Collective Impact Versus Collaboration: Sides of the Same Coin OR Different Phenomenon? (original) (raw)

Guide to Evaluating Collective Impact: Assessing Progress and Impact

2014

As collective impact has gained traction across the globe, demand has grown for an effective approach to evaluating collective impact initiatives that meets the needs of various interested parties. Collective impact practitioners seek timely, high-quality data that enables reflection and informs strategic and tactical decision making. Funders and other supporters require an approach to performance measurement and evaluation that can offer evidence of progress toward the initiative's goals at different points along the collective impact journey. This three part series responds to these needs by offering practitioners, funders, and evaluators a way to think about, plan for, and implement different performance measurement and evaluation activities

Collective Impact Strategies: Introduction to the Special Issue

Metropolitan Universities, 2017

The societal and cultural issues facing humanity are far greater than any nonprofit, for-profit, university, or government agency to address adequately alone. Whether poverty, water shortages, socio-economic inequality, natural disasters with lasting effects, or any number of other challenges facing our communities, organizations must band together to secure the impact needed to truly create change.Increasingly, communities are turning to collective impact as an approach that brings together the collective resources of multiple institutions to address a community-identified problem or need. While a somewhat new approach, there is a growing body of evidence of supporting the effectiveness of using the collective impact approach to addressing wicked problems (Bridgeland et al., 2012; Christens and Inzeo, 2015; Kania, Hanleybrown, and Splansky Juster, 2014).As anchor institutions, Metropolitan Universities have a unique opportunity and responsibility to initiate and promote social chan...

Building Successful Collective Impact Models

Cross-sector public-private partnerships can be one of the most powerful organizational forms to tackle the large-scale, seemingly intractable, problems facing the planet. Examples of success stories like Malaria No More exist but more often stories of failure abound: lack of trust, breakdown of communication, and conflict over mission and metrics. The big question is: What factors lead to successful public-private collaboration? We set out to determine the conditions under which cross-sector public-private partnerships, or collective impact models, flourish and deliver results. Based on the rich literature from economics, game theory, psychology, sociology and political science on collective action, and the new literature on collective impact and system change, we derive a series of variables that previous research has identified as important factors for successful collaboration. We test this holistic set of criteria on 10 cases of collective impact models at the local, national and international levels including: Living Cities, Memphis Fast Forward, New Orleans Kids Partnership, 4.0 Schools, InterAction-WASH, India Backbone Implementation Network, GBC Health, Malaria No More, and WASH Funders. In addition, we seek to discover new insights from these cases about the structures and processes that leaders of collective impact models can put in place to maximize results. Today's challenges, from climate change, to access to education, to human trafficking, require that we develop more effective coordination across the non-profit, government and private sectors.

Widening the view: situating collective impact among frameworks for community-led change

Community Development, 2015

Collective impact is a framework for achieving systems-level changes in communities through coordinated multi-sector collaborations. It has quickly gained influence in public health, education, and community development practice. Many adherents to the collective impact framework position it as a novel approach, however, and they often neglect many of the relevant findings from previous research on coalitions, interorganizational alliances, and other forms of organizational and crosssector collaboration. Additionally, the collective impact model differs in important ways from other effective models for community-driven changes in systems and policies, including grassroots community organizing. This article situates collective impact in relation to similar approaches, makes key distinctions between the collective impact framework and principles for grassroots community organizing, and draws on these distinctions to offer recommendations for enhancing collaborative practice to address community issues. The clarification of these distinctions provides possibilities for future innovations in community development practice, evaluation, and research. To tackle the root causes of the systemic issues that collective impact efforts seek to address will require learning from the community organizing approach to community engagement, analysis of power, and capacity for conflict.

Collective Impact as Disruptive Illumination

How are we to now make sense of collective impact within the field of community development now? This question is explored by the authors through a literature review, interviews, and a reflective dialogue. Their exploration identified three emerging models which infuse community development principles into the collective impact framework. They conclude collective impact is a “disruptive illumination” which has resulted in a deeper, useful conversation about social change and community development.

Back on Track: The challenges of implementing a small place-based Collective Impact initiative

Health Promotion Journal of Australia, 2018

Issues addressed: Back on Track (BoT) was developed as pilot to provide an integrated service response to twenty at-risk young people residing in a metro Melbourne housing estate. For this cohort, traditional welfare sector interventions were proving ineffective, with the siloed nature of the sector identified as a key barrier to effective engagement. Methods: Developed as an offshoot of an established CI project, the Education Engagement Partnership (EEP), BoT used Collective Impact (CI) methodology to inform project development. CI was considered a means to implement systematic change whilst increasing positive health, education and justice outcomes for the target cohort. Results: BoT was abandoned after start-up due to a lack of CI model buy-in on the part of one stakeholder. Conclusions: BoT's initial success can be directly attributed to stakeholder experience of the EEP. The project's break down illuminates challenges that can emerge when the welfare sector attempts interagency collaborative practices. BoT highlights the centrality of relationship-building for successful CI implementation and flags potential issues in collaborations between small place-based initiatives and large statewide agencies constrained by non-negotiable internal policies. So what? CI methodology is increasing popular in health promotion work, and there is a need to examine how the methodology translates into local level practice.