The document discusses the importance of collective impact in addressing systemic social issues, particularly in education and community development. It outlines the Strive partnership's successful model, which emphasizes a common agenda, shared measurements, and aligned activities among various stakeholders to improve outcomes. The need for a backbone support organization is highlighted as a crucial element for fostering collaboration and achieving long-term systemic change.

1. Achieving Collective Impact
Tshikululu – GIBS
Serious Social Investing workshop
18 March 2011

2. A story…

3. US education in crisis
 1950s – highest high school graduation
rates in the world
 2010 – 18th among 24 industrialised
countries.
 Billions of dollars and heroic efforts of
teachers and NGOs:
 May have improved individual schools
 No system-wide progress.

4. Bringing people together to
improve results for every
child, every step of the way,
from cradle to career, in
Cincinnati, Newport and
Covington.
In 4 years
significant system-
wide improvements
across 34 of 53
indicators of
success

5. Why has strive made progress
where so many have failed?
 300 leaders of diverse initiatives
 Government, schools, business, CSOs
 Realised fixing one point on the continuum
would make little difference unless all parts
improved.
 And no single org. could do this alone.
 Did NOT create a new program, or try to
raise more money.

6. The Strive Partnership unites providers
around shared issues, goals, measurements and results
…then supports and strengthens strategies that work.
 Focused the entire educational community on
A single set of goals
 Progress measured in the same way.
 15 different Student Success Networks
 Develop success indicators
 Discuss strategies
 Learn from each other
 Align efforts

7. Mars wants to improve the lives of 500 000
cocoa farmers in Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana…
Mars Partnership for African
Cocoa Communities of
Tomorrow (iMPACT),
A coalition whose goal is to ensure future
supplies of cocoa and a socially and
environmentally responsible approach to
its production.

8. Collective Impact
…the long term commitment of a group of
important actors from different sectors to a
common agenda for solving a specific social
problem.
 More than just collaboration…
A centralised infrastructure, a dedicated staff,
structured relationships…
 Common agenda, shared measurement,
continuous communication, aligned activities.

9. Large scale social change
comes from better cross-
sector coordination rather
than from the isolated
interventions of individual
organisations.

10. Isolated Impact
 1.4 million CSOs and funders trying to invent
independent solutions to complex social
problems.
 Individual successes but little system change.
 Technical approaches – one day we’ll
‘discover the cure’.
 Our tools do not help us.
 Our habits do not help us.
 Our systems do not help us.

11. Are we willing to do what's necessary
to give every child in South Africa a
chance to succeed?
… but perhaps its not a question of will, but a
question of how.
“Collaboration is where we fail. Despite
our best intentions, the improvements
needed … remain out of reach.”

12. Five conditions of
collective success
1. A common agenda – and theory of change
 Shared vision of success
 …and what is needed to achieve & sustain it.
2. Shared measurement systems
 Gather data and measure results against a few agreed
indicators of success.
 Keeps work aligned, allows comparison, learning and
mutual accountability.
 Feedback: Quality of relationships as performance
management and predictor of success.

13. …continued
3. Mutually reinforcing activities
 Each actor does what it excels at in a way that
supports the actions of others.
 Fit into overall theory of change and strategy
4. Continuous communication
 Developing trust a challenge
 Regular meetings… takes time and care
 Web tools

14. …continued
5. A backbone support organisation
 Separate organization and staff
 Backbone roles: Project manager, data manager and
facilitator
The expectation that
collaboration can occur
without a supporting
infrastructure is the
most common reason
why it fails

15. Going local…
Our current reality
 Many excellent individual initiatives, but…
 Competition among service providers - discourages
alignment, sharing and learning.
 Fragmentary short-term ‘project’ interventions – rather than
holistic longer term developmental processes owned and
managed by schools themselves.
 Success is measured in terms of outputs (e.g. number of
training workshops), rather than outcomes (real changes in
attitudes, behaviour, relationships, capabilities, conditions).
 Difficult to match resources to needs: what’s available, what
quality etc.
 More??

16. Imagine if, in each district, we had a
backbone organisation that…
 For Schools:
Supports schools to plan and manage a holistic and integrated
long-term development strategy.
Provides access to resources and service providers.
Manages data collection – including comparative feedback on
service providers.
Facilitates long term relationships for sustainability.
Provides a framework for comparative, outcome-based monitoring
and evaluation – against their own benchmarks and against other
similar schools.

17. …a backbone organisation that…
 For Service Providers:
Facilitates communication, alignment and mutually reinforcing
interventions leading to more effective impact.
Promotes and supports shared impact and performance
measurement and reporting.
Provides access to resources and work opportunities.
Provides lower transaction costs for funding i.e. less time-
consuming fundraising and reporting to multiple donors; also long-
term engagements.
Facilitates sharing of resources, experience, learning and practice.

18. …a backbone organisation that…
 For Funders:
Maximises return on investment by enabling long term systemic
impact.
Manages impact and performance monitoring, assures the
alignment and quality of the interventions and reduces risk.
Facilitates long-term relationships with beneficiaries including
opportunities for staff volunteering, public reputation etc.
 For Government:
Facilitates effective cross-sector partnerships.
Provides information on what works that can inform policy.
Provides access to skills and services to support schools.

19. Some new approaches,
methods and tools to foster
systemic and collective impact…

20. Theories of change
and theories of action:
A shared vision of
success
Every school in (district)
is a safe, healthy, happy
and effective place of
learning and growing.

21. Map the system of influence:
What actors influence this vision?
What should School Parents
leader- Teachers
each actor do ship
to contribute Community
optimally to CSOs
success? etc.
Success:
Dept. of healthy, Learners
Ed happy
etc.
School
environ
ment

24. Feedback systems and performance
management
Relationship metrics are the
best available predictor of
outcomes and impact.
In business, customer loyalty
is a proven predictor of
growth, profits and share
value

25. Constituency Feedback
Performance Results
Constituents
Evidence of performance Evidence of Results
Feedback, when converted into data, provides high
quality data on performance, relationships and impact.

26. Turning feedback into data: Simple
performance scorecards
FBF performance scorecard:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Farmers
Experience of the program
Number and scope of training
Trainers expertise and attitude
Applying new methods learned
Perceptions of changes
Overall Ratings
Comparison with last period

27. The pathway to action: careful comparison
incentivises listening and improving
This approach to presenting bills to customers of a public utility in California produced a
dramatic reduction in energy use for the first time. Comparison is the key to getting folks to
act on metrics.

29. Thank you!
Andre@
KeystoneAccountability.org