Support Network Mapping

The US Climate Action Network (USCAN) and Southeast Climate and Energy Network (SCEN) have hundreds of member organizations focused on climate issues that range from the “big greens” such as NRDC, Sierra Club, and Greenpeace to grassroots, youth, and BIPOC organizations such as Sustaining Way, People’s Justice Council, and Care About Climate. The smaller organizations are doing incredibly important work to combat the climate crisis, but they are hampered when they do not have access to resources on topics such as board management, fundraising & grant writing, monitoring and evaluation methods, or access to high level decision makers. When small organizations have to create these documents and processes on their own with limited staffing, it deters them from their programmatic work. The goal of this project is to assist organizations in sharing their information, best practices, and contacts in order to make them higher performing thereby enhancing their core missions and work. This climate crisis is too heavy of a burden for us to continue to leave anyone behind.

To provide a mechanism for resource and networking opportunities, a coalition of organizations within both USCAN and SCEN is developing an Asset & Power Map. An Asset Map is an online map that can be filtered to identify resources based on certain categories. A Power Map is a diagram that is created based on an issue to understand who is connected to decision maker(s) through networks in order to access the decision maker(s). The team will create a framework that the network can use in order to develop Power Maps collaboratively. With both mapping functions implemented, organizations will be able to collaborate more effectively and alter existing resources to fit the needs of their organization or community so they do not have to start from scratch.