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Over the past two months, we published seven interviews with experienced backbone leaders. Although we approached these interviews with a loose agenda (“How have their initiatives evolved and been sustained?” “What can experienced backbone leaders teach newer initiatives”, etc.), the interviewees provided a treasure trove of nuanced advice, stories of success, and (yes) stories of failure. Instead of sticking to talking points, each interviewee gave us the real story.

Cheryl Moder is the Vice President of Collective Impact at San Diego’s Community Health Improvement Partners (CHIP), a 20-year old nonprofit whose mission is to advance long-term solutions to priority health needs through collaboration. Among other responsibilities, CHIP has served as the backbone for the San Diego County Childhood Obesity Initiative for the past 10 years.

Here at the Forum we’ve been having amazing discussions about equity in collective impact. As part of the discussion series with experienced backbone leaders, I had the chance to catch up with a three key members of KConnect to talk about the role of equity in their work. KConnect is the backbone of a collective impact initiative focused on providing all children in Kent County, Michigan a path to economic prosperity through family, education, and community opportunities. Representing KConnect are Pamela Parriott, Executive Director of KConnect; Lynne Ferrell, co-chair of the KConnect Board of Trustees; and Paul Doyle, consultant for KConnect’s Equity & Inclusion Workgroup and focus.

Our conversation series with experienced backbone leaders continues with a conversation with Kat Allen, co-chair of Communities that Care Coalition (CTC). CTC focuses on supporting the health and well-being of young people in Franklin County and the North Quabbin region of Massachusetts. CTC has been operating since 2002, and much can be learned from their experience and evolution. For more information on CTC, see this 6-minute video of Kat’s “practitioner insights” and a brief case study.

This is the second in our conversation series with experienced backbone leaders. (see this blog post describing the series.) In this conversation, we spoke with Chekemma Fulmore-Townsend, President and CEO of the Philadelphia Youth Network (PYN). PYN serves as the backbone organization for Project U-Turn, which aims to galvanize collective commitment and action to address Philadelphia’s dropout crisis.

Welcome to the first in a series of conversations with experienced backbone leaders! (see this blog post describing the series.) In this chat, we’ll hear from Ellen Kahler, Executive Director at the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund (VSJF) since 2005.

Summer is upon us, and in the U.S. the weather is hot, and the days long. I spent my childhood in Alabama, where the often-unbearable summer heat made us appreciate cold drinks, shade, and air conditioning. The hot weather sapped our desire to run around outside, so in the evening we’d fire up the grill, gather fresh tomatoes from the garden, watch the lightning bugs flutter across the yard, and enjoy one another’s company. In this setting, stories were shared, wisdom was imparted, and we generally got to know one another a lot better.

Forming a steering committee and creating a common agenda is hard work. But what happens after the vision has been agreed upon? How do you create an infrastructure that can make progress toward achieving the common agenda? A new article titled Committing to Collective Impact: From Vision to Implementation discusses this important phase in a collective impact initiative.