1. Fostering a Culture
of Collective Impact
Michael R. Wood
Director, Partnerships & U.S. Network Engagement / United Way Worldwide
Leslie Wright
Vice President, Community Building, United Way of East Central Iowa
2. Today’s Agenda
Welcome and Introductions
Why Pursue Collective Impact?
What is Collective Impact?
What does it look like in our communities?
Backbone Organizations
Break
Creating the Culture: Skilling up
Assessing your current state
What’s your plan and what do you need?
Adjourn
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3. What issue is causing your
community the most pain
right now?
5. Isolated vs. Collective Impact
Isolated impact Collective Impact
• Funders select individual • Funders understand that
grantees that offer the most social problems and their
promising solutions. solutions arise from the
• Nonprofits work separately interaction of many
and compete to produce the organizations within a larger
greatest independent impact. system.
• Evaluation attempts to isolate • Progress depends on working
a particular organization’s toward the same goal and
impact. measuring the same things.
• Large scale change is • Large scale impact depends
assumed to depend on scaling on increasing cross-sector
a single organization. alignment and learning among
• Corporate and government many organizations.
sectors are often disconnected • Corporate and government
from the efforts of foundations sectors are essential partners
and nonprofits • Organizations actively
coordinate their action and
share lessons learned.
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7. Collective Impact Defined
―The commitment of a group of
important actors from different
sectors to a common agenda
for solving a specific social
problem.‖
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8. The Five Conditions of Collective Impact
All participants have a shared vision for change
including a common understanding of the problem and
Common Agenda
a joint approach to solving it through agreed upon
actions.
Collecting data and measuring results consistently across
Shared all participants ensures efforts remain aligned and
Measurement participants hold each other accountable.
Mutually Participant activities must be differentiated while still being
Reinforcing coordinated through a mutually reinforcing plan of action.
Activities
Consistent and open communication is needed across the
Continuous many players to build trust, assure mutual objectives, and
Communication create common motivation.
Creating and managing collective impact requires a
Backbone separate organization(s) with staff and a specific set
Support of skills to serve as the backbone for the entire initiative
and coordinate participating organizations and agencies.
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10. Phases of Collective Impact
Components
Phase I Phase II Phase III
for Success
Governance Identify champions Create infrastructure Facilitate and refine
and and form cross- (backbone and
Infrastructure sector group processes)
Map the landscape Create common Support
Strategic and use data to agenda (goals and implementation
Planning make case strategy) (alignment to goals
and strategies)
Facilitate community Engage community Continue
Community
outreach and build public will engagement and
Involvement
conduct advocacy
Analyze baseline Establish shared Collect, track, and
data to identify key metrics (indicators, report progress
Evaluation and
issues and gaps measurement, and (process to learn
Improvement
approach) and improve)
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12. Discuss at your table:
1. Share an example of Collective Impact
work in your community
2. What phase of development is this work
in?
3. What is your United Way’s role in the
work?
4. What’s working?
5. What is challenging?
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13. United Way of Greater Milwaukee
Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative
Over 50 partners, including representatives from the business, faith,
academic, social service, and funding communities
Goal: Reduce births to teens by 46% by 2015
In March of 2006, the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Advisory
Committee released its results at the United Way Women’s
Initiative luncheon in the report If Truth be Told: Teen Pregnancy,
Public Health and the Cycle of Poverty. This report resulted in nine
core recommendations, including creating a collaborative funding
strategy to create a strategic and effective community response to
teen pregnancy.
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15. Kirkwood Pathways for
Academic Career Education and
Employment (KPACE)
The Issue:
66% of new and replacement positions in the
region will require education beyond a high school
diploma through 2014 (Skills 2014)
90% (N-5,700) of the available workforce
(members of IowaWORKS) do not have a college
credential—11% No GED; 53% HS Diploma; 26%
Some College
18. Collective Impact in Action
• Strive has brought together local leaders to tackle the
student achievement crisis and improve education
throughout greater Cincinnati and northern Kentucky.
• A core group of community leaders decided to abandon
their individual agendas in favor of a collective approach to
improving student achievement.
• These leaders realized that fixing one point on the
educational continuum--such as better after school
programs--wouldn’t make much difference unless all parts
of the continuum improved at the same time.
• Strive focused the entire educational community on a
single set of goals.
