Articles, Cities Reducing Poverty, Poverty Reduction Strategy
Canada’s first national poverty reduction strategy, “Opportunity for All” is a welcomed move forward for those working to eliminate poverty in...
Articles, Cities Reducing Poverty, Poverty Reduction Strategy
Canada’s first national poverty reduction strategy, “Opportunity for All” is a welcomed move forward for those working to eliminate poverty in...
Collective Impact is a framework for addressing complex community dilemmas and is most effective when trying to move the needle at a population or...
Leadership, governance, and backbone supports are three of the most important elements of a Collective Impact initiative. We've assembled a...
Tools, Community Engagement, Megan Wanless
This tool offers a simple and fun exercise that can help break down barriers between group members and provide a space and context to play,...
Collective Impact initiatives generally follow five phases that each present unique challenges. The papers, tools and resources contained in this...
A data walk is a powerful process for engaging diverse stakeholders in a shared sense-making process around data. Created by The Urban Institute,...
Evaluating Community Impact, Mark Cabaj
Social innovators, evaluators, and community changemakers are increasingly focused on changing complex systems, but often struggle to describe...
Webinars and Videos, Cities Deepening Community, Community Change
In this webinar, Jessie Sutherland touched on the key components to success in resident-led community change initiatives, including sustainability...
Webinars and Videos, Community Change, Evaluation
Almost anyone who is interested in making progress on tough economic, social and environmental issues is committed to changing the system. Yet,...
Do you need a quick warmup to help change the mood in a meeting? The Collective Lines warmup activity lets participants play while intentionally...
Webinars and Videos, Community Change
In this webinar, Megan Courtney and Liz Weaver reflect on 25 years of collective wisdom in community change from Canada to New Zealand. Based on...
Articles, Mark Cabaj, Evaluation, Evaluating Community Impact, Social Innovation
As changemakers, we are not always clear on what scaling means nor how efforts to scale should be properly evaluated, and because of this...
Tools, Community Innovation, Prototyping
Prototyping and testing can help you build excitement and buy-in for a new service, get feedback to help you iterate and refine your service, or...
Webinars and Videos, Cities Deepening Community, neighbours
In this webinar, Jonathan Massimi introduced the Asset-Based Community Development approache and also the Asset-Based Community Driven Efforts...
Case Studies, Cities Reducing Poverty, Natasha Pei, Community Engagement
Even the best laid plans often go awry. Poverty is messy and complex and the process of finding solutions to poverty will be too. A collaborative...
Case Studies, Heather Keam, Cities Deepening Community
There are several organizations and municipalities are focusing their efforts on neighbourhoods. But how do they know their efforts are making a...
Webinars and Videos, Community Change, Community Innovation
This webinar focused on the experience of The Winnipeg Boldness Project, a research and development project working alongside the North End...
Cities Reducing Poverty, Poverty Reduction Strategy
This collection of poverty reduction strategies provides a glimpse into the work of eight Cities Reducing Poverty (CRP) members. It shines a...
This year both the Tamarack Institute (Canada) and Inspiring Communities (Aotearoa New Zealand) achieve significant milestones. They are...
Webinars and Videos, Affordable Housing, Housing Strategy
In this webinar, Tristan Johnson, Planning Analyst at the City of New Westminster discussed the City’s approach to overcoming local housing...
Webinars and Videos, Cities Deepening Community, neighbours, Paul Born
In this webinar, Peter Block explored the concept of a neighbourly economy including discussion on how to build ‘Abundant Community’ in...
Articles, Mark Cabaj, Evaluation, Evaluating Community Impact, Policy
Despite the central role of policy change in social change, innovators and evaluators often struggle to be clear about what outcomes, results, or...
Tools, Community Engagement, Sylvia Cheuy
The Peer Input Process is a relatively quick and structured way to get input and insight from peers into a current challenge in your community...
Adam Vasey, Cities Reducing Poverty, Poverty Reduction Strategy, Poverty Reduction
Tamarack Institute’s Vibrant Communities – Cities Reducing Poverty (VC – CRP), since arriving on the national scene in 2002, has been building a...
Case Studies, Collective Impact, Adam Vasey
Windsor-Essex County (Windsor-Essex), the southernmost region in Canada, consists of nine municipalities: Amherstburg, Essex, Kingsville,...
Webinars and Videos, Mark Cabaj, Evaluation, Evaluating Community Impact, Systems Change
In this webinar, Meg Hargreaves and Mark Cabaj explore the ideas and steps required to properly evaluate ‘system changes’ that emerge when...
Case Studies, Community Engagement, Leena Sharma Seth, Cities Reducing Poverty
Hastings County and Prince Edward County (HPE) are located in southeastern Ontario, spanning the 401 corridor to the southernmost part of...
Case Studies, Galen MacLusky, Jessica Fisher, Community Change, Community Development
Communities across the world are used to having change thrust upon them. Governments, social services, and institutional systems are often the...
Case Studies, Alison Homer, Housing Strategy, Cities Reducing Poverty
Housing affordability has become a critical issue across Canada, particularly in the Metro Vancouver region. The City of New Westminster works to...
Webinars and Videos, Cities Reducing Poverty, Poverty Reduction, Paul Born, Adam Vasey
Tamarack Institute - Vibrant Communities Canada's (VCC) Co-founder and Co-CEO, Paul Born and VCC's Adam Vasey, Director of Policy, Learning, and...
Case Studies, Galen MacLusky, Housing, Housing Strategy, Community Innovation
How can social labs change social policy? As leaders on the ground it’s often clear in our minds how our systems lead to marginalization and...
