Collective Impact

by John Kania and Mark Kramer, Standford Social Innovation Review, Winter 2011. Available online and as pdf

The same work has also been the subject of a New York Times article “Coming Together to Give Schools a Boost By DAVID BORNSTEIN March 7, 2011.  And further material is also available on the FSG website, a consultancy group involved in the process.

Excerpts:

“… Large-scale social change requires broad cross-sector coordination, yet the social sector remains focused on the isolated intervention of individual organizations“

“The social sector  is filled with examples of partnerships, networks, and other types of  joint efforts. But collective impact initiatives are distinctly different. ”

“Shifting from isolated impact to collective impact is not merely a matter of encouraging more collaboration or public-private partnerships. It requires a systemic approach to social impact that focuses on the relationships between organizations and the progress toward shared objectives. And it requires the creation of a new set of nonprofit management organizations that have the skills and resources to assemble and coordinate the speciic elements necessary for collective action to succeed.”

“…Our research shows that successful collective impact initiatives typically have f ive conditions that together produce true alignment and lead to powerful results: a common agenda, shared measurement systems, mutually reinforcing activities, continuous communication, and backbone support organizations.”