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22. Backbone Organizations
Types of
Description Examples Pros Cons
Backbones
One funder initiates Calgary Ability to secure start-up funding Lack of broad buy-in if CI effort seen as
Funder- CI strategy as Homeless and recurring resources driven by one funder
Based planner, financier, Foundation Ability to bring others to the table Lack of perceived neutrality
and convener and leverage other funders
New entity is created, Community Perceived neutrality as facilitator Lack of sustainable funding stream and
often by private Center for and convener potential questions about funding priorities
New
funding, to serve as Education Potential lack of baggage Potential competition with local nonprofits
Nonprofit
backbone Results Clarity of focus
Established nonprofit Opportunity Credibility, clear ownership, and Potential ―baggage‖ and lack of perceived
Existing takes the lead in Chicago strong understanding of issue neutrality
Nonprofit coordinating CI Existing infrastructure in place if Lack of attention if poorly funded
strategy properly resourced
Government entity, Shape Up Public sector ―seal of approval‖ Bureaucracy may slow progress
Government either at local or state Somerville Existing infrastructure in place if Public funding may not be dependable
level, drives CI effort properly resourced
Shared Numerous Magnolia Lower resource requirements if Lack of clear accountability with multiple
Across organizations take Place shared across multiple voices at the table
Multiple ownership of CI wins organizations Coordination challenges, leading to
Organization Broad buy-in, expertise potential inefficiencies
Senior-level Memphis Broad buy-in from senior leaders Lack of clear accountability with multiple
Steering
committee with Fast across public, private, and voices
Committee
ultimate decision- Forward nonprofit sectors
Driven
making power
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23. Backbone Organizations
Is your United Way a backbone organization?
If not, would you be willing to serve in that role?
What are the barriers or challenges to taking this on?
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26. What do we need?
Inspiration
Dense networks (connectivity)
Trust
Collaboration & Innovation
Fierce Conversations
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27. Hope fuels
our first steps
toward uncertain destinations.
28. Sinek’s Golden Circle
―People don’t buy what you do,
they buy why you do it. The goal
is to do business with people
who believe what you believe.‖
Sinek, Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire
Everyone to Take Action
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVnN4S52F3k
42. Midnight Lunch: The 4 Phases of
Team Collaboration Success
Build capacity in your team structure
Practice discovery learning
• Create a new context
• Provocative questioning
• Unreasonable hypotheses
• Solution scenarios
• Inquire and reflect
Create a coherent micro culture
Create the structures for speed and scale
• Collective intelligence
• Smart layers
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43. A guide for your discovery learning…
Principles for Building Effective Community
Impact Strategies
1. Establish your target outcomes
2. Uncover the underlying issues
3. Choose strategies and approaches that create lasting
change
4. Create a plan for implementing those strategies
5. Decide how to measure, communicate and improve
results
48. Balance the Tensions
• Patience versus urgency
• Data driven versus
innovative
• Digital versus relational
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49. Questions for you…
What will you do?
What supports do you need to do
this work well?
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50. Great Resources:
The Answer to How is Yes Peter Block
The Abundant Community John McKnight and
Peter Block
The Medici Effect Frans Johansson
Fierce Conversations Susan Scott
Midnight Lunch Sarah Miller Caldicott
Start with Why Simon Sinek
Reinventing Social Change David Gershon
socialchange2.com
To Be Fearless Case Foundation
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Editor's Notes
Everyone intro with name, role, 1 question about CI and above
Large-scale social change requires broad cross-sector coordination, yet the social sector remains focused on the isolated intervention of individual organizationsCollective impact is not just a fancy word for collaboration, but represents a fundamentally different, more disciplined, and higher performing approach to achieving large-scale social impact.
UW funding - : In 2011, United Way is funding 15 programs for a total of $631,000Key partnersCommunity Based Organizations and ProgramsColleges and Universities:The Faith Community: over 40 adults have been trained as facilitators of "Keeping it Real“University of Wisconsin Center for Urban Population Health Local Media: SERVE Marketing. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ClearChannel Outdoor, Marcus Theaters, CW18 and My 24
Unemployment trends by education attainment Overall unemployment rate- 8.5%Unemployment rate for individuals with less than a high school diploma- 14.3%Unemployment rate for individuals with a high school diploma- 8.7%Unemployment rate for individuals with a Bachelor’s degree- 4%
Academic SupportsGED Academy- Adult Basic Education (reading, writing and math) refresher trainingGED Training and TestingAcademic Connections to support transition from non-credit to credit classesSocial Service SupportsConnection to community resources and servicesUse of financial assistance in the event that all community resources have been exhausted
Role of Backbone organization – Creating and managing collective impact requires a separate organization and staff with a very specific set of skills to serve as the backbone for the entire initiativeFunders, community foundations, government agencies and United Ways can all fill the backbone roleThe backbone organization is not necessarily the lead organization for the initiative
What is a dense networkPassionate focusInspirational leader(s)Use of symbolsLink to an institution (concept or an entity)James Davison Hunter – wrote the book “To Change the World”
What's the purpose of your networkLearnAlign efforts = mutually reinforcing activities versus those that fragmentFocus – start somewhere small enough!MobilizeWe use circles when mapping to reflect our desire to get a 360 degree view of the issues
Ready by 21 example
Capacity = connectivity = reduce social distance – build trustDiscovery learning = individually = together = nodes then large group new context within which to frame the issue – broader, multi-dimensional, additive versus competitive,Micro culture ask what are the parts of culture beliefs – both liberating and limiting… need to examine them, formalize them how we “be” together – the safety of challenge, examination I will give you a couple of suggestions for this in a minute.inspiration, purpose, progress and debate
