I wonder if anyone has suggestions on how to measure the efficacy of the backbone organization and quantify the value it adds to the collective work. We have difficulty convincing funders that the messy, hard work has value that is as important as the outcomes that the partner organizations achieve because they are involved in the structure the backbone organization energizes and sustains.
I like this approach; it overcomes the “theory of change myopia” that can beset an individual foundation and its dependent non profits. I’d love to do something on this in our deep, local, connected theme at SOCAP12 in San Francisco October 1-4
The Wilder Foundation offers a free online assessment tool that can be used to measure the backbone organization’s collaborative efforts. It’s helped focus attention on hot issues for several collective impact partnerships I am a part of.
Louise—Thanks for your comment. FSG is currently working with the Greater Cincinnati Foundation, a key funder of several backbone organizations in the Cincinnati/Northern KY community, to help them answer this question. We hope to share more with the field more broadly in the coming year.
Just wanted to follow up on my colleague’s article. We mention trust in the last section of the report. I wanted to stress how important trust is to the success of collective impact efforts. True behavior change in the way that organizations interact and work together won’t happen in the absence of trust - and that trust is built along the way through the process of developing a vision, identifying shared goals, and developing and launching aligned strategies. Also based on our experience developing collective impact efforts, it is important to explicitly focus on power dynamics and how you accomodate the inherent imbalances between the size and access to resources of the various players contributing to the effort (e.g. with a large funder, or with a large school district). Finally, we would encourage an explicit focus on the competitive dynamics that exist between the involved organizations and taking intentional steps toward helping the actors shift from competition to coordination.
First, thank you and congratulations to the authors! Your research is a great contribution to this growing field. Learning from our partnership work at Synergos shows a lot of similarity internationally and fully confirms your findings.
In addition to the elements you described, we have been paying special attention to the leadership factor in these processes. In the early 2000s Synergos coordinated the work of an international team of researchers, who concluded that there was a set of attitudes and individual traits that made broad collective action possible and effective. Among them were low ego needs and ability to bridge diverging viewpoints among stakeholders. That research team coined a term “bridging leadership”, which we have been using to describe these characteristics.
Today our Fellowship program is dedicated to supporting civil society leaders who facilitate this kind of collective processes. We also believe that many private philanthropists are in a particularly good position to provide this kind of leadership and we promote this approach with our Philanthropists Network.
The “soft,” intangible elements you also mention are proving essential for building trust and breaking into a generous, collaborative mode of action. It involves applying more broadly some methodologies that until now have been reserved for the personal sphere or for work with small teams. The bottom line of these methodologies is that we will not see social change without transformation at the individual, team and institutional level.
Building on both Jeff’s and Daniel’s comments above, and with appreciation for the work of FSG in helping to codify this important approach, I wanted to add that from our experience at the Interaction Institute for Social Change, helping people develop the skills of collaborative process design and facilitation is of paramount importance in cultivating trust and ultimately realizing the promise of these large-scale multi-stakeholder efforts.
From our work over the past 20 years, we’ve observed how often people come to these change initiatives without the necessary skillset, and we’ve found it imperative to help them to see the water in which they swim and cultivate the capacity to strategically and “spiritually” align process (how they do the work) with their aspirations in terms of results. For example, funders may be called to shift into a convening role that is somewhat or completely unfamiliar to them. How they exercise power in this new mode is critical and can be a great challenge. We’ve been robustly engaged in this conversation in our work with Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (http://geofunders.org/storage/documents/Do_Nothing_About_Me_Without_Me.pdf) and with various philanthropic, state agency, and community-based convenors (http://interactioninstitute.org/impact/highlights). And of course power is not just about access to resources, but also about the structural inequities that are often at the root of the very issues we are trying to solve. Grounding people in a safe space and an ability to see and talk about structural analysis and complex systems is key.
Related to this is the importance of helping people enter into genuine relationship with one another. This means taking time to get to know one another beyond formal roles and through their authentic longings for change. There can certainly be resistance to this exercise - “We are all so busy, can’t we just get to the real work?” And as my colleague Gibran Rivera has noted, this resistance is endemic in a society that seems to devalue the importance of relationship. But we also know that perhaps the most important sustaining factor for change is connection to one another at the most human of levels, the place where personal purpose comes together with shared purpose.
And there are also important questions about who should be involved in the initiative and how they might be involved. We find that stakeholder analysis is one of the most important steps in the process design phase. People are often tempted to gloss over this in a rush to get to results and subsequently default to “the usual suspects.” If people are looking to truly shift systems, then it is important to “get the system in the room,” first identifying the diversity of perspectives and commitments that will be necessary for the work at hand, including getting at root causes. This means getting those who are MOST affected by the issues at hand centrally involved.
