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Collective Impact is an approach that allows Participants to engage in sustainable, systemic, and scalable change.
Collective Impact is an approach that allows Participants to engage in sustainable, systemic, and scalable change.
Collective impact, or CI, is an innovative way of thinking about organizational efforts to achieve complex outcomes. CI moves away from traditional, isolated approaches and brings together stakeholders from a variety of sectors to produce collective change.
Collective impact, or CI, is an innovative way of thinking about organizational efforts to achieve complex outcomes. CI moves away from traditional, isolated approaches and brings together stakeholders from a variety of sectors to produce collective change.
The CI approach convenes agencies and groups that might not normally work together to achieve common goals and puts responsibility on the stakeholders to leverage existing resources in a new way.
The CI approach convenes agencies and groups that might not normally work together to achieve common goals and puts responsibility on the stakeholders to leverage existing resources in a new way.
The key difference between CI and traditional collaboration is that stakeholder interdependence is integral to achieving the initiative's shared goals. In order for the collective impact initiative to succeed, all participating organizations must succeed as well.
Click on the introductory video below to learn more.
CIFinal.mp4
The biggest problems foundations tackle involve many factors from many players in a complex system; for this, you need more than a logic model. A solution that works once might not work again. So, strategies must evolve and be co-created with other actors in the system. Need to be able to shift resources as the situation demands (be nimble).
Moving from visioning to implementation in CI is when leaders must commit to sustained action.
“The real work of the collective impact initiative takes place in the targeted working groups through a continuous process of ‘planning and doing,’ grounded in constant evidence-based feedback around what is or is not working.”
“The real work of the collective impact initiative takes place in the targeted working groups through a continuous process of ‘planning and doing,’ grounded in constant evidence-based feedback around what is or is not working.”
Through these discussions, the working groups can adjust strategies and create action plans to bring those strategies to life.
A critical precedent to deciding on a working group structure is the creation of a common agenda, which in most cases takes many months to develop.A common agenda includes a shared vision for change, a common understanding of the problem (drawing initial boundaries around what is in/out of scope), clear and measurable goals, and high-level strategies (i.e., a strategic action framework to achieve those goals). Without a thoroughly-discussed and rigorously-researched common agenda, initiative leaders will struggle to determine where to focus working group resources.
Two inputs into the common agenda that are particularly helpful for determining working group structure:
1) defining and scoping the problem, and
2) assessing the existing landscape.
Collective impact is fundamentally not about creating a whole new initiative, but rather connecting and strengthening existing efforts and filling gaps.
Collective impact is fundamentally not about creating a whole new initiative, but rather connecting and strengthening existing efforts and filling gaps.
There are many ways that working groups can build on current efforts: the initiative could “outsource” working groups to existing collaboratives, connect new members or otherwise provide backbone support to the existing collaboratives, or even combine existing collaboratives under one umbrella.
Using data to understand the problem and identifying existing players helps identify the highest areas of need and most critical leverage points. To complement these analyses, collective impact leaders must also sense the momentum and relationships among key players at the grassroots, grass tops, and political leadership levels.
A key to having strong working groups, and a strong collective impact initiative, is having the right leaders at the table who are committed to moving the work forward.
The ability to recruit the right working group leaders determines, in large part, the number of working groups. Quite simply, strong leaders will be able to start and sustain working groups, and will bring other leaders to the table. In our experience, 3 to 6 working groups is a manageable number in the first few years of an initiative, but the optimal number depends heavily on the strength of each group’s leadership.
Four specific priorities of working groups in the early months:
- Use Data to Further Understand the Problem and Develop an Approach to Continuous Learning
- Identify High-Leverage Strategies and Quick Wins
- Build Relationships
- Provide Backbone Support, but Build Co-Chairs’ Capacity to Lead and Members’ Ownership of the Work
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