Building the Practice of Collective Impact

Posted on January 17, 2019
By Liz Weaver

Collection of Tools 53Collective impact (CI), a framework for influencing systems change, was launched in the winter of 2011.  The CI approach has been deployed by community collaboratives across Canada, the US and internationally to move the needle on a wide variety of complex issues from decreasing homelessness and poverty to improving health and education outcomes for children and youth. 

There are many local and national organizations that are supporting and advancing the practice in Collective Impact including the Collective Impact Forum, United Way Worldwide, Living Cities, Forum for Youth Investment and the Aspen Roundtable Forum on Community Solutionsin the US and the Tamarack Institute and Innoweave in Canada.  Internationally, organizations like Collaboration for Impact and Opportunity Child in Australia, Social Development Centre in Denmark and Inspiring Communities in New Zealand are supporting Collective Impact efforts as well.  

The Tamarack Learning Centre is an active member of the Collective Impact Forum's co-catalyst network and regularly contributes to the growing Collective Impact practice.  Over the past eight years, Tamarack has developed several tools and written numerous papers to advance Collective Impact knowledge and capacity.  In 2019, Tamarack is launching the Collective Impact Compendium Series.

The Collective Impact Compendium Series will bring together key resources, papers and tools which are currently used with the outcome of building knowledge and capacity.  The first in the Collective Impact Compendium Series focuses on the five phases of Collective Impact and identifies resources that Collective Impact practitioners can use to advance their work across these phases. The second in the series focuses on Leadership, Governance and Backbones.

Future topics covered in the Collective Impact Compendium Series will include: 

  • Building Community Readiness for Collective Impact
  • Engaging Community Stakeholders to Build Movements for Change
  • Evaluating Collective Impact Efforts
  • Building Resilient and Sustainable CI Approaches

The Collective Impact Compendium Series is designed as a living document.  If you have tools, papers or resources that build the capacity of Collective Impact practitioners, please share them with us at tamarack@tamarackcommunity.ca.  Together we can continue to grow the Collective Impact field. 

Learn More:

Topics:
Collective Impact, Liz Weaver, Blog, Community Change


Liz Weaver

By Liz Weaver

Liz is passionate about the power and potential of communities getting to impact on complex issues. Liz is Tamarack’s Co-CEO and Director, Learning Centre. In this role she provides strategic direction to the organization and leads many of its key learning activities including collective impact capacity building services for the Ontario Trillium Foundation. Liz is one of Tamarack's highly regarded trainers and has developed and delivered curriculum on a variety of workshop topics including collaborative governance, leadership, collective impact, community innovation, influencing policy change and social media for impact and engagement.

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