Ecosystem Mapping: A Great Tool for Social Impact

In the world of social change and impact, ecosystem mapping is a powerful tool to harness to improve your work. By mapping connections between the people, organizations, places and problems that the issue you’re addressing, you can find new ways to leverage and shift systems to make the world a better place. Learn how this works in practice below!

What is Ecosystem Mapping?

Today in the world of social impact, we know that systems thinking is critically important for achieving goals. To address an issue like homelessness, it’s now necessary to consider the larger system effects that help create and reinforce the problem. You may work with those involved in education, healthcare and mental health, substance abuse issues and more to find systemic ways you can collaboratively address homelessness.

Ecosystem mapping involves creating a map of the interconnections between all the people, organizations, ideas, and other factors that impact the problem you face. It can help you understand the interactions between different issues and sectors, to find new opportunities for action and impact.

What Can You Learn Through Ecosystem Mapping?

Explore the Structure of Connections

Dig into the way the parts of your ecosystem interconnect. Discover new ways to structure your connections to change ecosystem flows and interaction.

Measure the Quality of Connections

Use our validated measures for trust and value, along with traditional network science metrics to track how your relationships change over time.

Connect Multiple
System Levels

Map multi-level ecosystems at the individual, sub-system and complete ecosystem levels to identify how each level impacts and affects the others.

Identify
Key Leverage Points

Identify key nodes with significant influence on the rest of the ecosystem so you can leverage them intentionally to improve and reach goals.

How Does It Work in Practice?

Ecosystem mapping can be done quite simply using a pen and paper to identify connections. However, it is more effective using innovative tools like the PARTNER Platform. It uses validated trust and value metrics, along with standard network science measures, to help you map and analyze your ecosystem connections more quantitatively. With options for tracking and integrating systems at multiple levels, it’s a flexible, powerful tool for ecosystem mapping.