Blog

The New Year is a great time for reflection and often, a much needed opportunity for rejuvenation. (You can find some excellent self-care recommendations over at Nonprofit with Balls. We’re big fans of the “no email during the holidays” rule.) For our last blog of the year, we’re excited to share the Collective Impact Forum’s most popular reads and resources for 2015.

Vu Le is an important voice in the nonprofit sector. He speaks truth to power and calls out the elephants in our collective room. Many critics approach their fields with righteousness; Vu approaches with refreshing humility as one struggling with these questions and willing to be wrong. On November 30th, he posted “Why Communities of Color Are Getting Frustrated with Collective Impact.” He may find it surprising that The Collective Impact Forum not only welcomes his critique, but is broadcasting it as an important contribution to our field. I am writing to share some thoughts about why his essay is so important. I hope others will also join this discussion.

A while ago I wrote “Collective Impact: Resistance is Futile,” detailing the frustrations of CI and comparing it to The Borg on Star Trek. “Controlled by a hive mind that neutralizes any sort of individualism, and comprising billions of annexed individuals, [The Borg is] strong and terrifying, like an army of zombie robots, each with one eye that has a laser beam.” That was my first impression of collective impact, at least the way it’s being playing out in Seattle.

Today, we are excited to release our Cross-sector Partnership Assessment. In our work supporting over 70 collective impact initiatives in cities around the country, we’ve found that initiatives often struggle to build and maintain their cross-sector partnerships. So, Living Cities developed the Assessment to help cross-sector partnerships, particularly collective impact partnerships, understand how to best work with stakeholders to achieve dramatically better results for low-income people in cities.

We talk a lot about the importance of a backbone organization in collective impact, but moving from the conceptual idea of a backbone into making it a reality requires key decisions around three important pieces: size & structure, selection process, and funding sources.

The Collaborating to See All Constituents Reach Their Full Potential memo by GEO and the CI Forum, observes that developing and applying an explicit focus on equity to community collaborative work and the work of philanthropy is not easy. Incorporating an explicit focus on equity requires a consistent and intentional effort to create the time and mechanisms that help us to examine whether we are actually changing our practices, processes, policies, and systems so that “equity” does not become just another buzz word.

When I’m not trying to get philanthropy to be more proactive around embracing diversity, equity, and inclusion, I’m working to get my Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. Though the emphasis of my dissertation is on philanthropy and social movement dynamics, there are moments when my day job comes up particularly with respect to how foundations facilitate change and the kind of data and analysis they use to support their strategies and approaches.

As conversations around race and equity gain prominence in the national dialogue, it seems the philanthropic sector is increasingly recognizing the ways in which a long history of segregation, systemic racism and inequality hinders our ability to build strong and equitable communities. In the words of Malala Yousavsai, “we cannot all succeed when half of us are held back.”

It’s become increasingly clear that large scale social change efforts need to directly tackle structural racial inequality in order to be truly impactful and effective. For this reason, racial equity has become a central focus of the work at Living Cities, especially within its collective impact portfolio which focuses on changing the systems in cities that consistently produce poor outcomes for many city residents.

No organization (or issue) is an island, and central to collective impact is the recognition that achieving real impact means changing complex and dynamic systems. Yet, too much work happens in isolation. While funders might like to see more collaboration among their grantees, the reality is that too many nonprofits lack the opportunity and resources to engage in collective work. In the process of securing sufficient funding, mapping out sustainability plans, cultivating a “brand” and seeking recognition, the necessary work of collaboration often goes to the wayside.