Blog

In-mid March, I went into my house with my children and began this long, confusing time of isolation and change. Almost daily, I learn of friends and family who have gotten sick, who have had to isolate from their children, who are struggling to pay their bills or buy food, who have been denied life-saving care for other illnesses, and who have lost someone they love. I know I’m not alone in this. And I find myself thinking not just about the trauma of what is happening right now today, but also about what will happen tomorrow.

During the past month, many of us have had our lives and livelihoods completely upended. We have been forced to respond to emergencies in our work and for some of us, in our lives. For those of us still working, we have had to change our work and the way we work. For those with children, jobs are being balanced with new roles as principal, teacher, guidance counselor, cafeteria worker, janitor, and librarian at their brand new home school. We’ve had to lean into empathy and manage change like never before. If you are struggling, you are not alone.

We are happy to share five new case studies featuring a subset of the collaboratives studied by the 2018 research study “When Collective Impact Has an Impact,” conducted by ORS Impact and Spark Policy Institute. Each case study takes a deeper look at how the conditions of collective impact contributed to achieving population change.

We are living in an unprecedented, unpredictable, and scary time. It is hard for all of us. After several conversations with colleagues and much reflection on how collective impact efforts respond, I hope the following thoughts and recommendations may be helpful.

As governments, businesses, and individuals scramble to respond to the threat of a COVID-19 pandemic, those of us who work in the social sector rightly ask what we can do to effectively contribute.

No two collective impact initiative are the same … that of course is the reality of working to make progress on complex, systemic issues. However, one thing that has tripped up many initiatives using a collective impact approach is that they have been so focused on implementing the “Five Conditions of Collective Impact” – outlined in the original article Collective Impact in the Stanford Social Innovation Review – that they forget about the *how* this work actually unfolds.

At work during an affinity group meeting, I shared a story from back in college where a close friend offered me assistance. We were in our college café, and I was standing by the counter, squinting up at the menu hanging on the far wall. As someone with low vision, menus posted on walls are normally my unreadable enemy. My friend knew this, and while I stood there, she offered to read the menu to me. I replied that I didn’t need assistance that day as I was wearing my (very large, very magnifying) glasses instead of my less powerful but culturally more accepted contacts. She replied, “Oh, I didn’t even notice.”

For organizations and individuals engaged in collective impact work, it is important to remain inclusive in the way you and your organization frame the issues and partners you work with. The recent FrameWorks Institute’s article Framing Two-Generation Approaches to Supporting Families offers valuable insights for framing, messaging, and shifting mental models in collective impact work.

Earlier this year, the Collective Impact Forum gathered feedback through its fifth annual survey of members with online profiles. The purpose of this survey was to assess the Forum’s progress to date, to understand the current state of our members’ collective impact initiatives, and to collect input on topics of interest for our programming. Thank you to all who responded to the 2019 survey.

If collective impact efforts have any certainties, one surely is the ever-revolving (one might hope ever-evolving) door of community partners coming to the table. Our efforts for inclusivity, the reality that multisector coalitions invite instability as people leave jobs and new people come in: it’s inevitable that we will be regularly onboarding new partners. How do we invite in new faces without disrupting the focus and momentum of the team? I’m often asked this as I coach collective impact efforts. Here are a few strategies that seem to work.