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Over the past two months, we published seven interviews with experienced backbone leaders. Although we approached these interviews with a loose agenda (“How have their initiatives evolved and been sustained?” “What can experienced backbone leaders teach newer initiatives”, etc.), the interviewees provided a treasure trove of nuanced advice, stories of success, and (yes) stories of failure. Instead of sticking to talking points, each interviewee gave us the real story.

Cheryl Moder is the Vice President of Collective Impact at San Diego’s Community Health Improvement Partners (CHIP), a 20-year old nonprofit whose mission is to advance long-term solutions to priority health needs through collaboration. Among other responsibilities, CHIP has served as the backbone for the San Diego County Childhood Obesity Initiative for the past 10 years.

The notion of “neutrality” is sometimes used to describe one of the defining features of backbone leaders in collective impact, with phrases such as “perceived neutrality” or “neutral conveners” often coming up when describing the role. However, as the collective impact approach continues to reach a broader audience, some have astutely pointed out shortcomings of the word “neutrality” in describing the ideal role of backbone leaders.

Hello CI enthusiasts! This is our sixth in a series of interviews with experienced backbone leaders. In this chat, we’ll hear from Lynda Petersen, Associate Director at the Community Center for Education Results (CCER).

We hope you’re enjoying our conversations with experienced backbone leaders. In this installment, we had the pleasure of sitting down recently with Gabriel Guillaume, Executive Vice President of Local Initiatives and Strategy at LiveWell Colorado. LiveWell Colorado, launched in 2008, is a nonprofit organization committed to reducing obesity in Colorado by promoting healthy eating and active living. LiveWell is a statewide collective impact initiative that supports local collaborative efforts.

Recently the Collective Impact Forum featured a terrific piece by Sheri Brady and Jennifer Splansky Juster on the Collective Impact Principles of Practice. These eight principles to guide efforts to put collective impact into practice are long overdue.

Here at the Forum we’ve been having amazing discussions about equity in collective impact. As part of the discussion series with experienced backbone leaders, I had the chance to catch up with a three key members of KConnect to talk about the role of equity in their work. KConnect is the backbone of a collective impact initiative focused on providing all children in Kent County, Michigan a path to economic prosperity through family, education, and community opportunities. Representing KConnect are Pamela Parriott, Executive Director of KConnect; Lynne Ferrell, co-chair of the KConnect Board of Trustees; and Paul Doyle, consultant for KConnect’s Equity & Inclusion Workgroup and focus.

Our conversation series with experienced backbone leaders continues with a conversation with Kat Allen, co-chair of Communities that Care Coalition (CTC). CTC focuses on supporting the health and well-being of young people in Franklin County and the North Quabbin region of Massachusetts. CTC has been operating since 2002, and much can be learned from their experience and evolution. For more information on CTC, see this 6-minute video of Kat’s “practitioner insights” and a brief case study.

Using shared measures to track progress toward goals and understand where partnerships are making progress and where improvement is needed is increasingly emphasized as essential for addressing complex issues and improving our communities. However, our understanding of exactly how to harness the power of data is limited. One thing, though, is abundantly clear: Making good on the commitment to use data is hard—and the challenges aren’t just about technology.

This is the second in our conversation series with experienced backbone leaders. (see this blog post describing the series.) In this conversation, we spoke with Chekemma Fulmore-Townsend, President and CEO of the Philadelphia Youth Network (PYN). PYN serves as the backbone organization for Project U-Turn, which aims to galvanize collective commitment and action to address Philadelphia’s dropout crisis.