Community Asset Map

Using the information gleaned from your Learning Conversations and surveys of the neighborhood, you are now ready to put together your Community Asset Map.

Your Leadership Team can do this in an afternoon or through a retreat. Here are the steps you will want to include:

Define your neighborhood boundaries. You may use the initial neighborhood boundaries you identified during the gifts assessments or you may change or expand those based on what you learned.

Prepare an initial asset map. Obtain a city or neighborhood map from your local government or, if there is no existing map, tape a large piece of paper on the wall and have the Leadership Team draw the boundaries, streets, and assets of their neighborhood. You can also use online tools such as Google Maps.

To get started, identify the institutional assets of the neighborhood, parks, schools, businesses, agencies etc. These are landmarks or organizations that most everyone can identify.

At this point, you will develop a color-coding system so that your map creates a visual representation of assets. For example, parks can be green, schools/yellow, senior centers/blue, etc. You can also start to build your map in 3-D using building blocks or Legos. Or, if your faith community is oriented toward online life, you can use a Google map or another online mapping tool. Two examples of mapping assets online are this or this. These maps are a collaborative effort of The Episcopal Church, Episcopal Relief and Development, and two different diocese who have begun to map their assets. You can also plug into the whole of the Episcopal Asset Map.

Once you have the institutional assets identified, add your faith community’s assets and those individual assets stemming from your congregation.

Then, using the resources and gifts identified through your Learning Conversations continue to build the map based upon your discovery in the neighborhood. Be sure to indicate the location of residents and business owners.

What you will find as you build your map is that there are natural “hot spots” of assets and passions that align.

Share your asset map with the community to invite feedback. Once you have a draft map that you feel is representative of your learnings, share the map with the wider community both to gain investment and to get feedback. You can take pictures or make copies, as appropriate and hang it up in the church building and any local recreation centers. Consider holding a community meeting or coffee hour to share the results and get feedback. Make sure you have members of your Leadership Team on hand to explain the map to folks. Your asset map will be informative to them and help them gain ownership in the outcome. And, you are reinforcing your relationship between community members.

Make initial improvements to the map. You will undoubtedly get useful feedback that you will want to incorporate into the map. Make these changes and re-post the edited map. You will want to keep this map in the forefront of the community’s mind as you work together to develop an Action Plan.

Asset Mapping is Never Finished!

Continually work on your map by staying connected with participants and by asking them to participate in keeping the map current. Everyone should always be on the look-out on how they can help identify the gifts and passions of other residents they know and ask them to get involved.

Celebration: 

Recognize and celebrate your success both in your faith community and with the wider community. Creating an asset map is an accomplishment worth recognizing and your celebration will remind participants that we are now ready to take what we have learned and put our assets into action.