Collective Impact - The Power of Partnerships

"Nothing will work, but everything might." - Clay Shirky

Collective Impact is an approach to solving social problems that stresses pooling together the energies and resources of multiple nonprofit, public and private players to address pressing social problems.

Let's take the issue of the dropout rate at a community high school, for example. A student may drop out of high school for any number of reasons, many of which have their roots in things that occurred long before they even started high school. Adopting that perspective, the job of reducing the community's dropout rate is not only the responsibility of the high school and after school programs for teens; it's also the responsibility of parents and city officials and elementary programs, etc. The most effective way to combat the problem then is to:

• Get everyone with a stake in the outcome at the same "table"
• Establish a common vision of what they're trying to achieve
• Adopt a shared set of measurable goals
• Pursue evidence-based actions toward achieving those goals

Easy to do? No way. But it's happening. More details in the linked story above.