Thank you for providing this updated information. As a program officer with Lumina Foundation I have encouraged several place-based grant partners to apply the lessons and strategies outlined in your first article. I can’t wait to share this updated article with them as well. In particular Lumina Foundation has funded several communities to use the “collective-impact” approach to increase the postsecondary success of Latino students. We are in the first year for a four year engagment and I look forward to documenting and learning from the outcomes they acheive. Thanks for the thoughtful and timely research. Please keep it coming!
If you are not already aware of it, I’d like to draw your attention to the Drug-Free Communities program, administered by a federal partnership between the Office of National Drug Control Policy in the White House, the HHS Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration (SAMHSA) and Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America. This national effort funds over 700 local communities to address underage and adult substance use on a community level and integrates all of the critical components that you describe in your model. In addition, coalitions are required to be trained to understand how to develop a data-driven theory of change and are tied to common metrics. The results speak for themselves. I would encourage you to take a look at this very effective national model to fund, support with advocacy, research, training and technical assistance, effective coalitions across the country that are achieving measurable and impressive results. I believe this kind of national coordination of a locally driven process is unique among federal programs, and could serve as a model for tackling other issues using a locally driven process with federal coordination and support.
This article is a great follow-up to the first article from December. I think it helps people understand how to more specifically operationalize collective impact and gain a better understanding of the commitment it takes. I am intrigued about how this article informs the conversation around the competencies needed to be successful at collective impact. Does anyone know of any additional research or observations on what qualities make up a successful collective impact professional?
Public Allies (http://www.publicallies.org) is very much embracing this model and looking for ways we can help foster/convene basic conversations around issue identification for potential collective impact in our 21 sites across the country.
Daniel -
This idea of bridging leadership is critical! In the article, we talk about the “importance of dynamic leadership” to both initiate and sustain a collective impact effort. The description in the article of someone who is willing to allow participants to find their own solutions is absolutely consistent with your comment about “low ego needs.” We also encourage you to check out our “Leading Boldly” article which may be of interest to you on this topic:
Tina, thanks for sharing these ideas with your grant partners. We’re excited that you’ve found Collective Impact to be a fruitful approach. We look forward to seeing how the Latino Student Success initiative progresses! We’ll also be launching some work on a collective impact approach to Latino student success shortly and it would be great to share what we’re learning with each other.
Curtis -
Thank you for your thoughtful comments. We at FSG continue to be great fans of IISC’s work, and see much resonance with the collective impact concept. We agree wholeheartedly with your comment, and have found that building relationships and trust among stakeholders is key to the success of any collective impact effort. This is part of what we refer to as the “soft stuff” that brings together people who otherwise might not ever work together. Mapping the stakeholders can be a critical first step in this process. Thanks again for your important work in this space!
Stephen -
Through FSG’s work on collective impact initiatives, we’ve learned many important lessons on how to successfully execute a collective impact effort. We look forward to sharing additional findings around implementation and execution in the coming years!
Congratulations to FSG for raising awareness of a new way of working that has the power to multiply the impact we and many other organisations are able to have on some of the really hard-to-crack social problems.
In our venture philanthropy work here in the UK, we are helping the organisations in our portfolio to be able to do three things: scale up, link up and speak up. (More about how we and other venture philanthropy organisations do this is detailed in research from London Business School http://www.impetus.org.uk/media/51242/catalysing systemic change - the role of venture philanthropy.pdf
As the authors of Channeling Change so wisely point out, learning to “link up” often requires the development of new skills and ways of working for organisations aspiring to deep collective impact. We will be sharing this very useful “how to” of collective impact work with the organisations we support and with our grantmaking partners, to try to become even more effective in this crucial area.
Great follow-up article. Very inspiring. I am part of the BACKBONE organization of an initiative in Marin County, CA: Thriving Families Network. The founder of this initiative,The Marin Community Foundation, believe in the “backbone” concept very much: I coordinate the efforts of the collaborative, manage communication among the stakeholders, assist people to stay focus on our shared vision, facilitate regular meetings with staff from the 12 different organizations, etc.
I work very closely with the other essential BACKBONE: the evaluator. But We do not work for any of the 12 organizations. Our work website is tfnmarin.org, in case you want to know more about Thriving Families Network.
Your articles are helping me find the gaps in our work as support structure of the initiative and reassure me that we are doing something right.
