The Latest

Making Your Collaborative Work a Little Easier

"Collaboration is nothing new. The social sector is filled with examples of partnerships, networks, and other types of joint efforts. But collective impact initiatives are distinctly different. Unlike most collaborations, collective impact initiatives involve a centralized infrastructure, a dedicated staff, and a structured process that leads to a common agenda, shared measurement, continuous communication, and mutually reinforcing activities among all participants." - John Kania & Mark Kramer

Collective Impact initiatives require a new way of thinking about and approaching collaboration.

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Collective Action, Impact, Intelligence (and Stupidity)

Collective impact is based largely on the concept that we can do more together than apart, which holds true under the assumption that we can coordinate, organize and execute as a unit. This assumption doesn't always hold true and the implications for getting it wrong require serious attention. 

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How Visible is Your Organization Online?

In their most recent Internet Use Survey, Stats Canada reported that 83% of Canadian households have access to the internet and 69% of connected households use more than one type of devise to go online. The number of Canadians that are online, and the amount of time they spend online, is growing each year. 

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How Healthy is Your Backbone?

The human backbone - the spine - is one of the most important parts of a living being. The spine's five major purposes include: movement, support, protection, coordination, and control of the entire body. 

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Small Actions, Big Change: Pathways for System Impact

Scaling Out, Scaling Up, Scaling Deep is a new paper by Darcy Riddell and Michele-Lee Moore that dives deeply into an a key question that is top-of-mind for many community change agents and funders: How do we scale up the impact of a promising social innovation?   The impetus for this report, jointly commissioned by the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation and the Tamarack Institute, grew from the realization that highly successful local projects too often fail to demonstrate meaningful impact on the broader social and/or environmental systems they are operating within. 

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Meetings...bloody meetings

There is an old but relatively famous set of videos by John Cleese and others called 'Meetings Bloody Meetings'  in which John is brought to trial for hosting meetings that actually serve very little purpose.  We have all been in those types of meetings!  

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