City of Chester Nonprofit Map

View Chester Nonrpofits in a full screen map

City of Chester Nonprofit Map

During June of 2012, I came to the City of Chester as an AmeriCorps VISTA placed with support from PathWays PA at the Chester Economic Development Authority (CEDA). 

This map and the accompanying list of nonprofit organizations' basic information, located underneath the map and accessible by scrolling down in the map window, is one product of my term of service, and I hope it is effective in improving access to services in the Chester community. This map and list are not exhaustive in that they do not include all nonprofits based in the City of Chester. Some organizations operating in Chester are not 501(c)(3)-registered, some are difficult to locate, and I'm sure there are some I am still not aware of despite lots of time and effort spent searching. This list certainly does not provide information regarding nonprofits based outside of Chester that have a heavy presence in the City, although I believe information on such organizations would be very useful.

To accomplish this task, I received guidance from many nonprofits in the community, including PathWays PA, the Chester Education Foundation, the Chester Youth Collaborative, the Community Improvement and the United Way of Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey in Delaware County. Their input informed me as I developed a survey which will provide information that can be used to improve and expand upon the map and database in the future. For more on the survey or to fill it out, visit my blog post “City of Chester Nonprofit Survey.”

As is the case with all of the work I did as a VISTA, I had a lot of help from others working in the community. My first source of information - and the most robust - was a spreadsheet compiled by a federal employee I had contact with as a result of the White House's Strong Cities, Strong Communities Initiative in the City of Chester. The list was compiled using information reported to the IRS. This provided me with basic information including names and locations for all of the 501(c)(3)-registered entities in the City of Chester.

More information came from CEDA staff and nonprofit leaders in the community. These sources were able to add names of organizations who may not have filed in 2012 or may have been left off of the list I was given for other reasons. Some organizations were also removed from my list by these sources as it was known that they were no longer operating.

The rest of my information was gathered through basic internet research. This way, I was able to fill in some of the gaps in my data, finding things like phone numbers, contact names, and email addresses. I was also able to take advantage of GuideStar’s website to categorize nonprofits and make the final product more easily navigable.

If you have any questions about the map or database or you would like to make a suggestion for improvement, please contact me at 610-447-7858 or whaland.daniel@gmail.com. If you would like information regarding the nonprofits I made note of but was unable to map because of insufficient data, please contact me using my contact information above. I would be happy to share my master spreadsheet.