Case Studies, Heather Keam, Cities Deepening Community, Neighbourhood Strategy
Across Canada, there has been a decrease in voter-turnout at every level of government. This means that government policy and decision-making...
Articles, Community Innovation, Prototyping
To create change we need not have all the answers up front. Instead, the act of creating prototypes and testing them in real-world conditions can...
Case Studies, Sylvia Cheuy, Collective Impact, Community Engagement
June 2018 marked the culmination of months of research, conversation and community discussions led by two collaborative initiatives in Rockford...
Liz Weaver, Leadership, Community Change Festival, Collaborative Leadership
This paper explores the multiple faces of leadership and draws from Weaver's years of experience in both implementing and supporting an array of...
Webinars and Videos, Collaborative Leadership, Liz Weaver, Community Change Festival, Community Change
One of the most pressing collaborative challenges is to fully engage the participants around the table in the process. Too often, the...
Tools, Liz Weaver, Collective Impact
Collective Impact and collaborative efforts are focused on improving community conditions. Too often, we forget about the motivation of the key...
Tools, Community Innovation, Ideation
Have you ever had an idea explained to you that was not fully thought out? It happens often and can be frustrating for both parties when the idea...
Case Studies, Natasha Pei, Cities Reducing Poverty, Poverty Reduction Strategy, New Brunswick
New Brunswick is Canada’s largest Maritime province by area; boasts a population of 760,000; and is Canada’s only officially bilingual province,...
Webinars and Videos, Reconciliation, Community Change
Reconciliation Canada is a registered charity leading the way in engaging Canadians in dialogue and transformative experiences that revitalize the...
Publications, Community Change Festival, Collaborative Leadership, Collaboration, Liz Weaver
It starts with collaboration. This is the coming together of two or more organizations to work collectively, share authority, decision-making and...
Webinars and Videos, Community Innovation, Community Change Festival, Galen MacLusky
Human-Centred Design and Design Thinking, popularized by innovation firms such as IDEO and institutions such as Stanford’s d.school, are rapidly...
Webinars and Videos, ABCD, Community Development
Neighbourhoods are one of the foremost opportunities available to us to foster a sense of belonging. Neighbourhoods are home to an abundance of...
Publications, Community Innovation, Galen MacLusky, Community Change Festival
Are you a Design Thinker? A Social Innovator? A Behavioural Economist? Do you use Systems Thinking, Co-Design, or Labs to effect change? If you’re...
Cities Deepening Community, Heather Keam, Case Studies, Sheila Murray
All levels of government ask residents to create an emergency kit and a plan that ensures they can look after themselves for at least the first 72...
Articles, Cities Reducing Poverty, Cities Deepening Community, Paul Born
"In the next 25 years, Canada will accept at least 7.5 million immigrants. Visionary cities taking steps to reduce poverty and deepen community...
Webinars and Videos, Collective Impact
Tamarack's Liz Weaver facilitates a discussion with Paul Born, Co-CEO of Tamarack Institute, and Mark Cabaj, President of From Here to There...
Publications, Community Engagement, Sylvia Cheuy
Sylvia Cheuy has released her new paper about community engagement. Community change initiatives are often set against complex and systematic...
Case Studies, Cities Reducing Poverty, Sustainability, Poverty Reduction Strategy, Poverty Reduction
On November 22nd, 2017, Oxford County Council approved a Resolution that committed the County of Oxford to achieving Zero Poverty. This resolution...
Articles, Galen MacLusky, Community Innovation
This article by Galen MacLusky discusses how taking the time to explore why you want to innovate can help you expose potential pitfalls that...
Webinars and Videos, Sylvia Cheuy, Phyllis Alexander and Hasshan Batts, Oliver Reilly, Leadership
Hasshan Batts and Phyllis Alexander engage in a conversation with Tamarack's Sylvia Cheuy. They are the driving force being Leadership Without...
Webinars and Videos, Cities Deepening Community
Internationally renowned writer, teacher and systems thinker Margaret Wheatley summons us to be leaders for this time of profound disruption, to...
Tools, Collaborative Leadership, Collaboration, Community Innovation, Galen MacLusky
Groups often get overwhelmed by how many tasks they need to get done which leads to burnout and disconnected teams that are chasing different...
Case Studies, Poverty Reduction Strategy, Cities Reducing Poverty
Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside Community Economic Development Strategy proactively and innovatively leverages the neighbourhood’s talents,...
Articles, Poverty Reduction Strategy, Cities Reducing Poverty
This article documents how Living SJ and the Saskatoon Poverty Reduction Partnership, two members of Vibrant Communities’ Cities Reducing Poverty...
Most collective impact and collaborative efforts benefit from establishing a core set of values and principles for working together. The time...
Webinars and Videos, Collective Impact
Tamarack's Liz Weaver discusses the Canadian Case Studies from the ORS Impact and Spark Policy Institute report "When Collective Impact has an...
Webinars and Videos, Leadership, Collaborative Leadership
Community Change efforts require different leadership styles and approaches than other initiatives.
Galen MacLusky, Community Innovation, Community Change
What makes Community Innovation different from other forms of Social Innovation is the focus on community – placing community members as both the...
Webinars and Videos, Collective Impact
Tamarack's Galen MacLusky discusses the ORS Impact and Spark Policy Institute report "When Collective Impact Has an Impact", joined by Terri Akey...
Mark Cabaj, Strategy, Collaboration, Evaluating Community Impact
Social innovators tackling complex social, economic and environmental challenges – particularly those working with diverse stakeholders – can...
Case Studies, Community Change, Cities Deepening Community
Since the 1990’s, the City of Kamloops has been an advocate for community accessibility. Over the last twenty years, many projects have been...
