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At TSC, we take a broad view of resources. Resources aren't just money, they are anything that can be used to help you.
In other words, they are anything we can access or draw on to help us and our communities to achieve our goals.
In the broader culture, we often see the word "resources" used to refer to money, or sometimes to skill building (such as an informational resource.) When we look at resources this way, we don't always see everything that is available for us to use in our work.
This is a tool to help you and your organization do a resource inventory, which is the first step in strategizing how to best leverage all of your resources in support of your goals.
Resources can exist on many levels: Personal, organizational, community
These can include personal qualities such as resilience, creativity, problem-solving, kindness, and more.
These can also include skills that you have learned, such as public speaking, conflict resolution, budgeting, and more.
They also can be things that you are personally good at. People often struggle to notice the things they are good at, because we don't always notice what comes easily to us. Sometimes it helps to ask a friend or colleague what we are uniquely good at. Another way to ask is to ask what is missing when you are not there.
An organization is more than the sum of its parts. In addition to the personal resources that each member of an organization brings to the table, organizational resources can include the systems that people can use to work together.
Resources can include good communication, strong organization or internal systems, shared values and rituals for the team, and clarity of purpose.
These are resources because they are things that the organization can draw on to get their work done with greater ease.
Network resources means resources you can access through your networks, even if they are not internal to your organization.
These can include expertise, dedicated skills, or mentorship. They can also include introductions to people who may be able to support or promote your work.
There are often many people in our formal or informal networks that are happy to help, but need to be asked for something specific. That means we have to do the work of figuring out what assistance we need from our networks and figuring out who to ask.
You can work on this alone or with others in your organization.
This tool is a first step to thinking about all of the resources your organization has access to. Future tools will help you to think through how to build on and extend your areas of strength, so that you can build an organization that is well resourced for long-term changemaking.