People and Planet First Ecosystem Mapping

In 2024, $8 billion was donated to environmental causes and $16 billion to social causes in the United States. However, as individuals, businesses, and government consumers, we spent more than $23 trillion on goods and services. What if we aligned our purchasing behavior with our ethical principles? Who would we buy from? How can we leverage that purchasing power for greater impact? Fortunately, there are enterprises across the U.S. placing social and environmental missions at the core of their work. This workshop builds on research by Just Results and Purchasing with Purpose that maps these enterprises, along with their supporting funders, buyers, and networks, to reveal a purchasing-powered ecosystem. All SOCAP attendees (or participants) in this workshop play a role in the ecosystem, whether they realize it or not when they walk in.

As a brief opening to the session, participants will hear from a researcher (acting as a moderator), a network leader, an enterprise founder, and a corporate procurement representative, who will speak about the U.S. enterprises prioritizing social and environmental missions. The group will discuss the diversity of these enterprises’ locations, sectors, offerings, and purposes, as well as what it looks like to purchase from them.

The rest of the workshop will be an interactive exercise, designed to give participants firsthand experience in building connections as part of this ecosystem. Facilitators will guide participants in creating an ecosystem map on the floor of the room, where they will work together to categorize themselves into ecosystem groups that were identified through the research. Participants will then be prompted to connect with someone from a different category, and through questions provided by the moderator, explore how they could collaborate beyond the workshop to strengthen this ecosystem.