Community Innovation, Tools, Galen MacLusky
Have you ever been asked to come up with new ideas to solve an old problem, or been stuck on how to get a group to approach a challenge in a...
Webinars and Videos, communications
Lindsay Sage, co-founder of sagecomm, discusses the development of compelling issue positions and the key considerations, channels and tactics to...
Webinars and Videos, Shared Measurement, Evaluation, Evaluating Community Impact
In transformative community change efforts, collaborative tables often face challenges with outlining the measures that will show how their effort...
Webinars and Videos, communications, Community Engagement
This webinar session lays the foundation for winning communication strategies for community causes and issues.
Webinars and Videos, Community Engagement, Inclusion
The wisdom and perspectives of community members are essential in finding effective solutions to the community's most complex issues. These...
Webinars and Videos, Collective Impact, Evaluation
The development of evaluation plans often seem tedious and routine. They are typically written as part of funding applications and then hurriedly...
Cities Reducing Poverty, Alison Homer, Case Studies, Poverty Reduction Strategy
Calgary’s Financial Empowerment Collaborative plays an important role in the community-driven Enough for All poverty reduction strategy. Working...
Collaborative Leadership, Collective Impact
This Case Study focuses on combined economic and social developments championed by the Rider Poole Foundation in the Greater Lehigh Valley area....
The Cover Story is an exercise that can be used for multiple purposes. The object of the game is to act as journalists whose job it is to capture...
Human Centered Design is a process that starts with people and ends with new solutions that are tailored to their needs. The process involves...
This tool is particularly useful when exploring an issue from several different perspectives. Each hat focuses on a subject area and endeavours to...
Achieving success is not about wishing for the best future but being prepared to do the difficult work of getting ready. Ready, Set, Go is...
Webinars and Videos, Collective Impact, Community Change
Collective Impact (CI) is more than having a good idea, it is about convening community leaders around a complex problem and then trying to move...
Webinars and Videos, Collective Impact, Community Engagement
We are overwhelmed by the amount of information coming at us from all sources, including social media. How do you make sure your messages stand...
Case Studies, Neighbourhood Strategy, Cities Deepening Community
Every city builds neighbourhoods with sidewalks and roads, and homes, parks and arenas. Municipalities across Canada are realizing that it's not...
Webinars and Videos, Community Engagement, French
L’engagement communautaire consiste à connaître votre auditoire et déterminer vos objectifs d’engagement, ainsi qu’à utiliser les outils pratiques...
Webinars and Videos, Collective Impact, Sylvia Cheuy
You have your partners at the table, but how do you keep them engaged? This webinar provides an overview of the key elements of collaborative...
Case Studies, Poverty Reduction Strategy, Cities Reducing Poverty
Central Iowa is a community with a diverse population, robust insurance, financial services agri-food and technology sectors, and boundless...
Webinars and Videos, Collective Impact, Liz Weaver
This informative webinar will provide useful approaches to understanding the how and why of Shared Measurement. We explore two specific tools:...
Evaluating Community Impact, Evaluation, Mark Cabaj, FAQ
FAQ | This Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) document explores 15 questions about principles-focused evaluation raised through the webinars and...
Community change efforts often involve addressing complex issues with multiple root causes. The paradox of this work is that leaders must...
Webinars and Videos, Collective Impact, Liz Weaver
Successful collaborative efforts require a deep understanding of the problem that the group is trying to solve. The webinar will explore how to...
Webinars and Videos, Evaluation, Community Innovation
How can social innovators and would-be change makers ensure they are adhering to core principles and assess whether doing so is yielding desired...
Webinars and Videos, Community Engagement, Collective Impact
Community Engagement is about knowing your audience, identifying your engagement goals and then using practical tools and building an engagement...
Five levels of engagement that are key to clarifying the appropriate level of engagement before implementing an engagement strategy.
Ontario, Case Studies, Cities Reducing Poverty
Located in southern Ontario and part of the Greater Toronto Area, Halton Region is known as an affluent community and desirable place to live....
Publications, Sylvia Cheuy, Community Innovation
Developing innovation capacity within our communities and the non-profit sector has now become a strategic imperative. With the array of complex...
Evaluation, Webinars and Videos, Community Engagement
In this webinar Tamarack's resident evaluation practitioner, Liz Weaver, shares some of her favourite tools for evaluating the impact and outcomes...
Evaluating Community Impact, Tools
This tool will help guide you through the Most Significant Change process. This technique is a form of participatory monitoring and evaluation....
Collaborative Leadership, Collective Impact, Tools, Worksheet, Mark Holmgren
This tool will help groups develop a common understanding of one another’s perspectives on collaboration and can assist in making a case for...
Collective Impact, Evaluation, Evaluating Community Impact, Webinars and Videos
In this webinar, Liz Weaver and Mark Cabaj discuss Mark's paper Shared Measurement: The Why is Clear, The How Continues to Develop and review five...
Neighbourhood Strategy, Cities Deepening Community
In this case study, you will find the process and details of This is My Neighbourhood, The City of Calgary's four-year pilot project, which has a...
Cities Reducing Poverty, Poverty Reduction, Publications, Books, Case Studies
This book explores the efforts of collaborative groups in six different Canadian cities where each one is guided by a desire to employ a...
Cities Reducing Poverty, Poverty Reduction, Publications, Strategy
Toronto’s vision by 2035 is to be a city with opportunities for all, and a leader in the collective pursuit of justice, fairness and equity. The...
Cities Reducing Poverty, Poverty Reduction, Publications, Evaluating Community Impact
Incomes are an important determinant of well-being and one of the more measurable aspects of poverty. Data can tell us how poverty affects groups...
