1. Collective Impact Overview: A Framework for Community Change
Donna Jean Forster-Gill
Program Manager,
Vibrant Communities Canada – Cities Reducing Poverty -

2. An Overview of Collective Impact
Community Foundation of Greater Cincinnati
Collective Impact: Pulling Together

3. The Collaboration Spectrum
Trust
Compete
Co-exist
Communicate
Cooperate
Coordinate
Collaborate
Integrate
Competition for clients, resources, partners, public attention.
No systematic connection between agencies.
Inter-agency information sharing (e.g. networking).
As needed, often informal, interaction, on discrete activities or projects.
Organizations systematically adjust and align work with each other for greater outcomes.
Longer term interaction based on shared mission, goals; shared decision-makers and resources.
Fully integrated programs, planning, funding.
Turf
Loose
Tight

4. Collaborative Life Cycle
MATURITY
EXPLORATION
expand
possibilities
& buy-in
conserve
new
thinking
declining
outcomes
place
bets
manage
choice
CORE LEADERSHIP
DIRECTION &
crisis
birth
SUSTAIN &
GROW
unravel
develop &
adapt
shared vision
chaos
refine
reconnect
DEVELOPMENT
CREATIVE DESTRUCTION

5. Key Practices for Effective Collaboration
Assessing the Environment
Creating Clarity
Building Trust
Sharing Power and Influence
Reflection

6. Why Collective Impact

7. From Isolated Impact to Collective Impact
Funders select individual grantees
Organizations work separately
Evaluation attempts to isolate a particular organization’s impact
Large scale change is assumed to depend on scaling organizations
Corporate and government sectors are often disconnected from foundations and non-profits.
Collective Impact
Funders understand that social problems – and their solutions – arise from multiple interacting factors
Cross-sector alignment with government, nonprofit, philanthropic and corporate sectors as partners
Organizations actively coordinating their actions and sharing lessons learned
All working toward the same goal and measuring the same things

8. Used for Many Complex Issues
Teen Pregnancy
Health
Education
Homelessness
Community Safety
Poverty

9. Setting the Stage for Collective Impact

10. Preconditions for Collective Impact
Influential Champion(s)
Urgency of issue
Adequate Resources

11. Collective Impact – Framing Questions
Do we aim to effect ―needle- change (i.e., 10% or more) on a community-wide metric?
Do we believe that a long-term investment (i.e., three to five-plus years) by stakeholders is necessary to achieve success?
Do we believe that cross-sector engagement is essential for community-wide change?
Are we committed to using measurable data to set the agenda and improve over time?
Are we committed to having community members as partners and producers of impact?
From White House Council on Community Change

12. Collective Impact Efforts Tend to Transpire Over Four Key Phases
Governance
and
Infrastructure
Strategic
Planning
Phases of Collective Impact
Collective Impact Efforts Tend to Transpire Over Four Key Phases
Community
Involvement
Phase I
Generate Ideas
and Dialogue
Phase II
Initiate Action
Phase III
Organize for Impact
Phase IV
Sustain Action
and Impact
Components for Success
Convene community stakeholders
Identify champions and form cross-sector group
Evaluation
And
Improvement
Create infrastructure (backbone and processes)
Facilitate and refine
Continue engagement and conduct advocacy
Support implementation (alignment to goal and strategies)
Collect, track, and report progress (process to learn and improve)
Hold dialogue about issue, community context, and available resources
Map the landscape and use data to make case
Create common agenda (common goals and strategy)
Facilitate community outreach specific to goal
Facilitate community outreach
Engage community and build public will
Determine if there is consensus/urgency to move forward
Analyze baseline data to ID key issues and gaps
Establish shared metrics (indicators, measurement, and approach)

13. What is Collective Impact

14. Five Conditions for Collective Impact
Specialized
Agendas
Common
Agenda
Fragmented
Measurements
Shared
Measurement
Mutually
Reinforcing
Activities
Independent
Activities
Sporadic
Communication
Continuous
Communication
Unsupported
Efforts
Backbone
Organization

15. What makes the difference between a good movie and a bad movie?
Common Agenda
What makes the difference between a good movie and a bad movie?
“Getting everyone involved to make the same movie!”
- Francis Ford Coppola

16. Common Agenda Define the challenge to be addressed.
Acknowledge that a collective impact approach is required.
Establish clear and shared goal(s) for change.
Identify principles to guide joint work together.

17. Communication in Tillamook County, Oregon
Teen Pregnancy
According to the Health Department summary, Tillamook county "found that forming partnerships and working together toward a desired result can bring about astounding results. ... Their turn-around was an evolutionary process, with new partners bringing contributions forward at different times."
No Shared Agenda
Reduce Teenagers Giving Birth
Reduce Teenagers Getting Pregnant

18. Building a Common Agenda
Prior History
Positive or negative impact
Pressing Issue
Galvanize leaders across sectors
Data
Determine what you need to understand impact of the issue on community
Community Context
Is there community buy in? Determine community leverage opportunities
Core Group
Determine who needs to be involved in core group
Convener
Trusted leadership to facilitate collaborative efforts
Community Engagement
Determine how to engage the broader community in the effort

19. Who’s driving the agenda? How complex is the issue?
5 things to consider when building a common agenda
Who’s driving the agenda?
How complex is the issue?
How does the issue play out in the community?
Who is doing what already?
What are the next steps?
Agenda – requires working differently together;
Complex – set boundaries for what will and won’t work on, look at where most impact is and let go of rest
Play Out – data – need data to make informed decision
What doing – map community assets
Next steps – talk about it, engage the community, listen more than speak

20. Shared Measurement
Identify key measures that capture critical outcomes.
Establish systems for gathering and analyzing measures.
Create opportunities for “making-sense” of changes in indicators.

