Project Overview

This outreach project is regarded as essential to UAS achieving its mission of integrating and inspiring the sustainability movement in the San Francisco Bay Area. UAS has a database with over 650+ records of 'organizations' – meaning non-profits, civic departments, neighborhood associations and “green” businesses all dedicating their energy to one or more aspect of a vision for a sustainable, healthy community and ecosystem. Currently the records are incomplete and, in some cases, obsolete and it is believed that this database is not a comprehensive set of data.

Mapping the Ecology of the Sustainability Movement intends to arrive at a comprehensive database that will be universally available, as a directory on the uas.coop website, of all the organizations and individuals dedicating energy to sustainability in the Bay Area, including key data that will help individuals easily identify which organizations they would like to support and help organizations identify other organizations to strategically collaborate with on projects, fund raising, operations, policy and other such relationships. All of these outcomes are seen as critical to helping the sustainability movement be more integrated and effective. This project also established a quality of relationship and connection with UAS and these organization that UAS intends to leverage to the overall benefit of the movement.

UAS intends to support organizations in more effectively meeting their goals and achieving their missions faster.

Details of the Project

The mapping project involves the following tasks:
- contacting all 650+ organizations in the UAS database to establish relationship and collect strategic profile data
- identifying core needs of organizations, overlapping efforts, unrealized relationships, shared policy priorities, surplus resources
- reconnecting with all the organizations over time with a report on, currently unrealized, relationships and direct action and policy allies
- facilitate connections between allies for more effective, aligned policy advocacy and action

The outcomes from this project will include several unique collaborations amongst organizations, new joint policy platforms presented by newly allied organizations, less overlap in efforts amongst organizations in the movement.

Needs addressed by this project:
- coordination within the sustainability movement where currently there is a surplus overlap of efforts creating cacophonic chaos for policy makers and, often, frustratingly slow progress on missions and goals
- a comprehensive directory of organizations involved in the local sustainability movement and identification of overlap with analysis of collaboration opportunities
- Inspired, coordinated, proactive policy platforms and direct actions supported by non-profits and businesses in the sustainability movement

Strategies:
- alliance building through direct contact by phone or meeting, data collection and publication and whole-systems analysis
- partnership with other directory publishers (e.g., including WiserEarth)
- self-selected taxonomic categorization of the organizations in the movement to group organizations and identify relationships
- direct data collection about current needs, advocacy needs and policy priorities from organizations in the movement
- facilitate collaborations through targeted events bringing together overlapping and related organizations
- leverage UAS communications infrastructure to host discussions between organizations in the movement

Goals and Objectives:
- Comprehensive directory of organizations in the Sustainability Movement published for all
- Analysis of relationships published for all

- Collaborations
- Specific legislation passed supported by collaborations formed by UAS