Thank you
Thank you for your comment and for telling us about the Thriving Families Network. We’re thrilled to hear that you’ve found our work on Collective Impact useful in guiding your efforts in Marin County—and we agree that having a neutral backbone (which can mean one that does not work for any of the organizations) is hugely important. Additional resources and findings from our experiences with Collective Impact, including a Collective Impact blog, can be found on our website at http://www.fsg.org/OurApproach/CollectiveImpact.aspx
Thank you for your comment and for telling us about the Thriving Families Network. We’re thrilled to hear that you’ve found our work on Collective Impact useful in guiding your efforts in Marin County—and we agree that having a neutral backbone (which can mean one that does not work for any of the organizations) is hugely important. Additional resources and findings from our experiences with Collective Impact, including a Collective Impact blog, can be found on our website at http://www.fsg.org/OurApproach/CollectiveImpact.aspx
I came here after reading the article about Collective Impact by John Kania & Mark Kramer and found this to be a next step of it. This helped me in understanding the collective impact in a better way. Thanks.
I too came to the work after reading the article by John Kania and Mark Kramer. I am looking at the principles of collective impact to support me in optimising my partnerships at Wulagi Primary School, in Darwin, Australia and in articulating my beliefs and vision.
COMMENTS
BY Louise Stewart
ON January 26, 2012 12:10 PM
I wonder if anyone has suggestions on how to measure the efficacy of the backbone organization and quantify the value it adds to the collective work. We have difficulty convincing funders that the messy, hard work has value that is as important as the outcomes that the partner organizations achieve because they are involved in the structure the backbone organization energizes and sustains.
BY Kevin Jones
ON January 26, 2012 01:57 PM
I like this approach; it overcomes the “theory of change myopia” that can beset an individual foundation and its dependent non profits. I’d love to do something on this in our deep, local, connected theme at SOCAP12 in San Francisco October 1-4
BY Rebecca Kelley
ON January 26, 2012 07:07 PM
The Wilder Foundation offers a free online assessment tool that can be used to measure the backbone organization’s collaborative efforts. It’s helped focus attention on hot issues for several collective impact partnerships I am a part of.
BY Emily Malenfant
ON January 27, 2012 12:10 PM
Thanks Rebecca! Sounds like a great resource. Can you share the link?
BY Ellen Martin
ON January 28, 2012 12:30 PM
Louise—Thanks for your comment. FSG is currently working with the Greater Cincinnati Foundation, a key funder of several backbone organizations in the Cincinnati/Northern KY community, to help them answer this question. We hope to share more with the field more broadly in the coming year.
BY Jeff Kutash (Managing Director, FSG)
ON February 1, 2012 09:40 AM
Just wanted to follow up on my colleague’s article. We mention trust in the last section of the report. I wanted to stress how important trust is to the success of collective impact efforts. True behavior change in the way that organizations interact and work together won’t happen in the absence of trust - and that trust is built along the way through the process of developing a vision, identifying shared goals, and developing and launching aligned strategies. Also based on our experience developing collective impact efforts, it is important to explicitly focus on power dynamics and how you accomodate the inherent imbalances between the size and access to resources of the various players contributing to the effort (e.g. with a large funder, or with a large school district). Finally, we would encourage an explicit focus on the competitive dynamics that exist between the involved organizations and taking intentional steps toward helping the actors shift from competition to coordination.
BY Daniel Domagala, Director, Senior Fellows Program,
ON February 6, 2012 06:41 AM
First, thank you and congratulations to the authors! Your research is a great contribution to this growing field. Learning from our partnership work at Synergos shows a lot of similarity internationally and fully confirms your findings.
In addition to the elements you described, we have been paying special attention to the leadership factor in these processes. In the early 2000s Synergos coordinated the work of an international team of researchers, who concluded that there was a set of attitudes and individual traits that made broad collective action possible and effective. Among them were low ego needs and ability to bridge diverging viewpoints among stakeholders. That research team coined a term “bridging leadership”, which we have been using to describe these characteristics.
Today our Fellowship program is dedicated to supporting civil society leaders who facilitate this kind of collective processes. We also believe that many private philanthropists are in a particularly good position to provide this kind of leadership and we promote this approach with our Philanthropists Network.
The “soft,” intangible elements you also mention are proving essential for building trust and breaking into a generous, collaborative mode of action. It involves applying more broadly some methodologies that until now have been reserved for the personal sphere or for work with small teams. The bottom line of these methodologies is that we will not see social change without transformation at the individual, team and institutional level.
BY Curtis Ogden
ON February 8, 2012 04:20 AM
Building on both Jeff’s and Daniel’s comments above, and with appreciation for the work of FSG in helping to codify this important approach, I wanted to add that from our experience at the Interaction Institute for Social Change, helping people develop the skills of collaborative process design and facilitation is of paramount importance in cultivating trust and ultimately realizing the promise of these large-scale multi-stakeholder efforts.
