Requests around organizational mapping

SoFA Members Discussion
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At last week’s co-working session (the first of 2025, welcome all!), I had a very fruitful time discussing the state of organizational mapping with @audree.morin and @jerry.koch-gonzalez. I learned about a number of outstanding issues and requests. I believe this is a set of backlog questions for my fellows in @IT-Circle.

  1. One of the current workflows for organizations to be added to the map is basically as listed on the map page: a representative of an organization fills out the health check, then if they score well enough, they can fill out the nomination form to have their details added to the map. (We can also still manually identify and vet organizations; this was the approach that we took before folks developed the health check.) The nomination form is currently a Google Form, though, and Audrée requested that we shift that to be a Ninja Form, so that it can better integrate with our Groundhogg workflows. That seems good to me; any concerns about that? (Also, Audrée, can you remind me of the other workflow that you all use for adding organizations to the map? I think it involved the organizational learner program, but I am trying to recall what you said about who is holding the domain for that work and how it flows.)

  2. Audrée is wondering who is doing the work of actually adding organizations to the map, and she’s wondering if she and other folks can be trained and empowered to do that work. I encouraged her to move forward with adding organizations herself, and I said that I would check in with IT Circle folks about what sort of policy we want to have around that.

    Audrée noted that there does exist a tag-driven funnel for this, but that organization members don’t typically fill it out themselves. So we might want to look into that at some point.

  3. Jerry would like to reorganize the layout of the map so that Intentional Communities (ICs) have their own top-level category, such that you can show only the ICs. Right now you can only have the map hide the display of either organizations or members. This seems good to me; do my fellow circle members have any concerns about that?

  4. We would benefit from also mapping consultants and trainers.

  5. I still dream of being able to automatically generate the map from the information in Groundhogg. Someday, perhaps.

Jerry and Audrée, did I miss anything?

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Hi John!
Again, thanks so much for taking the time to listen to our needs! This is much appreciated :slight_smile:

  1. The other path to be added on the map is when orgnizations sign up to OL, they fill in an organizational contact form, which sends info to GH. Previously, when this info was received, me or Zujeil would tagg the person in the mapping role (which changed very often in the past years and the last one was Pame) on Asana and they would add the organization to the map with the info from GH. https://www.sociocracyforall.org/member-organization-contact-form/

  2. I think I know that it is no one’s role currently to map organizations, because Pame left and she has not been replaced. So I’m more wondering who will take on the role now. And can it be decentralized, as John understood right.

Yes, the tag driven funnel is documented in “How SoFA interacts with organizations” policy, here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/105y9Ts7bsvrIdpPi2MxJd_FptbqTAQ1ZTfo-EYrHh88/edit?tab=t.0#bookmark=id.xd1b1cv79bqj (sorry it’s not on the policy manual yet, and it’s already outdated… we’re doing our best!). It’s been a while since I looked at the results of the funnel, and most importantly, I don’t know where the information goes now, when people fill in the Google form! So it might be that some people filled it in and we purely don’t know.
This document is deprecated, this is where the information went before: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nPLLMvEaT2WsDcrTxShzwn4Z7RajI9PGZZP9OUfZjlQ/edit?gid=2098229921#gid=2098229921
Apparently, the destination was changed, but I don’t know to where. And I don’t have the link to the editable version of the map nomination Google form. Probably in Pame’s stuff?!
In any case, it is true that organizations tend to not have time to fill in the form themselves, and that we get much better results when we offer to do it for them and then run it by them before publishing (especially the description). I offer this as a free service to communities in my IC circle role.

  1. Yessss!!!