The Aspen Institute's Forum for Community Solutions is placing big bets on the future of collective impact as an important framework for community change. Over the past several years, Steve Patrick, the Vice President and Executive Director of the Forum has brought leadership and vision to three critically important impact areas.
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Recently the Collective Impact Forum featured a terrific piece by Sheri Brady and Jennifer Splansky Juster on the Collective Impact Principles of Practice. These eight principles to guide efforts to put Collective Impact into practice are long overdue.
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Water knows no boundaries. In this same spirit, boundaries fade when water managers collaborate. With shared goals to improve water quality, ensure sustainable water supplies, reduce flood damages and build resilience to deal with a changing climate, water managers across the Grand River watershed used Collective Impact as the framework to guide the updating of the Water Management Plan for the watershed. The Grand River Conservation Authority provided the support and facilitation to bring partners together.
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A closer look at the array of collective impact efforts reveals a diversity of backbone infrastructure designs as well. Depending on the size and scope of the collective impact effort, and the unique context it is operating in, the backbone may look and be structured differently.
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"Working in complexity can surface some tough challenges, but they are not insurmountable. Transformational change is possible." - Liz Weaver
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"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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