Cities Reducing Poverty, Poverty Reduction, Strategy, Publications
Medicine Hat, the city credited as being the first to end homelessness, is taking on poverty in all its forms, with a goal of ensuring wellbeing...
Cities Reducing Poverty, Poverty Reduction, Membership, Brochure
Vibrant Communities Canada membership brings local poverty reduction initiatives into a national movement that supports them to build capacity and...
Webinars and Videos, Collaborative Leadership, Collective Impact
Collaboration is increasingly difficult and increasingly necessary. Often, to get something done that really matters to us, we need to work with...
Evaluating Community Impact, Tools, Collective Impact
This tool will help you develop evaluations that you can actually use to make a larger impact on your initiative. It outlines why evaluation...
Publications, Evaluation, Mark Cabaj, Collective Impact
Shared Measurement: The Why is Clear, The How Continues to Develop is a paper written by evaluation expert Mark Cabaj, that offers five practical...
Collective Impact, Collaborative Leadership, Publications, Liz Weaver
Authentic community change moves at the speed of trust. And yet, we spend so little time and focus on intentionally building trust amongst...
Community change efforts are dynamic and typically unfold according to four phases. From our own work in collaborative community change, Tamarack...
Community Engagement, Tools, Collective Impact
This tool is used to assist groups and/or communities to engage effectively and clarify their goals for engagement.
Collective Impact, Tools, Cities Deepening Community
To work effectively as a team, it is important that we understand and agree upon what we want to achieve together. The most powerful and authentic...
Community Engagement, Publications, Cities Deepening Community
The first step to building a community is to have a conversation. When we talk with each other, we build connections and form relationships....
Publications, Mark Holmgren, Collaborative Leadership
Thirty-five people engaged in the co-creation of this paper with Tamarack's Mark Holmgren to offer their perspective on collaborative leadership...
Collaborative Leadership, Tools
The Heart, Hand, Mind Tool is used to explore an issue or opportunity from multiple perspectives in order to reveal elements of significance.
The Story Spine Tool uses the familiar elements of a story to provide a structured way to facilitate a deeper reflection and dialogue about an...
Collective Impact, Collaborative Leadership, Tools, Worksheet
The Key Factor Mapping Tool is used to develop a shared understanding of the factors that have the most impact on addressing a complex issue or...
Webinars and Videos, Collaborative Leadership, Collective Impact
Join Ben Hecht, President and CEO of Living Cities, and Tamarack's Mark Holmgren, Director of Vibrant Communities, for a provocative hour of...
Publications, Collective Impact, Paul Born, Cities Reducing Poverty, Poverty Reduction
How to Develop a Common Agenda for a Collective Impact: A 5 Step Guide is a paper written by Paul Born that provides a 'how-to' approach for...
Neighbourhood Strategy, Cities Deepening Community, Webinars and Videos
Michelle Drake and Darren Kropf discuss the development of Kitchener’s first Neighbourhood Strategy and how the City will support resident-led...
Webinars and Videos, Collaborative Leadership
Leading a non-profit organization comes with big expectations, and You’re It! Shared Wisdom for Successfully Leading Organizations from Both a...
Publications, Community Engagement, Lisa Attygalle
The Context Experts is a paper written by Lisa Attygalle that discusses how to increase the authenticity of community engagement and eradicate...
Single, Double and Triple Loop Learning is related to Brenda Zimmerman’s explanation of problems or challenges as being Simple, Complicated, or...
This tool assists with getting a team started with online collaboration while focusing on communication, coordination, creation, and...
A tool to help reach your community through mobile engagement including ideas for you to implement.
Tools, Community Engagement, Evaluation
This helps explain insight communities of partners, stakeholder, and citizens. These communities share with you what they think and feel, and why...
An explanation on when to use geo-mapping which is a way to crowd-source information for your community to obtain verifiable feedback data.
The future search is an approach that centers on a conference with 'visioning' at its core. The crucial stages that should be followed are also...
This tool explains how to use focus groups with a set criteria. There are also various approaches outlined to help assist your efforts.
This tool helps segment your various stakeholder groups, monitor their engagement, and create a plan to deepen their engagement.
A tool to help you develop your own digital storytelling to empower community members, educate stakeholders, and evaluate change.
This tool outlines what a Community of Practice is why you should make one and how to assemble the tools and talent to make it succeed.
Tools, Community Engagement, Community Innovation
This tool helps explain how a citizen jury can help consider complex issues through gathering evidence, deliberating, and making final decisions.
This tool explains Citizen Panels, what their commitment is, strengths, weaknesses, and when they can be used.
This tool focuses on using art and creativity as a form of community engagement. It can be very effective at encouraging participation and...
Notes and highlights of appreciative inquiries including some key questions that can be used to ignite conversation.
Tools, Community Engagement, Friendraising
Friendraising: from raising funds to making friends. This tool discusses passions, organization, and relationships.
Tools, Community Engagement, technology
This tool provides 10 guidelines for increasing online community engagement. It's meant to help you think about the best ways to involve others in...
Tools, Community Engagement, technology
Open Space Technology is a management tool that helps overcome the difficulties of conventional approaches to decision-making.
Tools, Community Engagement, Budgeting
This tool shows how participatory budgeting can be used to involve citizens with decision making about budget issues on both small and large-scale...
Tools, Community Engagement, Neighbourhood Strategy
A tool explaining the Great Neighbours initiative Connect Cards that provide thought provoking questions designed to build deeper social...
An insight into podcasts about why to make one and assembling the various tools and talent.
This tool is used to appreciate complex challenges and to break down barriers. It explains what polarities are, the value of polarity thinking,...
