions or just need someone to help you get up and running there are many good consulting groups who can help. In the San Francisco Bay Area, the Urban Strategies Council is a nonprofit who works with many other groups to setup their GIS tools and provides trainings when needed, in San francisco the GreenInfo Network provides excellent help for conservation focused nonprofit GIS work. In other cities try contacting your local NNIP partner organization for help or a recommendation. Consultants can be expensive but a number of nonprofits provide more affordable help and understand your work as an added bonus!

Most tutorials will be utilizing ArcView, in part because this is the most suitable tool for many nonprofits but primarily because it is the most affordable commercial product due to ESRIs grants programs and Techsoup. Some matching tutorials wil be developed with uDig as it is the most mature open source GIS with solid cartographic capabilities.

• How to create Thematic Maps

• Map classification- how to NOT lie with maps

• How to Geocode

There are a huge number of online GIS training resource, it doesn't make sense to duplicate the good work of others so I will list out a number of useful tutorials that I recommend. Our own tutorials are being developed specifically with nonprofit/advocacy users in mind which is most likely the least considered usergroup in all the GIS resources I have ever read, hence the existence of this entire site. I have grouped them by area or by program as clearly as possible.

BY SOFTWARE

ESRI Software

• ESRI Virtual Campus & training tools
  
• USGS (US Geological Survey) ArcView Tutorials

MapInfo Software Training

• MapInfo Pro toturial
  
• MapInfo Startup Tutorial
• Slightly bizaare concept but a huge list of all PDF documents with a number of MapInfo tutorials
  

Manifold Software Training

• asd
• 
  

BY ISSUE

General GIS Tutorials & Materials

• USGS Overview of GIS
  
• Summary of available programs and useful materials

Spatial Data & Databases

• Guide to accessing and using spatial data from government agencies
• Spatial Database Concepts