prepared by: Yin Yin Wu

updated: 8/23/08

Website: http://www.maplight.org/

Mission: MAPLight brings together campaign contributions and how legislators vote, providing an unprecedented window into the connections between money and politics.

Inspiration/History:

Maplight is a groundbreaking public database that illuminates the connection between campaign donations and legislative votes in unprecedented ways. Elected officials collect large sums of money to run their campaigns, and they often pay back campaign contributors with special access and favorable laws. While this common practice is contrary to the public interest, it is legal. Maplight makes money/vote connections transparent in order to help citizens hold their legislators accountable.

Business Model:

Theory of Change:

Provide information to empower citizens to hold the government accountable by making it more transparent.

Core Programs:

Accessible information on their website, widgets of campaign financing

Recent Developments:

Renowned law professor Lawrence Lessig has joined the Board of Directors of Maplights an innovative nonprofit startup illuminating the connection between money and politics.

Biography of Jahel Bisharat:

She is the co-Founder and Co-Chair of Homestead Inc. and OpenTable Inc. Previously, she has also served as Vice President of marketing for Amazon.com. At Amazon.com, Jahel oversaw customer acquisition and retention, brand marketing, public relations, market intelligence and the customer experience group. Previously, Jaleh held executive positions at PointCast, Approach Software and Lotus Development Corporation. In 1999, Jaleh was named as one of Advertising Age’s Power 50 marketing executives. She holds an AB in Government from Harvard-Radcliffe and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Biography of Thomas Layton:

Thomas is the Co-Founder and Co-Chair of Maplight, and is CEO of Metaweb. Thomas was CEO of OpenTable from 2001 to June 2007. Previously, he was a co-founder of CitySearch, Inc., which later merged with Ticketmaster and is now a subsidiary of USA Networks. Prior to his experience at Ticketmaster-CitySearch, Thomas was with Score Learning Corporation, a leading educational services company, where he served first as Chief Financial Officer and later as President and Chief Operating Officer. Thomas holds an MBA from the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and a BS from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is also a Crown Fellow with the Aspen Institute.

Biography of Dan Newman:

He is Co-Founder and Executive Director of MAPLight.org. Dan, an entrepreneur and political organizer, is the author of three books on speech recognition software and is the founder of Say I Can, a speech recognition firm. Dan co-founded the Berkeley Fair Elections Coalition and has served as a consultant to various political and nonprofit groups, including the Center for Voting and Democracy, Israel Venture Network, and the Mental Health Association of San Francisco. He received a MA in Psychology from the University of California at Berkeley, where he attended on a National Science Foundation Fellowship, and a BA in Biomedical Ethics from Brown University.

Questions to be Raised During Visit (3-4):

What role will Lessig play?

How do you make sure people take advantage of this information?
Does the press use this information?

Further Resources (2-3):

http://www.netsquared.org/projects/proposals/light-money-and-politics-maplight-orghttp://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/05/24/following-the-money-trail-online/


*Information obtained from MapLight.org