collaboration

Collaboration sparks the fresh thinking needed to create high-impact solutions to address the complex, interconnected issues affecting communities. When the leadership and knowledge of various sectors, groups, and individuals are united, it unleashes creativity and mobilizes coordinated, community-wide action in ways that promote justice and equity for all.

Online Course

foundations of collective impact

This course will introduce you to the key elements of the Collective Impact Framework. Over the course’s six, self-directed, modules you will be guided to assess and build readiness for Collective Impact within your community; and create an action plan to mobilize the multisector input and commitment needed to develop, implement, and sustain a successful Collective Impact Initiative.

A 2-Part Virtual Workshop

advancing systems change with collective impact

Join us for this new, two-part virtual workshop designed to help you design, implement, and renew a successful Collective Impact Initiative. This workshop will profile lessons from practitioners about how to achieve high-impact results and will focus specifically on the importance of bringing a systems lens to Collective Impact to explicitly incorporate both programmatic AND systems-change strategies into Collective Impact implementation plans.

Learn more

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meet the director

Sylvia is a Consulting Director of the Tamarack Institute’s Collaboration Idea Area. She is passionate about community change and what becomes possible when residents and various sector leaders share an aspirational vision for their future. As a changemaker, Sylvia draws on her practical knowledge and first-hand experience in the work of multi-sector collaboration and systems change.

Book a 15-minute session with Sylvia

Why Lasting Impact Requires Systems Change

Designing and implementing systems change strategies is essential to work for changemakers. What we know about systems change is that:

Effective programs and services rarely generate the transformational and lasting change needed to meaningfully address complex social and/or environmental issues.
Systems change strategies focus on addressing the now institutionalized practices and perspectives, that unintentionally hold the issue in place.
Collaborative approaches are effective at helping to “see” and address system barriers

How Collaboration Fuels Community Innovation

Multi-sector collaboration drives community innovation by:

Engaging the wisdom of multiple partners – especially those closest to the issue – to create a richer, more nuanced, appreciation of a shared issue
Recognizing and harnessing the strengths and resources unique to each “place”
Leveraging collective creativity to co-design novel solutions
Aligning around a unified strategy to mobilize coordinated, community-wide action where leadership and responsibility are shared

The Essential – and Often Invisible – Role of Field Catalysts in Community Change

Field Catalysts accelerate and amplify the impact of local community change efforts by connecting them and intentionally linking them to broader systems change strategies. To do this they play 4 integrated roles:

Understand the field and engage system actors
Strengthen the capacity of local community change initiatives
Make the work of local collaborative initiatives more visible, coherent, and robust
Nudge systems to catalyze system change

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Collaboration at Tamarack

Since 2011, Tamarack has collaborated with colleagues in Canada, the United States and internationally as a co-catalyst in advancing Collaboration as a framework for community change.

Tamarack actively works with collaborators including the Collective Impact Forum and the Harwood Institute in the United States; Inspiring Communities in New Zealand and Collaboration for Impact in Australia to intentionally build the field of practice in collaborative community change efforts.