What is collective impact?
“Large-scale social change comes from better cross-sector coordination rather than from the isolated intervention of individual organizations…” –– John Kania & Mark Kramer, Stanford Social Innovation Review: Collective Impact (2011)
The Collective Impact Forum describes “collective impact” as a network of community members, organizations, and institutions advancing equity by learning together, aligning, and integrating their actions to achieve population and systems level change. Facilitating the Five Conditions of collective impact requires centering equity by weaving the Five Equity Strategies into the process.
Five Conditions of Collective Impact
Developing a common agenda means bringing people together in a structured way to collectively define a problem and create a shared vision to solve it.
Establishing shared measurement means tracking progress in the same ways, allowing for continuous learning and accountability.
Fostering mutually reinforcing activities means integrating participants’ many different activities to maximize the end results.
Encouraging continuous communications means building trust and strengthening relationships among participants.
Having a strong backbone means a team dedicated to aligning and coordinating the work of the collaborative.
Equity strategies supporting emergence of collective impact conditions to achieve social change involve grounding the process by providing data and context to support targeted solutions; focusing on systems change, along with programs and services; shifting power within the collaborative by listening to and acting with community; and building equity leadership and accountability.
our roadmap
We’ve been using and adapting the framework outlined by John Kania and Mark Kramer in the Stanford Social Innovation Review as a guide for our process. We’re in the early phases of a long journey, with a current focus on bringing people together across sectors, building trust, mapping resource networks, and sharing data as we chart our course through Phase III.
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What are impact networks?
Converge – The Network Mindset: Scaling Out, Not Up
Interaction Institute for Social Change – Why Networks for Social Change
Stanford Social Innovation Review – Fostering Self-Organization
Stanford Social Innovation Review – Social Change Increasingly Requires Networked Action
GEO – What Role Can Grantmakers Play in Supporting Networks?
“Never confuse movement with action.”