The Latest

The Rise of Localism

Place matters. The place where you live is becoming increasingly more important.  A recent article in Yes! Magazine explored the importance of localism, a growing trend in the US and Canada. 

Swimming in the Deep End

Systems change work is about understanding all of the actors in the system and the dynamic flow of power, relationships, and mindsets that exists between them.  John Kania, Mark Kramer and Peter Senge, in their recently released paper, The Water of System Change use the metaphor of water to describe systems.  The water is the environment through which fish and other life exists but it is also a flowing, moving and changing entity. 

Lean into Adaptive Leadership

Many of us shy away from using the power that we have, often to our own and our community’s detriment. This was one of the nuggets of wisdom shared with the participants attending Tamarack's Adaptive Leadership Masterclass series that took us to five cities across Canada and wrapped up just last week. Liz Skelton, Co-Founder of Collaboration for Impact shared a story about working with Indigenous leaders in Australia. It was there that she discovered that leaning into her formal and informal power could be used to help the collaborative group drive change forward.

Bearing Witness

The Suncor Energy Foundation (SEF) regularly convenes key strategic partners to consider current and future trends impacting our connected worlds.  There are four outcomes for this gathering: 

Building Capacity, Building Community

Inspiring Communities is a New Zealand capacity building leader and partner of the Tamarack Institute.  For the past 10 years, the leaders of Inspiring Communities have been working across the country to build local leadership and inspire community-led development and have documented their work in a series of resources called Learning by Doing.  Inspiring Communities has the vision that all communities will flourish. 

When Collective Impact Has An Impact - An Evaluation of the Practice

In 2017, the Collective Impact Forum and the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions commissioned ORS Impact and the Spark Policy Institute to conduct a field-wide evaluation of Collective Impact.  The evaluation sought to answer the following five questions: 

1. To what extent and under what conditions does the Collective Impact approach contribute to systems and population changes?
2. What system changes have contributed to the population level outcomes being achieved?
3. What are the other positive or negative impacts, intended or unintended, on the community and system?
4. What evidence is there that the Collective Impact effort has contributed to these system and population changes?
5. What evidence is there that the population changes would not have been achieved if the Collective Impact approach hadn’t been used.