This is what I understand as the ‘soft’ side of systems design – instead of physical resources flows, à la industrial ecology or permaculture, we’re talking informational, financial, and human resource flows. But as with ‘harder’ side of systems design, we’re still ‘linking’ outputs to inputs, available resources to needs; in this case, linking interested design firms and philanthropic funding to social challenges. Hence Wendell Berry’s astute observation that “the genius of America farm experts is very well demonstrated here: they can take a solution and divide it neatly into two problems.” Our work is therefore that of taking 2+ problems and (sometimes, re-)linking them into integrated solutions. Or as permaculturist Bill Mollison would have it, the problem isn’t an excess of slugs, but a deficiency of ducks (link the slugs to the ducks, and voilà).

I envision a dazzling mind-mappy dashboardy interface for tracking the available informational, financial, and human resources and needs, e.g. in a municipality, and facilitating the process of making connections. Kinda like a match-making website but for systems design. Whether or not that’s absurd/realistic/desirable, here are three manifestations of soft systems design akin to the design + social sector idea that emerged at Aspen:

>>Obama Works, a national grassroots organization, linked the time and toil campaign supporters willingly spend (lots!) to public service (whyobamaworks.org).
>>All for Good, a craigslist service, similarly links folks who are willing to volunteer with local volunteer opportunities (allforgood.org).
>>Lend Me Some Sugar links underutilized advertising dollars with social-enterprises-to-be (facebook.com/LendMeSomeSugar?v=app_4949752878).