Author: John Sperrazza
Founding Board Member and Treasurer, Making An Impact

At Making An Impact, we believe access to reliable information can change lives. That is why we work to make credible community resource information easy to find, understand, and use.

But there is an important distinction that is often overlooked:

Information may be provided to the community at low or no cost, but producing reliable information is not free.

Behind every Making An Impact resource is an investment of time, expertise, technology, funding, and ongoing work. And when another organization copies that work, presents it as its own, or uses it to support a program or grant without acknowledging the source, the impact goes far beyond a missing credit line.

Google Is a Starting Point, Not a Resource Guide

Finding a website or phone number online is relatively easy. Determining whether the information is accurate, current, relevant, and useful is something entirely different.

Organizations change locations. Phone numbers change. Programs close. Eligibility requirements change. Funding ends. New programs begin. Websites become outdated. Services that existed six months ago may no longer be available.

That is why developing credible community resource information requires research, verification, judgment, organization, and continual updating. Professional standards for community resource databases similarly emphasize ongoing verification, quality control, structured data, monitoring, and correction—not simply collecting information from the internet.

For Making An Impact, creating a resource means doing the work necessary to make the information useful and trustworthy.

What Does It Actually Take?

There are real costs associated with developing and maintaining the resources we provide. They include:

• Research: Identifying agencies, programs, services, eligibility requirements, contact information, and other resources that may help residents.
• Validation: Reviewing and verifying information because not everything found through Google, websites, or social media is complete or accurate.
• Compilation and organization: Taking hundreds of pieces of information and determining how to categorize and present them so someone can actually find what they need.
• Writing and editing: Turning raw information into clear, consistent, understandable content.
• Graphic design and layout: Creating guides that are visually organized and easy to navigate.
• Translation: Making information accessible to people who may not primarily communicate in English.
• Printing and distribution: Producing physical guides and getting them into the hands of nonprofits, government agencies, law enforcement, schools, healthcare providers, faith communities, and residents.
• Technology: Maintaining websites, searchable online resources, software, translation capabilities, hosting, and other digital tools.
• Maintenance: Reviewing, correcting, replacing, and updating information as organizations and services change.

This work never truly ends. And while it may look simple from the outside, doing it well requires dedicated expertise, resources, and an ongoing commitment to accuracy and maintenance. Not every organization is equipped, resourced, or mission-focused to undertake it effectively.

When Our Work Is Used Without Attribution, There Is a Cost

Making An Impact wants community information to be used. That is why we create it.

We want nonprofits to share it with clients. We want government agencies, schools, healthcare providers, faith communities, first responders, and others to use it to help people find assistance.

But sharing information and appropriating someone else’s work are not the same thing.

When an organization copies or substantially relies on information researched, compiled, organized, or presented by Making An Impact and removes the source, presents the resulting resource as its own, or incorporates that work into a program or grant application without attribution, it can undermine the organization that invested in creating it.

Why does that matter? Because attribution helps demonstrate impact.

When Making An Impact seeks grants, donations, sponsorships, and community support, we must demonstrate to funders that our resources are being used and that our work provides value. If our information circulates throughout the community with our name removed, part of that impact becomes invisible.

It is even more concerning when another organization uses work developed by Making An Impact to strengthen its own grant proposal or program without identifying where that work originated. The organization receiving credit may not have incurred the research, development, technology, design, or maintenance costs required to create it.

Over time, that can threaten the sustainability of the very resource everyone relies on.

Attribution Isn’t About Ownership of Community Needs

No organization owns a phone number, an agency address, or the existence of a particular service. And copyright law does not protect facts themselves.

However, copyright can protect original written expressions and, in appropriate circumstances, the creative selection, coordination, and arrangement of information in a compilation. The U.S. Copyright Office distinguishes between unprotected facts and potentially protected original authorship in how information is selected, coordinated, arranged, written, or otherwise expressed.

Making An Impact’s value isn’t simply that we found information. It is what we do with that information: researching, evaluating, validating, selecting, organizing, writing, editing, designing, translating, publishing, distributing, and maintaining it.

Our original content and other copyrightable elements of our publications and digital resources are intellectual property and should be respected accordingly.

Credit Costs Nothing. Creating the Resource Does.

There is also a larger issue at stake: collaboration.

Our community is stronger when organizations build upon one another’s expertise instead of unnecessarily duplicating work. If Making An Impact has invested resources in developing and maintaining trusted community information, another organization does not need to recreate the same infrastructure simply to put its own name on it.

Instead, cite it. Link to it. Share it. Partner with us. Support it.

Proper attribution is one of the simplest ways an organization can acknowledge the work that made the information available in the first place.

When using Making An Impact’s resources as part of a program, funding requests, presentation, publication, website, or other initiative, organizations should clearly identify Making An Impact as the source and seek permission when the intended use involves reproducing protected content.

Free to the User Does Not Mean Free to Produce

Making An Impact exists to help people connect with the resources they need. We are proud to make trusted information accessible to our community.

But accessibility should never be confused with absence of value.

Someone researched it. Someone verified it. Someone organized it. Someone designed it. Someone paid to print, translate, distribute, host, and maintain it.

And someone must continue doing that work tomorrow if the information is going to remain reliable.

When organizations acknowledge the source of the information they use, they do more than give credit where credit is due. They help funders, donors, partners, and the community understand who is doing the work, and why that work deserves continued investment.

At Making An Impact, we believe information should reach as many people as possible.

Use it. Share it. Help people with it.

Sharing information strengthens a community. Recognizing those who created it helps ensure the resource will be there tomorrow.