From our work over the past 20 years, we’ve observed how often people come to these change initiatives without the necessary skillset, and we’ve found it imperative to help them to see the water in which they swim and cultivate the capacity to strategically and “spiritually” align process (how they do the work) with their aspirations in terms of results. For example, funders may be called to shift into a convening role that is somewhat or completely unfamiliar to them. How they exercise power in this new mode is critical and can be a great challenge. We’ve been robustly engaged in this conversation in our work with Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (http://geofunders.org/storage/documents/Do_Nothing_About_Me_Without_Me.pdf) and with various philanthropic, state agency, and community-based convenors (http://interactioninstitute.org/impact/highlights). And of course power is not just about access to resources, but also about the structural inequities that are often at the root of the very issues we are trying to solve. Grounding people in a safe space and an ability to see and talk about structural analysis and complex systems is key.
Related to this is the importance of helping people enter into genuine relationship with one another. This means taking time to get to know one another beyond formal roles and through their authentic longings for change. There can certainly be resistance to this exercise - “We are all so busy, can’t we just get to the real work?” And as my colleague Gibran Rivera has noted, this resistance is endemic in a society that seems to devalue the importance of relationship. But we also know that perhaps the most important sustaining factor for change is connection to one another at the most human of levels, the place where personal purpose comes together with shared purpose.
And there are also important questions about who should be involved in the initiative and how they might be involved. We find that stakeholder analysis is one of the most important steps in the process design phase. People are often tempted to gloss over this in a rush to get to results and subsequently default to “the usual suspects.” If people are looking to truly shift systems, then it is important to “get the system in the room,” first identifying the diversity of perspectives and commitments that will be necessary for the work at hand, including getting at root causes. This means getting those who are MOST affected by the issues at hand centrally involved.
Additional details about the details of process design and facilitation in our practice can be found in this post on the IISC blog, if anyone is intereste - http://interactioninstitute.org/blog/2012/02/08/deepening-collective-impact/.
Thanks again for this important contribution to the field!
BY Tina Gridiron Smith
ON February 8, 2012 09:00 AM
Thank you for providing this updated information. As a program officer with Lumina Foundation I have encouraged several place-based grant partners to apply the lessons and strategies outlined in your first article. I can’t wait to share this updated article with them as well. In particular Lumina Foundation has funded several communities to use the “collective-impact” approach to increase the postsecondary success of Latino students. We are in the first year for a four year engagment and I look forward to documenting and learning from the outcomes they acheive. Thanks for the thoughtful and timely research. Please keep it coming!
BY Imogen Davis, Project Director, Tonka CARES Coalit
ON February 8, 2012 06:36 PM
If you are not already aware of it, I’d like to draw your attention to the Drug-Free Communities program, administered by a federal partnership between the Office of National Drug Control Policy in the White House, the HHS Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration (SAMHSA) and Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America. This national effort funds over 700 local communities to address underage and adult substance use on a community level and integrates all of the critical components that you describe in your model. In addition, coalitions are required to be trained to understand how to develop a data-driven theory of change and are tied to common metrics. The results speak for themselves. I would encourage you to take a look at this very effective national model to fund, support with advocacy, research, training and technical assistance, effective coalitions across the country that are achieving measurable and impressive results. I believe this kind of national coordination of a locally driven process is unique among federal programs, and could serve as a model for tackling other issues using a locally driven process with federal coordination and support.
BY Stephen Bauer
ON February 13, 2012 10:37 AM
This article is a great follow-up to the first article from December. I think it helps people understand how to more specifically operationalize collective impact and gain a better understanding of the commitment it takes. I am intrigued about how this article informs the conversation around the competencies needed to be successful at collective impact. Does anyone know of any additional research or observations on what qualities make up a successful collective impact professional?
Public Allies (http://www.publicallies.org) is very much embracing this model and looking for ways we can help foster/convene basic conversations around issue identification for potential collective impact in our 21 sites across the country.
BY Michael Murray
ON February 15, 2012 08:20 PM
Daniel -
This idea of bridging leadership is critical! In the article, we talk about the “importance of dynamic leadership” to both initiate and sustain a collective impact effort. The description in the article of someone who is willing to allow participants to find their own solutions is absolutely consistent with your comment about “low ego needs.” We also encourage you to check out our “Leading Boldly” article which may be of interest to you on this topic:
http://www.fsg.org/Portals/0/Uploads/Documents/PDF/Leading_Boldly.pdf?cpgn=WP DL - Leading Boldly (SSIR)
Imogen -
Absolutely, thanks for pointing this out. The FC CtC effort profiled in this article is a great example of this.