21. Collaboration in Cincinnati
Educational Achievement
STRIVE in Cincinnati
Over three hundred educational organizations, human service groups, government agencies and philanthropies and private businesses.
Shared agreement on 15 key milestones and 72 measures along a student road-map of success.
A strong back-bone organization supporting a variety of “networks” supporting each key milestone.
Measureable progress in most key indicators in recent years.
Homelessness

22. Strive Partnership Goals:
Working together along the educational continuum to drive better results in education so that every child…
• Is prepared for school
• Is supported inside and outside of school
• Succeeds academically
• Enrolls in some form of postsecondary education
• Graduates and enters a career
Results: 10% increase in graduation rates in Cincinnati since 2003; 16% increase in college enrollment rate in Covington, KY since 2004
Mention that the Halton 7 is already a shared measurement framework – clear indicators, measureable results

23. Shared Measurement in Vibrant Communities Canada
Process: # of people/orgs at table, # of community presentations, articles, etc
Progress: # of programs, # of new initiatives, etc
Policy: policy changes in own or other organizations, new investments, gov. policy changes
Population : # of people moved out of poverty, # of high school graduates, # of low birth weight babies

24. Mutually Reinforcing Activities
Agreement on key outcomes.
Orchestration and specialization.
Complementary – sometimes “joined up” - strategies to achieve outcomes.

25. Coordination in Saint John
Poverty
Housing
Transportation
Education to Employment
Early Childhood Development
Workforce Development
Neighborhood Renewal

27. Continuous Communication
Create formal and informal measures for keeping people informed
Communication is open and reflect a diversity of styles
Difficult issues are surfaced, discussed and addressed

28. Cooperation in Karelia, Finland
Heart Disease
Common Agenda: reduce heart disease.
Focus on measuring & reducing a variety of key risk factors (e.g. high fat food diet, smoking, etc.)
Emphasis on mutually reinforcing strategies with multisectoral actors (e.g. changing farming practices, media profile, trade policy around production and consumption of dairy products).
Backbone support provided by regional health authority.
Close collaboration with a range of organizations has been an essential element of success.
Diabetes Voice. May Volume 53. Special Issue.

29. In and Out Communication

30. Backbone Organization(s)
Guide vision & strategy
Support aligned activities
Established shared measurements
Build public will
Advance policy
Mobilize funding
Like a manager at a construction site who attends to the whole building while carpenters, plumbers and electricians come and go, the support staff keep the collaborative process moving along, even as the participants may change.
Jay Conner
Community Visions, Community Solutions: Grantmaking for Comprehensive Impact

31. Common Misperceptions about the Role of Backbone Organizations
The backbone organization sets the agenda for the group
The backbone organization drives the solutions
The backbone organization receives all the funding
The role of backbone can be self appointed rather than selected by the community
The role of backbone isn’t fundamentally different from “business as usual” in terms of staffing, time, and resources
Source: FSG Interviews and Analysis

32. Lessons Learned about Backbones
Their value is unmistakeable.
Backbones shares strengths in guiding vision and strategy and supporting aligned activities.
Backbone organizations shift focus over time.
Backbone organizations’ partners need ongoing assistance with data.
External communications, building public will, and advancing policy are common backbone challenges.
Source: Understanding the Value of Backbone Organizations in Collective Impact Initiatives

33. Shared Aspiration: 1 million Canadians will move out of poverty.
Active Learning Community Network to scale up social change
Common Evaluation Framework with shared measures
8 Action Teams advancing shared priorities
Loop of continuous communication
100 Cities/Regions/Provinces/Territories
reducing poverty together
Shared Aspiration: 1 million Canadians will move out of poverty.

34. Beyond Backbone: Other Critical Roles in Collective Impact
Community Ownership
Convener
Fiscal Sponsor
Backbone
Working Groups
Steering Committee
Leadership Table

35. Role of Convener
Convening and Hosting:  the convener initially calls the table together
Early Investor:  the convener is often an early investor in the collaborative effort
Fiscal Sponsor:  in many cases, the convening organization acts as a fiscal sponsor for the backbone infrastructure including holding funding for the collaborative table, hiring staff and providing administrative infrastructure
Trusted partner:  convening organizations are often members of the collaborative roundtables but not the chair or lead, this role is held by another member of the roundtable

36. 9 Leadership principles for Backbone Leaders
View the system you are trying to change through a lens of complexity
Let the vision be “good enough” rather than trying to plan every little detail
Live with balance between data and intuition, planning and action, safety and risk
Be comfortable with uncovering paradox and tensions
Don’t wait to be “sure” before proceeding with actions
Create an environment of information, diversity and difference, connections and relationship
Mix cooperation and competition – it’s not one or the other
Understand that informal conversations, gossip and rumor contribute to mental models, actions and beliefs. Listen to these.
Allow complex systems to emerge out of the interaction of systems, ideas and resources.

37. results of Collective Impact

38. Significant shifts in policy
Needle Moving Change
Unlikely suspects working together
Innovative solutions to complex problems
Increased community engagement
Increased awareness of complex issues
Feeling of control over some of society’s wicked problems

39. Things to Consider in Collective Impact
Patient capital
Persistence for longer term systems change
Align funders across sectors to common agenda
Legitimize the work of the collaborative table
No playbook, support and advance the skills and capacity of collaborative partners
Learn what’s working and quickly let go of what isn’t

40. Reflecting on Collective Impact
Think – Pair – Share
What have I learned about collective impact that I can apply to my role in the Halton Our Kids Network?
What other questions do I have?

41. Additional Resources
Stanford Social Innovation Review articles on Collective Impact: Resources for Backbones - Collective Impact Readiness Tool:

42. Thank You Enjoy the Collective Impact Journey!