This article is about the Proxi admin app at app.proxi.co.
Some maps aren't about places at all — they're about people. A community map, story map, crowdsourced map, prayer map, member map, alumni map, resource finder, or a global "put yourself on the map" campaign: every pin is a person, a story, or a helping hand, and the map becomes visible proof that a movement is real. Real examples built on Proxi: the OUT Foundation's nationwide map of LGBTQ+-friendly fitness spaces, the Traveling While Black community travel map, and anniversary story maps in the spirit of America's 250th. Crisis resource finders — where to find formula during the shortage, warming centers in a cold snap — are the same build with urgency turned up.
What makes this different from every other guide: the community submits the content, the pins can be sensitive, and momentum is the product. Here's the build.
1. Decide What One Pin Means
Everything follows from this sentence: "Each pin on this map is ______." A congregation praying for a missionary family. A member of your global alumni network. A store with formula in stock. A story from 1976. Write that sentence first — it becomes your form's title, your map's subtitle, and your moderation rule.
Then design the pin's fields on your collection (Fields → Add a field):
The story — a rich text field for the heart of it. Keep the prompt specific: "Tell us about your connection to Main Street" beats "Description."
A photo — a photos field; faces and storefronts make the map human.
One category — set the Category options to the movement's shape: "Praying / Serving / Sending," or "Chapter / Member at Large / Partner," or resource types for a finder map.
Privacy by design — each field has a visibility setting, so info you need but shouldn't publish (a contact email, a family's last name) can be collected without ever showing publicly. And on the submission form, mark personal fields as information about the submitter, not the place — those route to your private contacts, never to the map.
2. The Form Is Your Front Door
On the collection, switch on Public submissions. For story and prayer maps, keep Require approval before publishing on — every pin passes through you. For a crisis resource finder, consider auto-publish: speed matters more than polish, and you can prune afterward.
In Edit Form, write the invitation, not a form title: "Add your story to the map," "Put your congregation on the map," "Found formula? Drop a pin." Keep the fields to your designed pin — every extra question costs you submissions.
The privacy tip that matters most: for people-pins, ask for a city or neighborhood, not a street address — the location field happily takes "Duluth, MN" and pins the city. Say so right in the field's helper text: "Just your city is perfect."
Grab the form link and embed code from Share — the form can live on your website next to the map itself.
3. Style It Like a Movement
Global map? Turn on the globe. In Display → Map style, flip the 3D globe switch — a worldwide community genuinely lands differently spinning on a globe than flattened on a rectangle. Pair it with the Blue or Minimal style so pins glow against the ocean.
For story maps, Paper and Watercolor give an archival warmth; a resource finder wants plain Standard legibility.
Set the Cluster accent color in Branding — with hundreds of pins, clusters are what visitors see first, so make them beautiful.
Give each category a meaningful marker (Edit marker — a candle, a heart, a star), and set the default view to frame your community's footprint — the whole globe, the whole country, or one town.
4. Let Visitors Respond, Not Just Look
In Point Card → Actions:
Turn on Upvotes and rename it for the community: "Praying for you" on a prayer map, "❤ This story" on a story map, "Confirmed in stock" on a resource finder. Show the count — 40 people praying is the whole point.
Point comments (titled "Reviews" by default — rename it "Messages of support"; available on Pro) turns each pin into a guestbook. Moderate accordingly.
Turn on Save so people can keep a personal shortlist, and map sharing on — this kind of map spreads pin by pin.
5. Launch With Pins Already on It
Nobody adds themselves to an empty map. Seed 20–30 pins before you share anything — founding members, your own chapters, the first stories, entered by you or imported from a spreadsheet. Then:
Set a beautiful link preview image (Sharing section) — this map's growth loop is social shares.
Embed the map and the form on your website, and turn on List Publicly if you want it discoverable in search.
Make "add yourself" the ask in every channel: email signature, newsletter, the QR at your events.
6. Moderate With a Light, Steady Hand
The Review queue is your daily two minutes: approve the real, reject the spam. Put your one rule in the form description so rejections are never a surprise.
Someone's story changed, or they want off the map? Open their pin and edit it, flip Active off, or delete it. For long-lived maps, send a contributor their pin's secret edit link (in the pin's edit panel footer) so they can update their own story without asking you.
For resource finders, stale pins are worse than no pins — sweep weekly in Bulk Edit and deactivate anything unconfirmed.
7. Feed the Momentum
Every milestone is content: "Pin #100 just went up — from New Zealand!" Screenshot the globe, tag the newest additions, and re-share the form. Check Analytics for views and geography — "12,000 people have visited the map" is the line that goes in your annual report, your grant application, and your next board meeting. That's what a community builder map is for: making the invisible network visible, then showing it growing.
Worth a read on the Proxi blog: 5 uses for crowdsourced maps (with free templates), harnessing the power of community, collaborative maps with custom forms, using maps for social good, America's 250th story and event maps, and a community who built this: the OUT Foundation.