This tool explains scales that can be used for evaluating engagement satisfaction including the Net Promoter Score, Likert Scale, and Semantic...
This tool demonstrates how to use personas in the design of community engagement by helping you understand the various kinds of people you may...
Tools, WikiSites, Community Engagement
This tool explains what wiki's are as well as the advantages and disadvantages of using one. There are also various examples shown throughout the...
This article, written by Mark Holmgren, contains tools and approaches designed to help with the development of Collective Impact strategies and is...
This wheel will help engage attendees at a workshop or consultation to provide you with input regarding their own desired level of involvement.
Webinars and Videos, Collaborative Leadership, Collective Impact
Collaboration is increasingly difficult and increasingly necessary. Often, to get something done that really matters to us, we need to work with...
Tools, Collective Impact, Collaborative Leadership
Upside Down Thinking is both a mindset and a tool people can use to challenge status quo thinking and practice and foster innovation or creative...
Collective Impact, Tools, Worksheet
This empathy map tool will help you consider the perspectives of those who your project serves or affects. It will help your team consider the...
Collective Impact, Publications
In November 2016, Tamarack partnered with Collaboration for Impact in Australia to deliver a series of community engagement and collective impact...
Webinars and Videos, Community Engagement
Community members must be stakeholders in decisions that impact them, but sometimes as a community engagement practitioner, it can be scary to...
This resource is a comprehensive list of community engagement techniques that can be selected based on the level of engagement you are conducting....
Books, Case Studies, Cities Reducing Poverty, Leadership, Poverty Reduction, Publications, Business
This tool helps ensure the group's mutually reinforcing activities are fitted together to support a larger, shared strategy.
This tool can be used to generate an initial set of benchmarks or targets for the work of your collaborative.
This tool helps provide members with an overview of the key framework, decision, and progress that has been made on Collective Impact initiatives.
This tool helps provide members with an overview of the key framework, decision, and progress that has been made on Collective Impact initiatives.
This tool enables groups to describe the activities that they will undertake to ensure that they are achieving their intended impact.
This tool will outline budgets including resources and expenses. It discusses the Collective Impact initiative benefits from engaging in multiple...
This tool is a simple and fun way to inventory the assets of individual team members and determine how they can be used to move the collective...
Collective Impact, Tools, Worksheet, Communication
This tool will help guide a conversation with others as to what their desired level of involvement is in the opportunities and work of your group...
This tool will help outline the five different phases of Collective Impact including the cyclical cycle.
This tool will help outline the five conditions of Collective Impact that together produce true alignment and lead to powerful results.
This tool is an effective way to build awareness and “buzz” about your gathering. It helps select who will attend the learning event or gathering...
This tool will help clarify shared issues that need to be addressed by using various strategies, factors, and outcomes.
This tool will help groups decide where they are on the spectrum of collaboration include current level and idea level.
This tool will help give a clear overview of collective impact including pre-conditions and phases.
This tool will help project leaders to identify where their work can be strengthened. It can also be used as an assessment tool for boards and...
This tool will help groups identify and prioritize influential people who could be engaged in the Collective Impact effort.
This tool is helpful for collective impact initiatives. It helps develop a strong shared vision which creates a sense of commonality, builds trust...
Collective Impact, Tools, Liz Weaver
Communications is an important condition of collective impact and collaborative work. Keeping everyone on the same page is difficult when there...
Effective cross-sector collaboration – engaging a diverse group of stakeholders to assume shared responsibility for achieving a shared, mutually...
Collective Impact is transforming communities across Canada and the United States. We know the work can be challenging. Bringing many diverse...
This tool is designed as a reflective practice for members of Collective Impact planning tables that specifically focuses on the core elements...
Real, meaningful societal impact is attainable once we understand how to work together and collaborate in new and transformational ways.
In her...
Collective Impact, Webinars and Videos
In this short video, Liz Weaver talks about a key concept in Collective Impact 3.0 - the shift from a Management paradigm to Movement Building.
Collective Impact, Tools, Communication
This tool is designed to help you to map out the most effective approach to continuously communicate how your Collective Impact plan is evolving;...
In his ground-breaking book, Hardwired Humans – Successful Leadership using Human Instincts, author Andrew O’Keeffe provides a practical framework...
Community Engagement, Workshops
In October 2016, Collaborating for Impact and Together SA hosted a series of Masterclasses across Australia. Liz Weaver joined Australian...
Collective Impact, Tools, Liz Weaver
The early phases of a collective impact journey are often focused internally on developing the leadership team, connecting with the community...
This slide deck was created by Liz Weaver for the 2015 Champions for Change workshop for backbone leaders and focuses on the challenge facing many...
Poverty Reduction, Policy, Affordable Housing, Articles
On November 17, I delivered a webinar presentation for the Canadian Housing and Renewal Association titled “The Missing Piece: How Housing Policy...
Community Innovation, Publications
Liz Weaver explores the notion of disruption and how it relates to the voluntary and community sector in this new paper from Tamarack's Community...
Publications, Cities Deepening Community
As part of our Community Change Series 2016, Sylvia Cheuy explores the concept of community resilience - what it is and why it matters - in her...
Webinars and Videos, Cities Reducing Poverty
Webinars and Videos, Cities Reducing Poverty
2017 is the year where labour laws in Ontario will change. Through the government's Changing Workplaces Review, twenty-five years after their last...
Publications, Evaluating Community Impact, Mark Holmgren, Cities Reducing Poverty
From a poverty reduction perspective, we are inundated with the voices of our clients, our funders and donors, our colleagues, governments at all...
ABCD, Keynote Address, caring, Cities Deepening Community, Articles
A moving keynote address that holds the importance of care at the centre. Vickie Cammack and Al Etmanski discuss communal gardening and other acts...