BY Jeff Cohen
ON February 15, 2012 10:45 PM
Tina, thanks for sharing these ideas with your grant partners. We’re excited that you’ve found Collective Impact to be a fruitful approach. We look forward to seeing how the Latino Student Success initiative progresses! We’ll also be launching some work on a collective impact approach to Latino student success shortly and it would be great to share what we’re learning with each other.
BY Michael Murray
ON February 16, 2012 11:47 AM
Curtis -
Thank you for your thoughtful comments. We at FSG continue to be great fans of IISC’s work, and see much resonance with the collective impact concept. We agree wholeheartedly with your comment, and have found that building relationships and trust among stakeholders is key to the success of any collective impact effort. This is part of what we refer to as the “soft stuff” that brings together people who otherwise might not ever work together. Mapping the stakeholders can be a critical first step in this process. Thanks again for your important work in this space!
BY Michael Murray
ON February 16, 2012 11:50 AM
Stephen -
Through FSG’s work on collective impact initiatives, we’ve learned many important lessons on how to successfully execute a collective impact effort. We look forward to sharing additional findings around implementation and execution in the coming years!
BY Daniela Barone Soares
ON February 28, 2012 09:54 AM
Congratulations to FSG for raising awareness of a new way of working that has the power to multiply the impact we and many other organisations are able to have on some of the really hard-to-crack social problems.
In our venture philanthropy work here in the UK, we are helping the organisations in our portfolio to be able to do three things: scale up, link up and speak up. (More about how we and other venture philanthropy organisations do this is detailed in research from London Business School
http://www.impetus.org.uk/media/51242/catalysing systemic change - the role of venture philanthropy.pdf
As the authors of Channeling Change so wisely point out, learning to “link up” often requires the development of new skills and ways of working for organisations aspiring to deep collective impact. We will be sharing this very useful “how to” of collective impact work with the organisations we support and with our grantmaking partners, to try to become even more effective in this crucial area.
Daniela Barone Soares
Chief Executive, Impetus Trust
http://www.impetus.org.uk
BY Jose-Luis Arana
ON April 2, 2012 03:25 PM
Great follow-up article. Very inspiring. I am part of the BACKBONE organization of an initiative in Marin County, CA: Thriving Families Network. The founder of this initiative,The Marin Community Foundation, believe in the “backbone” concept very much: I coordinate the efforts of the collaborative, manage communication among the stakeholders, assist people to stay focus on our shared vision, facilitate regular meetings with staff from the 12 different organizations, etc.
I work very closely with the other essential BACKBONE: the evaluator. But We do not work for any of the 12 organizations. Our work website is tfnmarin.org, in case you want to know more about Thriving Families Network.
Your articles are helping me find the gaps in our work as support structure of the initiative and reassure me that we are doing something right.
Thank you
BY javaid
ON May 10, 2012 11:41 AM
IT is very good initiative.espicially in india it is very important
BY Michael Murray
ON May 22, 2012 02:36 PM
Dear Jose-Luis,
Thank you for your comment and for telling us about the Thriving Families Network. We’re thrilled to hear that you’ve found our work on Collective Impact useful in guiding your efforts in Marin County—and we agree that having a neutral backbone (which can mean one that does not work for any of the organizations) is hugely important. Additional resources and findings from our experiences with Collective Impact, including a Collective Impact blog, can be found on our website at http://www.fsg.org/OurApproach/CollectiveImpact.aspx
Best of luck!
BY Michael Murray
ON May 22, 2012 02:37 PM
Dear Jose-Luis,
Thank you for your comment and for telling us about the Thriving Families Network. We’re thrilled to hear that you’ve found our work on Collective Impact useful in guiding your efforts in Marin County—and we agree that having a neutral backbone (which can mean one that does not work for any of the organizations) is hugely important. Additional resources and findings from our experiences with Collective Impact, including a Collective Impact blog, can be found on our website at http://www.fsg.org/OurApproach/CollectiveImpact.aspx
Best of luck!
BY Linda Simmons
ON February 23, 2015 11:53 PM
I came here after reading the article about Collective Impact by John Kania & Mark Kramer and found this to be a next step of it. This helped me in understanding the collective impact in a better way. Thanks.
BY Susan Kilgour
ON March 6, 2015 07:16 PM
I too came to the work after reading the article by John Kania and Mark Kramer. I am looking at the principles of collective impact to support me in optimising my partnerships at Wulagi Primary School, in Darwin, Australia and in articulating my beliefs and vision.