A Learning Agenda for Collective Impact

(Illustration by Hugo Herrera)

The series “Collective Impact, 10 Years Later” has elevated a range of voices from people catalyzing, implementing, funding, and supporting collective impact work. The series reflects on how the field has evolved since Stanford Social Innovation Review published the first article on collective impact a decade ago and shines a spotlight on the importance of placing equity, community ownership, and sharing power as essential components of collective impact work.  We are grateful to all of the authors and partners for their insight, wisdom, and time shaping the field and capturing these learnings.

Collective impact remains as relevant today as it was 10 years ago. In fact, during times of political divide, pushback against movements for racial equity, denials of science, and other dividing narratives in our culture, collective impact initiatives in many settings remain places where people representing diverse perspectives are finding ways to co-create a future together that bridges divides. In addition, when comprised of stakeholders from both formal positions of power and community leaders calling for bolder, more transformational change, collective impact initiatives hold great promise for braiding together improvements in existing systems.

As we look ahead to the next decade, approaches to collective impact and other collaborative place-based work will continue to evolve. This evolution will be driven by changes from multiple directions: It will come from our external environment as we face new, challenging, or unpredictable circumstances that affect our work, our communities, and ourselves; It will come from within as we individually reflect on how we build and improve our own personal practices so that we can be stronger partners in our work and in our communities; and it will come from within our relationships and partnerships with each other as collective change is built by mutually contributing, sharing, learning, and doing together to reach a better, more equitable, and transformational future. 

The Collective Impact Forum and our partners see several areas for further evolution, learning, and energy over the coming years.

How can collective impact initiatives sustain commitments to and progress toward equity?

Many authors in this series have elevated practices for keeping equity at the forefront of local and national work, and as outlined in “Centering Equity in Collective Impact,” equity is now embedded into a new definition of collective impact:

Collective impact is a network of community members, organizations, and institutions that advance equity by learning together, aligning, and integrating their actions to achieve population and systems-level change.

Partners engaged in collective impact work must remain committed to equity over the long term, even and especially when the work gets hard, pushback against equity surfaces, and shifting toward neutrality feels easier. Sustaining progress toward equity requires grappling with the ever-present reality of racism, marginalization, and oppression and relentlessly pursuing transformational change, even in the face of adversity. Local context will dictate the focus of equity efforts, but without unwavering attention and action, backbone teams, steering committee members, and local partners can easily slide back into old habits and ways of being.

Funders, leaders, and backbone teams engaged in collective impact initiatives should ask: How does our work advance equity at every juncture? And those investing in and supporting collective impact efforts, such as intermediaries, consultants, and technical assistance providers, must ask how they can support practitioners and communities to continue this work.

How can practitioners build upon collective impact to center racial equity and shift imbalances of power?

One essential component of shifting imbalances of power is to create the conditions where community members own and lead collective impact initiatives. In order to do this, collective impact initiatives must assess how traditional power is dispersed in governance structures and decision-making, disrupt internal and external power dynamics and oppressive structures, share power, invest in the leadership development of community advocates, and create and sustain trust-based relationships. 

To further shift imbalances, collective impact initiatives can learn from the leadership, expertise, influence, and commitment of grassroots organizers and community-led coalitions that have long been on the front line of systems change efforts. Collective impact initiatives should engage grassroots organizers and community-led coalitions to understand their strategic priorities. An ongoing examination of whose vision the initiative is trying to achieve can keep the work community-focused and community-driven. This understanding can underpin discussions to determine where there may be an opportunity and interest in coalescing around a mutual agenda and will clarify any barriers to successful partnership. If opportunities for partnership do exist, collective impact initiatives should work with grassroots organizers and community-led coalitions to determine their respective roles and how each can leverage their power and influence.

Tension can arise when building connections with grassroots organizing groups, especially if those relationships are new. Trust-building, commitment, and showing up for the community are key, as well as understanding that some grassroots organizing groups may never want to formally join the collective impact table, as the collective impact initiative may be seen as too closely aligned with the power holders that are being called to change. In those cases, how are collective impact initiatives offering support, resources, and partnership to community-led efforts without requiring organizers to join the table? How are initiatives supporting their local organizers’ strategies?

How can collective impact initiatives make progress on the structural, relational, and transformational dimensions of systems change?

As addressed in several pieces in this series, collective impact initiatives are striving to achieve systems change through their work. Some collective impact initiatives are focused on the more structural pieces of systems change–shifting things like policy and resources allocation. But as described by the Collective Change Lab in “The Relational Work of Systems Change,” few initiatives have focused exclusively on the more transformational work of shifting mental models, narratives, and culture alone.

In order to sustain shifts over the long term, transformational work must occur in parallel with structural work. Mindset shifts and culture change will require work not only at the collaborative and organizational levels, but at the individual level, which will require personal transformation work. This dimension of systems change work has been far less present in collective impact initiatives to date and is ripe for further learning and attention in the field.

