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This book is a gift — and I'd still like you to sign up to read it. It nourishes me to know that it's being read, and by whom.
Chapters come out one at a time, roughly every two weeks. Sign up, and I'll let you know as each new one lands.
Sign up to read →Who this book is for
This book was inspired by our Social System Mapping clients and Community of Practice members, whose projects have taught me so much about what's needed for them to succeed. And it was written for anyone working to shift systems through networks and cross-sector collaboration, or drawn toward that work, even if peripherally:
This is our gift to a world that works for all
This work is offered as a gift. The chapters are available to anyone who signs up, without any requirement or expectation that I receive anything back. In this way, I'm experimenting with leaving the exchange economy.
I invite you to consider taking your own step with me, away from transaction and toward supporting needs. My life and work partner Tim and I have given much of our life energy to Social System Mapping, most of it as a gift. But we need financial support. This work fits a small (although growing) niche, and we've made sumApp so affordable that it barely supports itself. For over a decade, most of our mapping income has gone into developing the technology and methodology so that Social System Mapping can be available to any group that needs it, regardless of its resources.
Some years our client work has met our baseline material needs with relative ease, though even then we've deferred work on our house and haven't saved for when either of us can no longer work. In harder years — early Covid, and since the start of the latest administration — prospective clients and even do-it-yourself mappers could invest in little beyond immediate survival. Our income has dropped sharply while the overhead and the daily work continue. Right now, we're falling short of our basic material needs, and we need to replenish our small reserves if we're to keep developing the tools and methodology the field needs.
I want you to have this book regardless.
Part of the experiment is how you decide. Rather than asking "what is this book worth?" or "what will it give me?" — the habits of exchange-thinking — I invite you to first take needs into account, letting ours register alongside your own. Then give what you can give gladly, without stretching yourself.
If that still feels strange, or you'd simply rather have a number, I suggest $35. It's up to you, and I don't want you to feel any obligation.