About Sociogene
A clearer view of the association landscape
While building and growing New Empact Work, I found myself spending a lot of time researching associations.
I wanted to understand more than what an organization said about itself. I wanted to understand who it serves, how it presents its value, what programs it runs, who supports it, which organizations it sits alongside, and how all of those pieces connect.
The information was public, but scattered across association websites, annual reports, sponsor pages, IRS filings, conference sites, and other sources.
Sociogene grew out of that work.
I initially built it for myself as a way to bring those pieces together and see an association from the outside. It became useful enough that keeping it to myself stopped making much sense.
What Sociogene shows
Each association page brings together what's publicly available about it, which can include its public identity, its peer societies, the companies it names as supporters, and its financial history from IRS filings. Each page also carries an outside view: a reading of the organization's shape based on its public footprint.
Sociogene also connects those records across organizations.
If a company is named as a supporter by an association, you can see which other associations name it. If you're looking at an association, you can explore its peers and the companies named across that group.
Those connections are often difficult to see when the information lives on dozens of separate websites.
An outside view, not an inside judgment
Sociogene only knows what can be observed from the outside.
The outside view is an interpretation of an organization's public footprint, not an assessment of its staff, leadership, culture, effectiveness, or what happens internally.
Where Sociogene presents factual information, I try to show where it came from. Where it offers an interpretation, it should be understood as exactly that: an outside view based on the information available.
Public information can also be incomplete or outdated. If something is wrong, I want to know about it.
Why it's free
Sociogene started as my own research. Making it public makes that research more useful: association sponsorship and development staff, corporate partnership teams, board members, consultants and others can explore the same information instead of it sitting in my files.
There's no account required, no report to purchase, and no subscription.
Who's behind it
Sociogene is built by the team behind New Empact Work. The two projects serve different purposes, but they come from the same interest in understanding how associations work and building useful tools for the people who run them.
