Strategy without resources is fantasy. The best power map in the world is useless if you don't have the people, money, skills, relationships, and infrastructure to act on it. The gap between your strategy and your resources is the distance between aspiration and power.
The Asset Map
Every organizing effort brings existing resources to the fight. Most organizers dramatically undercount their assets because they only think about money. The asset map covers six categories:
| Category | What to Map |
|---|---|
| People | Committed members, skills they bring, time available, leadership pipeline depth |
| Money | Budget, reserves, donor base, grant possibilities, earned revenue. What can you spend without asking permission? |
| Skills | Legal expertise, media skills, data analysis, organizing experience, fundraising, policy knowledge, cultural competency |
| Relationships | Elected officials, journalists, organizational allies, community leaders, institutional contacts — map the social capital |
| Credibility | Standing on this issue with the affected community, decision-makers, and media |
| Infrastructure | Office space, communication systems, databases, event capacity, digital platforms, meeting spaces |
Interactive Exercise: Map Your Assets
The key discipline: be honest. Every gap you identify now is a gap you can fill. Every gap you hide from yourself becomes a failure point in the field.
Asset Map
Map your existing assets across six categories. Be honest — every gap you identify now is a gap you can fill.
People
How many committed members? What skills do they bring? How much time can they give? Leadership pipeline depth?
Money
Budget, reserves, donor base, grant possibilities, earned revenue. What can you spend without asking permission?
Skills
Legal expertise, media skills, data analysis, organizing experience, fundraising, policy knowledge, cultural competency, language access.
Relationships
Elected officials, journalists, organizational allies, community leaders, institutional contacts. Map the social capital.
Credibility
Does your organization have standing on this issue? Seen as legitimate by the affected community? By decision-makers? By media?
Infrastructure
Office space, communication systems, databases, event capacity, digital platforms, transportation, meeting spaces.
Coalition Assessment
Your power map from Module 3 identified potential allies. Now assess each one as a potential coalition partner — not with wishful thinking, but with strategic realism.
For each potential partner, evaluate:
- What do they bring? (People, money, skills, relationships, credibility, infrastructure)
- What do they need from us?
- What is their organizational self-interest? Not their stated values — their actual strategic incentive to participate
- What is the cost of coalition? Time, compromise, complexity, potential for elite capture
- Transactional or relational? Short-term issue-specific alliance, or long-term values-aligned partnership?
Coalition Assessment
Your power map identified potential allies. Now assess each as a coalition partner.
Elite capture check: When you bring coalition partners in, who controls the resources? Whose voice gets amplified? Is the coalition structured to center the most impacted or the most powerful?
Gap Analysis & Opposition Assessment
Gap & Opposition Analysis
Reflection & Integration
Module Reflection
The gaps you've identified feed directly into Resource & Capacity Development — the final school of Section I. That school teaches fundraising, grant writing, donor cultivation, and operational planning. It exists specifically to fill the gaps this module reveals.
Resource & Capacity Development