Webinars and Videos, Collective Impact
The practice of collaboration has evolved since the first article about collective impact went viral in 2011. Many communities are implementing...
Paul Born, Publications, Community Engagement
As part of our Community Change Series 2016, Paul Born provides thinking around five core ideas to create community change: collective impact,...
Webinars and Videos, Community Innovation
On the cover of Getting to Maybe - How the World Is Changed, a book co-authored by Frances Westley, readers are so boldly told "This book is for...
Human Rights, Webinars and Videos, Poverty Reduction, Cities Reducing Poverty
In this webinar, Michèle Biss, Legal Education and Outreach Coordinator for Canada Without Poverty (CWP), Stephen Portman, Advocacy Lead for...
Mark Cabaj, Liz Weaver, Collective Impact, Publications
As part of our Community Change Series 2016, Mark Cabaj and Liz Weaver put forward fresh thinking around five ways to build the next iteration of...
Webinars and Videos, Community Innovation
Australia and Canada share much in common. Australia has one of the highest levels of median wealth in the world, yet poverty and poor outcomes...
Collective Impact, Webinars and Videos
In this webinar, Mark Holmgren discusses the need to establish both formal and informal mechanisms for keeping people informed about the progress...
Community Engagement, Webinars and Videos
Severn Cullis-Suzuki explores the importance of disrupting what separates us in order to work together to understand and address the...
Collective Impact, Webinars and Videos
Steve Patrick, Vice President and Executive Director of the The Aspen Forum for Community Solutions and Jamiel Alexander, Community Organizer and...
Collaborative Leadership, Webinars and Videos
This spring, the Government of Ontario embarked on the single largest modernization to Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) ever, making...
Collective Impact, Webinars and Videos
What does it take to know you are making an impact? This webinar explores how to build shared measurement strategies into your collective work...
Community Engagement, Webinars and Videos
Join Paul Born and Liz Weaver as they discuss the emerging ideas and strategies that are disrupting how communities are responding to the complex...
Collective Impact, Webinars and Videos
How do you build a Common Agenda? Sylvia Cheuy, Director of Deepening Community at Tamarack, talks about the factors that you will need to...
Community Engagement, Webinars and Videos
Michael Jones and his conversation partners offer a richly textured and multidisciplinary examination of place. Too often, the places we create...
Evaluation, Webinars and Videos, Evaluating Community Impact
Evaluations “work” when they lead to insight and action. We all know that the process can be resource-intensive, so it is important for us to...
Collective Impact, Webinars and Videos
Liz Weaver discusses the three pre-conditions of collective impact, and the five main conditions of collective impact. She also discusses the...
Articles, Cities Reducing Poverty, Poverty Reduction Strategy
Canada’s first national poverty reduction strategy, “Opportunity for All” is a welcomed move forward for those working to eliminate poverty in...
Collective Impact is a framework for addressing complex community dilemmas and is most effective when trying to move the needle at a population or...
Leadership, governance, and backbone supports are three of the most important elements of a Collective Impact initiative. We've assembled a...
Tools, Community Engagement, Megan Wanless
This tool offers a simple and fun exercise that can help break down barriers between group members and provide a space and context to play,...
Collective Impact initiatives generally follow five phases that each present unique challenges. The papers, tools and resources contained in this...
A data walk is a powerful process for engaging diverse stakeholders in a shared sense-making process around data. Created by The Urban Institute,...
Evaluating Community Impact, Mark Cabaj
Social innovators, evaluators, and community changemakers are increasingly focused on changing complex systems, but often struggle to describe...
Webinars and Videos, Cities Deepening Community, Community Change
In this webinar, Jessie Sutherland touched on the key components to success in resident-led community change initiatives, including sustainability...
Webinars and Videos, Community Change, Evaluation
Almost anyone who is interested in making progress on tough economic, social and environmental issues is committed to changing the system. Yet,...
Do you need a quick warmup to help change the mood in a meeting? The Collective Lines warmup activity lets participants play while intentionally...
Webinars and Videos, Community Change
In this webinar, Megan Courtney and Liz Weaver reflect on 25 years of collective wisdom in community change from Canada to New Zealand. Based on...
Articles, Mark Cabaj, Evaluation, Evaluating Community Impact, Social Innovation
As changemakers, we are not always clear on what scaling means nor how efforts to scale should be properly evaluated, and because of this...
Tools, Community Innovation, Prototyping
Prototyping and testing can help you build excitement and buy-in for a new service, get feedback to help you iterate and refine your service, or...
Webinars and Videos, Cities Deepening Community, neighbours
In this webinar, Jonathan Massimi introduced the Asset-Based Community Development approache and also the Asset-Based Community Driven Efforts...
Case Studies, Cities Reducing Poverty, Natasha Pei, Community Engagement
Even the best laid plans often go awry. Poverty is messy and complex and the process of finding solutions to poverty will be too. A collaborative...
Case Studies, Heather Keam, Cities Deepening Community
There are several organizations and municipalities are focusing their efforts on neighbourhoods. But how do they know their efforts are making a...
Webinars and Videos, Community Change, Community Innovation
This webinar focused on the experience of The Winnipeg Boldness Project, a research and development project working alongside the North End...
Cities Reducing Poverty, Poverty Reduction Strategy
This collection of poverty reduction strategies provides a glimpse into the work of eight Cities Reducing Poverty (CRP) members. It shines a...
This year both the Tamarack Institute (Canada) and Inspiring Communities (Aotearoa New Zealand) achieve significant milestones. They are...
Webinars and Videos, Affordable Housing, Housing Strategy
In this webinar, Tristan Johnson, Planning Analyst at the City of New Westminster discussed the City’s approach to overcoming local housing...
