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Putting a Stake in the Ground

Posted by Liz Weaver on January 8, 2018

Over the last two weeks, there has been a theme that has resonated across different meetings and presentations that I have attended and facilitated. Tamarack supported a series of workshops hosted by the Ontario Trillium Foundation with Michael McAfee, President, PolicyLink. These workshops, in London, Toronto, Kingston and Ottawa were an opportunity for organizations to consider how to more effectively engage their community partners. Michael pushed participants to consider clarifying their community change approach. He told them if they did not have a clear, evidence-based understanding of what it was they were working to change, they were spinning their wheels. This is critical when you think about community engagement. Purposeful engagement means that you know what you want to engage others around. You put your stake in the ground. It does not mean that there is no flexibility, but if you have done your research, and have your evidence, it is easier to engage others. The engagement is focused and driving toward change.

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Thinking Through a Different Lens

Posted by Hailey Hechtman on November 15, 2017

During my time at the Tamarack Community Change Institute, I noticed that many peoples’ focus was squarely on bringing techniques, tools and strategies back to their communities that could strengthen not only the work that they were doing, but act as a framework for future opportunities amongst partners, participants and others that have not yet come to the table.

Although, this insistence on an applicable, packaged toolkit may steer us in a direction that helps to bring ideas and actions forward quickly, it also has a downside. There is a way of approaching change, a concentration on philosophy, on values, on process that needs to be melded into the activities that we do in order to see sustainable impact.

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Back to the Future

Posted by Erica Dyson on November 14, 2017

Hardly a day goes by without my adding a number of smileys to my emails or texts. In fact, here’s one now :) . Why? Well they are so expressive; so much better than LOL or BTW or FYI. So with one small icon, I seem to be able to convey information and feeling.

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Collaborative Thinking about Collaboration - A New Tool

Posted by Mark Holmgren on October 27, 2017

I imagine the majority of us value collaboration. We believe that doing it increases impact, fosters innovation, and is especially called for when it comes to effecting large-scale systemic change (or transformational change). Many say collaboration is more efficient than disconnected social change or social service efforts.

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Collaborative Frameworks

Posted by Deb Halliday on October 26, 2017

Earlier this month I participated in a workshop on collaboration at a gathering of several hundred grantmakers, hosted by Philanthropy Northwest. During the session, Collaborative Exchange, I presented on Graduation Matters Montana, a public-private initiative that resulted in record-breaking high school graduation rates.

As I was preparing for the session, I was reminded of a Tamarack Institute talk in which Liz Weaver and Mark Cabaj described what effective change efforts have in common. There are three things, they posited: (1) a framework; (2) principles; and (3) practices. How, I wondered, could I describe our work raising graduation rates, based on Weaver and Cabaj’s insights?

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About Collective Impact: Types of Problems, Degrees of Change, Learning Loops, and Methods of Thinking

Posted by Mark Holmgren on October 18, 2017

Collective Impact is a multi-sector approach to large-scale collaboration that is authentically inclusive of citizens in its development and implementation – in particular citizens who have life-experience with the big problems or issues being addressed, such as poverty, climate change, family violence, and so many more.

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