The Collective Impact Model

What's Collective Impact?

Read anything about collective impact and 90% of the items will begin with a sentence that says something like, "In 2011, Kania and Kramer published a groundbreaking article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review laying the groundwork for what they called a "Collective Impact" model with the purpose of encouraging a systems-change approach ecosystems of service providers could employ to achieve greater social impact."

That is absolutely true.  They did that.  What has ensued is almost now a decade of struggle, strife, and some success with full implementations of the model.  More groundbreaking, though, were the ideas within that, either together or uncoupled from the model, shifted the paradigm of social service provision as an industry.  Who knew collaboration instead of competition could be a useful idea in helping people.

In this article, they identify 5 elements of collective impact that, implemented together, can potentially lead to amplified impact for programs serving clients.  Today, I might extend this idea to include an approach to community collaboration that could really galvanize the ways people organize, whether part of an industry or not.

These elements are:

1. Common Agenda

What this comes to be in reality is a "shared vision for change" (Kania and Kramer, 2011).  They nailed this one on the head. It's the big banner that runs across everything we do in a collective impact setting.  It's the horizon, it's the change we want to see, it's the endzone, it's the shared way forward.  I have a lot to say about this importance of this and the many forms it can take but this is really the agreement as to the kind of change and the process of change we can agree upon together.

It sounds so basic but reality has proven to me it's potentially the most difficult element to get right with the biggest consequences for not paying it enough attention.  Oh the stories I have that will follow.

2. Shared Measurement Systems

That's right: data.  But not just data.  The point of coming to some shared understanding about the strategies, processes, and/or outcomes that are important hone focus and build a foundation for continually assessing, evolving, and sometimes nixing work all in the name of progress.  A lot of organizations, collective impact and otherwise, get hung up on shared database systems.  Note: that is not what this concept necessarily requires.  The more important activity here is agreeing on how to measure and track progress and the buy-in of all to assess and be assessed in a shared fashion.  In reality, I might call this a Common Accountability System.

3. Mutually Reinforcing Activities

Now, here's where things get interesting.  This element challenges cross-industry or cross-sector partners to start aligning efforts so that "the right hand knows what the left hand is doing." Said less biblically, this is an elegant way to describe Coordination.  The concept is exactly as you know it in everyday life, no more or no less.  But if we all harken back to that group project we had to do in the 9th grade and the turmoil that inevitably ensued, we know that realizing this, especially on the largest scale, will take the majority of a collective's time and vigilance.  The thing with alignment is that it requires almost immediate and constant re-alignment.

4. Continuous Communication

Of all of these elements, this seems like the biggest no-brainer and yet it might be the element that is the hardest to consistently get right.  When we think of communication, we have to think of all of the stakeholders at play, their language and expectations for knowing things, and at what level. Getting groups who may not talk to each other because it's not convenient or because they are outrightly hostile toward one another is part of this goal.  And unlike mutually reinforcing activities which is largely a planning endeavor (sometimes of Herculean proportions), continuous communication is emotional as well as functional.  The real question here is about continuous engagement, continuous appeal, continuous updates, and garnering continuous buy-in.  A newsletter every now and then will not satisfy the demands of this particular element.

5. Backbone Support Organization

Perhaps the most elusive of all of these elements in reality, the concept of a backbone organization comes from the notion that this collective will weave together cross-sector partners whose manifest purposes are not of this collective work.  Everybody has a day job.  The idea here is to create a dedicated staff and structure to manage these activities so that they are cohesive, they keep moving forward through the natural flux of a system like this, and that they draw more resources in a variety of forms.  In some ways this is about leadership and decision-making.  In other ways, it's about governing the day-to-day of these activities.  My experience is that it ends up being "shepherding" in every sense of the word.  On some days it's more like the shepherding of cats rather than that of animal breeds that need a leader to follow.  Cats have opinions about being put into a box that must be honored.

Now Go Out and Do It

In no way should the novelty of this approach be downplayed.  This framework created a full on revolution, especially for funders, that today is now international and continues to grow.  Few corners of the world are not touched by the idea of collective impact.  As with any framework though, the transition from theory to reality, the implementation of the dream, the operationalization of the variables means everything.  And making this framework happen is devilishly hard, even for the most well-intentioned and bought in.  Systems change does not happen in a day.  Sometimes it just may not happen at all.

A practical guidebook and discussion can be just what some need to stick with it.  Sometimes a little bit of "how" is all we need to make the next step something spectacular.

Root around here for ideas, thoughts, stories, and sometimes just a smidge of hope.  And let me know if you've got a story to share...I do believe together we can do just about anything.