Webinars and Videos, Cities Deepening Community, neighbours, Paul Born
In this webinar, Peter Block explored the concept of a neighbourly economy including discussion on how to build ‘Abundant Community’ in...
Articles, Mark Cabaj, Evaluation, Evaluating Community Impact, Policy
Despite the central role of policy change in social change, innovators and evaluators often struggle to be clear about what outcomes, results, or...
Tools, Community Engagement, Sylvia Cheuy
The Peer Input Process is a relatively quick and structured way to get input and insight from peers into a current challenge in your community...
Adam Vasey, Cities Reducing Poverty, Poverty Reduction Strategy, Poverty Reduction
Tamarack Institute’s Vibrant Communities – Cities Reducing Poverty (VC – CRP), since arriving on the national scene in 2002, has been building a...
Case Studies, Collective Impact, Adam Vasey
Windsor-Essex County (Windsor-Essex), the southernmost region in Canada, consists of nine municipalities: Amherstburg, Essex, Kingsville,...
Webinars and Videos, Mark Cabaj, Evaluation, Evaluating Community Impact, Systems Change
In this webinar, Meg Hargreaves and Mark Cabaj explore the ideas and steps required to properly evaluate ‘system changes’ that emerge when...
Case Studies, Community Engagement, Leena Sharma Seth, Cities Reducing Poverty
Hastings County and Prince Edward County (HPE) are located in southeastern Ontario, spanning the 401 corridor to the southernmost part of...
Case Studies, Galen MacLusky, Jessica Fisher, Community Change, Community Development
Communities across the world are used to having change thrust upon them. Governments, social services, and institutional systems are often the...
Case Studies, Alison Homer, Housing Strategy, Cities Reducing Poverty
Housing affordability has become a critical issue across Canada, particularly in the Metro Vancouver region. The City of New Westminster works to...
Webinars and Videos, Cities Reducing Poverty, Poverty Reduction, Paul Born, Adam Vasey
Tamarack Institute - Vibrant Communities Canada's (VCC) Co-founder and Co-CEO, Paul Born and VCC's Adam Vasey, Director of Policy, Learning, and...
Case Studies, Galen MacLusky, Housing, Housing Strategy, Community Innovation
How can social labs change social policy? As leaders on the ground it’s often clear in our minds how our systems lead to marginalization and...
Case Studies, Heather Keam, Cities Deepening Community, Neighbourhood Strategy
Across Canada, there has been a decrease in voter-turnout at every level of government. This means that government policy and decision-making...
Articles, Community Innovation, Prototyping
To create change we need not have all the answers up front. Instead, the act of creating prototypes and testing them in real-world conditions can...
Case Studies, Sylvia Cheuy, Collective Impact, Community Engagement
June 2018 marked the culmination of months of research, conversation and community discussions led by two collaborative initiatives in Rockford...
Liz Weaver, Leadership, Community Change Festival, Collaborative Leadership
This paper explores the multiple faces of leadership and draws from Weaver's years of experience in both implementing and supporting an array of...
Webinars and Videos, Collaborative Leadership, Liz Weaver, Community Change Festival, Community Change
One of the most pressing collaborative challenges is to fully engage the participants around the table in the process. Too often, the...
Tools, Liz Weaver, Collective Impact
Collective Impact and collaborative efforts are focused on improving community conditions. Too often, we forget about the motivation of the key...
Tools, Community Innovation, Ideation
Have you ever had an idea explained to you that was not fully thought out? It happens often and can be frustrating for both parties when the idea...
Case Studies, Natasha Pei, Cities Reducing Poverty, Poverty Reduction Strategy, New Brunswick
New Brunswick is Canada’s largest Maritime province by area; boasts a population of 760,000; and is Canada’s only officially bilingual province,...
Webinars and Videos, Reconciliation, Community Change
Reconciliation Canada is a registered charity leading the way in engaging Canadians in dialogue and transformative experiences that revitalize the...
Publications, Community Change Festival, Collaborative Leadership, Collaboration, Liz Weaver
It starts with collaboration. This is the coming together of two or more organizations to work collectively, share authority, decision-making and...
Webinars and Videos, Community Innovation, Community Change Festival, Galen MacLusky
Human-Centred Design and Design Thinking, popularized by innovation firms such as IDEO and institutions such as Stanford’s d.school, are rapidly...
Webinars and Videos, ABCD, Community Development
Neighbourhoods are one of the foremost opportunities available to us to foster a sense of belonging. Neighbourhoods are home to an abundance of...
Publications, Community Innovation, Galen MacLusky, Community Change Festival
Are you a Design Thinker? A Social Innovator? A Behavioural Economist? Do you use Systems Thinking, Co-Design, or Labs to effect change? If you’re...
Cities Deepening Community, Heather Keam, Case Studies, Sheila Murray
All levels of government ask residents to create an emergency kit and a plan that ensures they can look after themselves for at least the first 72...
Articles, Cities Reducing Poverty, Cities Deepening Community, Paul Born
"In the next 25 years, Canada will accept at least 7.5 million immigrants. Visionary cities taking steps to reduce poverty and deepen community...
Webinars and Videos, Collective Impact
Tamarack's Liz Weaver facilitates a discussion with Paul Born, Co-CEO of Tamarack Institute, and Mark Cabaj, President of From Here to There...
Publications, Community Engagement, Sylvia Cheuy
Sylvia Cheuy has released her new paper about community engagement. Community change initiatives are often set against complex and systematic...
