Prosono has worked with many clients to document their assets to identify opportunities to better leverage what a business has, to contribute to generate collective impact with community partners. We call this process Asset Mapping which is simply “a process to leverage the full spectrum of an organization’s products, services, resources and people towards social good”.
For some organizations, simply documenting their “6 Capitals” at your disposal will create opportunities to better leverage those assets to support collective community impact. Another way to visualize how to think about your capitals is through assessing them as either inputs and/or outputs for your business. The Prosono Capital Flow Diagram for Asset Mapping depicts the cycle in which capitals flow into a business as an input and exit the business as an output.
In the center is the business model. All business models can be summed up as questions of “how we create value, how we deliver on that value, how do we capture that value, and how are we financially sustainable?” That business model is influenced by forces such as mission, vision and organizational principles and continually adjust based on strategy, challenges and opportunities, operational performance, and resources. This simplified model has helped our clients identify some of the less obvious assets that live in between the point when a business purchases, uses, consumes, etc. an asset and when it sells, delivers, or impacts the external environment.
For example, an organization like Denver Water has inputs of human capital in the form of water engineers and water lawyers and as an output creates the natural capital of water being delivered to our houses. Somewhere between the inputs and the outputs there are typically some opportunities to leverage assets that are in an idle state better and apply them to collective community impact.
If you are looking to get started with Asset Mapping, Prosono has created with our clients a high level 5-Step Process to Asset Mapping. It involves understanding the “6 Capitals” at your disposal and documenting your organizations inputs and outputs. Click on the links to learn more or contact us at prosono@prosono.com.