I’m not sure how important Collective Impact is going to be, but I can tell you one thing: It’s big! 

There is huge interest in the Collective Impact framework in not only the United States, but in Canada, Australia, and around the world.  This won’t be news to community members because I am sure that you are very aware of the role that Paul Born, Liz Weaver, and Tamarack have taken on in helping individuals and organizations to learn more about how this model for collaborative action might be used to address significant social problems in local communities.  In fact, the Tamarack community websites have become a great source of information and ideas about Collective Impact and notices of upcoming events, conferences, and workshops. 

I hesitate to admit it, but I am a bit of a latecomer to the party.  In my own case, I first heard about Collective Impact when Paul Born was the featured guest in June 2012 at the Leveraging our Strengths conference put on by United Way of Ottawa.  I was immediately excited about this new model for collaborative engagement, particularly because it explicitly described and supported the need for a “backbone organization” to coordinate and engage partners.  This had a lot of resonance with me because I have worked in essentially “backbone” roles with United Ways and other organizations at the local, national, and international levels for the past twenty five years. 

I have always felt strongly that there is tremendous value in connecting organizations and sharing knowledge in the social sector, but it doesn’t always happen.  And it can be very hard to fund this “infrastructure” role because it doesn’t itself provide direct services and can seem to be unconnected to the kinds of outcomes that communities and funders expect and demand.  I absolutely agree that success should be measured in terms of impact on lives and local communities, but I have often found that we don’t always (I am being polite here!) know what others are doing and it takes a concerted effort to get people to work together. 

For me, Collective Impact changed all that.  Here was a well thought out and clearly presented framework for collaboration that covered all the bases, and most importantly explained how and why the five conditions worked together.  Of course collaboration is not new, and one might argue that there has been a significant push to working collaboratively for some time now, but I really think the Collective Impact framework is a game changer, if only because of the interest and momentum that has been created and the legitimacy that this body of work confers.  Even if you aren’t that interested in the specific initiatives that Kania, Kramer, Hanleybrown, and their colleagues describe in the various articles and blog posts, we can credit their consulting firm FSG with contributing something important to our field. 

How important is Collective Impact?  Well, let me give you a personal example.  Following the community conference in 2012 I started reading up on Collective Impact in the Stanford Social Innovation Review and following the dialogue at FSG and Tamarack.  And I stared talking to people about what I found so intriguing in this “new” theory.  Most hadn’t heard of it, but they quickly became interested because the framework seemed to reflect and give shape to ideas that they have had for a long time but couldn’t always put words around.  I call Collective Impact evolutionary rather than revolutionary because I think it builds clearly on ideas and experiences that many of us have had, but does so in a very deliberate way that shows the interrelationship and interdependence between the five conditions and describes in detail the kinds of processes and steps that are needed for success. 

So when I saw the Champions for Change: Leading a Backbone Organization for Collective Impact conference coming up in Toronto in April 2013, I naturally signed up, expecting a small and intimate gathering of 15 or 20 of us around the table to talk about this exciting “new” idea.  Much to my surprise there were more than 250 people in the room when I walked in.  And much to my embarrassment, nearly all of them were already working on Collective Impact and were eager to learn more about the framework and the specific role of the backbone organization.  Although deeply humbled, I learned a lot and came away even more sure that this was IMPORTANT and that something was really happening here. 

In a conversation later that spring with Gordon Floyd, CEO of Children’s Mental Health Ontario, we talked about how interested we both were in Collective Impact and agreed that it was time to take a more critical look at this in a Canadian context.  Gordon is a Co-Editor of The Philanthropist, Canada’s pre-eminent online journal for those engaged in the nonprofit sector, and so he took forward a proposal to his colleagues to dedicate a future issue to this topic.  I was delighted to be engaged as Associate Guest Editor to put together this special issue and am pleased to announce that we are on track for publication in May, 2014. 

This role was a real gift to me as I reached out to talk to many people about one of my favourite topics.  Now I was sure this was important.  As Buffalo Springfield said in the lyrics of their 1960’s anthem For What It’s Worth:  “There's something happening here, What it is ain't exactly clear”.  The response was fantastic.  Despite busy schedules, all of my correspondents were generous with their time and more than a dozen authors stepped forward to share their experiences and perspectives to help all of us figure out what is really going on here. 

I believe that you will find the result to be very interesting as detailed in the attached flyer.  This special issue will provide a comprehensive survey of the state of Collective Impact, from a detailed overview by Liz Weaver from an implementation perspective to the challenges of evaluating Collective Impact by Mark Cabaj.  We are also pleased to include an update from colleagues in Australia who are using Collective Impact to foster a new movement for social change, and an interview with John Kania and Fay Hanleybrown from FSG on their latest thinking and experience.  Paul Born and Don Bourgeois face off in a Point/Counterpoint feature on the question of whether this is a new and innovative approach or merely a re-packaging of old ideas about collaboration.   

The special issue will go online later in May and we invite you to visit www.thephilanthropist.ca to enjoy this and other issues that we hope will encourage reflection, stimulate debate, and help to re-imagine the nonprofit world. You can register online to comment on articles and be notified of new issues.   

As Mark Holmgren reported in a recent post, there is some healthy scepticism out there about Collective Impact, and this was precisely the reason that we wanted to explore the framework in more detail and from a Canadian perspective in The Philanthropist.  The jury is still out on Collective Impact, but the potential could be huge if this framework can indeed be used to address some of the most pressing and intractable problems that we face in our society.  Advocates claim that Collective Impact, properly and diligently applied, has the potential to create innovation and systems change and compelling evidence is starting to emerge.  I hope that the upcoming special issue of The Philanthropist on Collective Impact will help inform this discussion.