Case Studies, Cities Reducing Poverty, Sustainability, Poverty Reduction Strategy, Poverty Reduction
On November 22nd, 2017, Oxford County Council approved a Resolution that committed the County of Oxford to achieving Zero Poverty. This resolution...
Articles, Galen MacLusky, Community Innovation
This article by Galen MacLusky discusses how taking the time to explore why you want to innovate can help you expose potential pitfalls that...
Webinars and Videos, Sylvia Cheuy, Phyllis Alexander and Hasshan Batts, Oliver Reilly, Leadership
Hasshan Batts and Phyllis Alexander engage in a conversation with Tamarack's Sylvia Cheuy. They are the driving force being Leadership Without...
Webinars and Videos, Cities Deepening Community
Internationally renowned writer, teacher and systems thinker Margaret Wheatley summons us to be leaders for this time of profound disruption, to...
Tools, Collaborative Leadership, Collaboration, Community Innovation, Galen MacLusky
Groups often get overwhelmed by how many tasks they need to get done which leads to burnout and disconnected teams that are chasing different...
Case Studies, Poverty Reduction Strategy, Cities Reducing Poverty
Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside Community Economic Development Strategy proactively and innovatively leverages the neighbourhood’s talents,...
Articles, Poverty Reduction Strategy, Cities Reducing Poverty
This article documents how Living SJ and the Saskatoon Poverty Reduction Partnership, two members of Vibrant Communities’ Cities Reducing Poverty...
Most collective impact and collaborative efforts benefit from establishing a core set of values and principles for working together. The time...
Webinars and Videos, Collective Impact
Tamarack's Liz Weaver discusses the Canadian Case Studies from the ORS Impact and Spark Policy Institute report "When Collective Impact has an...
Webinars and Videos, Leadership, Collaborative Leadership
Community Change efforts require different leadership styles and approaches than other initiatives.
Galen MacLusky, Community Innovation, Community Change
What makes Community Innovation different from other forms of Social Innovation is the focus on community – placing community members as both the...
Webinars and Videos, Collective Impact
Tamarack's Galen MacLusky discusses the ORS Impact and Spark Policy Institute report "When Collective Impact Has an Impact", joined by Terri Akey...
Mark Cabaj, Strategy, Collaboration, Evaluating Community Impact
Social innovators tackling complex social, economic and environmental challenges – particularly those working with diverse stakeholders – can...
Case Studies, Community Change, Cities Deepening Community
Since the 1990’s, the City of Kamloops has been an advocate for community accessibility. Over the last twenty years, many projects have been...
Community Innovation, Tools, Galen MacLusky
Have you ever been asked to come up with new ideas to solve an old problem, or been stuck on how to get a group to approach a challenge in a...
Webinars and Videos, communications
Lindsay Sage, co-founder of sagecomm, discusses the development of compelling issue positions and the key considerations, channels and tactics to...
Webinars and Videos, Shared Measurement, Evaluation, Evaluating Community Impact
In transformative community change efforts, collaborative tables often face challenges with outlining the measures that will show how their effort...
Webinars and Videos, communications, Community Engagement
This webinar session lays the foundation for winning communication strategies for community causes and issues.
Webinars and Videos, Community Engagement, Inclusion
The wisdom and perspectives of community members are essential in finding effective solutions to the community's most complex issues. These...
Webinars and Videos, Collective Impact, Evaluation
The development of evaluation plans often seem tedious and routine. They are typically written as part of funding applications and then hurriedly...
Cities Reducing Poverty, Alison Homer, Case Studies, Poverty Reduction Strategy
Calgary’s Financial Empowerment Collaborative plays an important role in the community-driven Enough for All poverty reduction strategy. Working...
Collaborative Leadership, Collective Impact
This Case Study focuses on combined economic and social developments championed by the Rider Poole Foundation in the Greater Lehigh Valley area....
The Cover Story is an exercise that can be used for multiple purposes. The object of the game is to act as journalists whose job it is to capture...
Human Centered Design is a process that starts with people and ends with new solutions that are tailored to their needs. The process involves...
This tool is particularly useful when exploring an issue from several different perspectives. Each hat focuses on a subject area and endeavours to...
Achieving success is not about wishing for the best future but being prepared to do the difficult work of getting ready. Ready, Set, Go is...
Webinars and Videos, Collective Impact, Community Change
Collective Impact (CI) is more than having a good idea, it is about convening community leaders around a complex problem and then trying to move...
Webinars and Videos, Collective Impact, Community Engagement
We are overwhelmed by the amount of information coming at us from all sources, including social media. How do you make sure your messages stand...
Case Studies, Neighbourhood Strategy, Cities Deepening Community
Every city builds neighbourhoods with sidewalks and roads, and homes, parks and arenas. Municipalities across Canada are realizing that it's not...
Webinars and Videos, Community Engagement, French
L’engagement communautaire consiste à connaître votre auditoire et déterminer vos objectifs d’engagement, ainsi qu’à utiliser les outils pratiques...
Webinars and Videos, Collective Impact, Sylvia Cheuy
You have your partners at the table, but how do you keep them engaged? This webinar provides an overview of the key elements of collaborative...
Case Studies, Poverty Reduction Strategy, Cities Reducing Poverty
Central Iowa is a community with a diverse population, robust insurance, financial services agri-food and technology sectors, and boundless...
Webinars and Videos, Collective Impact, Liz Weaver
This informative webinar will provide useful approaches to understanding the how and why of Shared Measurement. We explore two specific tools:...
Evaluating Community Impact, Evaluation, Mark Cabaj, FAQ
FAQ | This Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) document explores 15 questions about principles-focused evaluation raised through the webinars and...
Community change efforts often involve addressing complex issues with multiple root causes. The paradox of this work is that leaders must...