Who's connecting the dots when it comes to your community's unique assets?
Every community has assets - but do you know how they are connected and where they are?
Asset mapping at Fourth Economy takes a strength-based approach to catalog existing capacity within a community that can be activated to address needs and guide problem-solving. We use asset mapping in our work to help communities gain a better understanding of and publicly showcase the key resources, organizations, services, and benefits that exist locally within their community.
Fourth Economy can help organizations create community-wide asset maps
Outdoor spaces like parks, playgrounds, bike paths, nature preserves, and hiking trails
Arts and cultural organizations like museums, public art, physical spaces, libraries, music venues
Institutions like schools, hospitals, nonprofits, social service agencies, charitable groups, civic organizations, and media outlets
Economic entities like small businesses, banks, and chambers of commerce
Four questions to consider
Are our assets concentrated in certain geographic areas and does that create barriers to access?
Do we have gaps in our asset mix or the ecosystem that supports them?
What are the relationships between our assets?
Is there an opportunity to present our assets with an improved organizational framework?
Our Asset Mapping can help communities gain critical insights to fill gaps and better meet community needs
Improve Access
Utilize an asset map to identify access issues due to geographic and transportation barriers. We can add economic disparity information to support more equitable investment of resources and overall access.
Increase Resilience
Our ‘connectivity’ approach to some asset maps allows a community to look for linkages between assets and where there can be an improvement. This is a good approach for looking at the strength and resilience of a certain set of assets.
Identify Gaps
An asset map can help communities identify gaps based on subject matter focus and even capacity aligned with certain community needs. This approach can also help identify the key nodes that connect groups in a community.
Strengthen Organizations
An asset map can create a visual representation of how organizations are focused on key needs in a community. They can also provide a way to better define the types of services and programs that are being offered.
