The basic premise is this: I am familiar with an organization called Pacoima Beautiful. It was a brilliant success story, turning an extremely distressed community from a vicious cycle to a virtuous one. In a nutshell, by engaging the youth in community research and proposals to their representatives, they were able to teach the students not only specific scholastic skills but also how to effect change.
From there, it seemed reasonable this pattern should be replicated in most communities. It's nothing other than how to train youth to be productive members of society: what is the process for fixing things you see are broken in your community? Important lesson!
But like most successful programs, it doesn't replicate obviously into other communities. Differences of norms, communication styles and political specifics, let alone what specifically needs to be changed, make just about every aspect open to interpretation.
So I undertook to develop a mechanism for mapping intangible assets: what was done by whom in order to develop intangible assets in the organization that led to procuring the necessary financial assets? What intangible (and tangible) assets are necessary to continuing to fulfill the organization's mission?
This is of course relevant in any community, regardless of whether the mission is education, health and safety, or financial profit: how specifically are intangible assets developed? Which ones are critical and which ones are "nice to have"? Are any superfluous or downright distracting? "Best Practice" is a meaningless term because we don't know into which environment it replicates well. Best for whom?
I also used a similar analysis mechanism to recommend a financial investment a couple years ago (which continues to this day to outperform dramatically, in the ways I had hypothesized).
As we move closer to having agreed-upon criteria to measure social return, I hope to find an organization or individual interested in investing in me to continue this work.
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