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My Aunt Janice’s biscuits are legendary. They are fluffy, buttery and light. Whenever we visit her in Alabama, we stop by to gorge ourselves on these delectable treats. I recently had a hankering for the biscuits so I asked for the recipe. While I’m not a huge fan of cooking, I don’t mind baking occasionally. The recipe only has four ingredients- flour, buttermilk, shortening, and butter. Simple, right?

The Integration Initiative—or “TII”—began in 2010 as a pioneering approach to community development. Living Cities designed TII, a precursor to the collective impact model, to support “bold, promising approaches that have the potential to transform the lives of low-income people and the communities in which they live.”

To effectively create collective impact in local communities, you need to pay attention to three things: a focus on context, developing many cross-sector partnerships, and systems change.

I had the great fortune of attending the first learning community of the Working Cities Challenge (WCC), an initiative led by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston to advance collaborative leadership and support ambitious work to improve the lives of low-income people in smaller Massachusetts cities. Passionate leaders talked through a number of challenging issues that have the potential to sow bitterness and discord in collective impact Initiatives. By addressing the conflicts and holding the tensions in balance, that bitterness can become a sweet recipe for catalyzing enduring change.

In recent years, data driven cross-sector partnerships have refined promising collective impact principles for tackling society’s largest, messiest problems. Here are some “keep it real insights” about what these principles look like in practice and what it takes to apply these principles effectively.