How can multiple collective impact initiatives in a community maximize resources and impact?

As place-based collaborative work continues, many communities now are home to multiple collective impact initiatives. While increased collaboration has benefitted communities, there’s a risk of collective impact initiatives themselves becoming siloed from each other. As COVID-19 has laid bare, the challenges in our communities are interconnected and share root causes. The presence of multiple collective impact initiatives in a community can cause initiatives to compete for local attention and funding, to do redundant work, such as building parallel community data systems, and to miss opportunities to collaborate and address related root causes. One solution to more effectively connect collective impact initiatives across issues is a field-building catalyst. In “How Field Catalysts Accelerate Collective Impact,” the Tamarack Institute describes its role as a field catalyst mobilizing collective impact initiatives across Canada in support of a living wage. Collective impact leaders can learn from this example and ensure local initiatives don’t create silos they were designed to reduce.

How can learning be shared globally? 

Collective impact initiatives have taken root across the globe, with the approach adapted for local history, context, resources, and capacity. The adaptations of the approach in a range of contexts have begun to illuminate valuable lessons for the global field, as we see in the reflections shared in “Power and Collective Impact in Australia.” But learning across continents has been minimal to date, and the trans-continental learning that has occurred has primarily been amongst western, English-speaking countries. More investment in sharing learning globally promises to accelerate this work.

For example, what can be learned from implementation of collective impact in more resource constrained environments, such as Saamuhika Shakti, a collective impact initiative focused on improving the quality of life of informal waste pickers and their families in Bangalore, India? And what can be learned by practitioners in the United States from collective impact initiatives in Europe, which have a much larger engagement from government than in the United States? What can we translate from those experiences about increasing the role of government as a partner? And what can practitioners learn about engaging the private sector in collective impact work, as has begun to take root in Good Job 5060 in South Korea? A resourced, proactive effort to share learning bilaterally across different regions would benefit all.

How can collective impact work be sustained?

We cannot conclude without talking about the critical importance of sustainability, both in terms of sustaining partners’ momentum, engagement, and a commitment to equity as we referenced above, and financial sustainability. The authors of “Working in Partnership With Opportunity Youth” emphasized this point with an observation from William Bell, president and CEO of Casey Family Programs: “It is not possible to solve generational challenges on a grant-making timeline.”

There is no single recipe or formula for sustaining engagement and momentum in long-term, emergent, systems change focused work. However, initiatives that have sustained themselves, long before, during, and through crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic have been flexible and adapted to the changes in their environment while still maintaining their mission and north star. The Communities That Care Coalition of Franklin County and the North Quabbin (CTC), highlighted in “Centering Racial Justice and Grassroots Ownership in Collective Impact” demonstrates this evolution and ability to sustain work over time. Since 2012, CTC has used the collective impact framework to improve youth health, well-being, and health equity in rural communities in Western Massachusetts. A nimble, learning, adaptive orientation is one key ingredient in sustaining momentum. As work in the field persists, we hope to learn more about how initiatives are keeping stakeholders focused on their essential work.

Sustaining funding for collective impact work is another vital area to explore. Many collective impact initiatives working to create lasting community-level change struggle to fund their work for more than an initial few years. Collective impact initiatives need to garner resources to support their collaborative infrastructure (e.g., backbone staff, data infrastructure, community engagement), and this funding must be committed over longer timelines. Increased commitments from philanthropy, government, and the business community can all contribute to greater sustainability:

• For philanthropy, continuing and increasing long-term support for collaborative work is essential to achieving systems change. And as philanthropy’s role in these initiatives continues, we hope funders will continue to evolve toward more trust-based, community-centered philanthropic practices that funders have begun to increasingly embrace such as those described in “How Funders of Collective Impact Initiatives Can Build Trust.”
• As shared in “The Leading Edge of Collective Impact: Designing a Just and Fair Nation for All” and “Reflecting on Collective Impact for Place-Based Social Change,” government funding and policy change holds the potential to truly sustain and scale the impact of collective impact work—be that through federal grant program like Promise Neighborhoods, requirements for multi-stakeholder coordination written into state funding streams, county-level allocations that fund backbone staff in agencies such as departments of public health, or through local grant programs to support innovative local efforts.
• With a few exceptions, corporate philanthropy and corporate social responsibility efforts remain largely unengaged in place-based collective impact work, another lost opportunity.

As a field, we need to find ways to increase the commitment of this range of funding types if we are to resource and sustain collective impact initiatives over the next decade.

Looking Ahead

People engaged in collective impact work around the globe have contributed to shaping the field, and many new changemakers are diving into collective impact work each year who will continue to bring fresh insights as this work evolves going forward. The residents in our communities, particularly those experiencing the greatest marginalization and oppression, require us all to address these questions and more. We hope you join us in this work.

The Collective Impact Forum would like to thank Matt Wilka and Tracy Timmons-Gray for their contributions to this series.

Read more stories by Jennifer Splansky Juster & Cindy Santos.