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Sustaining Collective Impact Efforts – How to build your approach

At the most recent Champions for Change workshop for backbone leaders, I was asked to develop a workshop which focused on the challenge facing many collective impact efforts – how to build a sustainable approach.   

This is a challenging conundrum for collective impact efforts which are designed purposefully to move the needle of vexing community issues, work with an eye to complexity and exist in an ever changing community context.  The variables inherent in collective impact efforts lead to many more questions:  

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Putting Children at the Centre

I am writing this from “down under” where Anglicare Tasmania and Communities for Children recently hosted over 500 leaders in Launceston, Tasmania to develop strategies which are designed to put children and their families at the centre of community well-being.

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It's not the Process - it is the Outcome

By now readers of my blog know that I am all about collective impact.  It is a framework that I believe has real merit, under the right circumstances and with the right outcome in mind.  But gosh, it is hard work and even though we have alot of experience in collaboration, we do not have the collective impact muscle fully developed yet.  

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Building Collective Impact 3.0

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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Collective Impact Backbones - Different Approaches

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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Considering Courage

I have never thought of myself as courageous.  I would use many other words to describe me - thoughtful, reflective, smart, sometimes judgemental but never courageous.  That is why the statement...the most courageous thing I have ever done ...is so perplexing. 

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