This article is cross-posted from Tamarack’s January 2019 issue of Engage!
Collective impact (CI), a framework for influencing systems change, was launched in the winter of 2011. The CI approach has been deployed by community collaboratives across Canada, the US and internationally to move the needle on a wide variety of complex issues from decreasing homelessness and poverty to improving health and education outcomes for children and youth.
There are many local and national organizations that are supporting and advancing the practice in collective impact including the Collective Impact Forum, United Way Worldwide, Living Cities, Forum for Youth Investment and the Aspen Forum on Community Solutions in the US and the Tamarack Institute and Innoweave in Canada. Internationally, organizations like Collaboration for Impact and Opportunity Child in Australia, Social Development Centre in Denmark and Inspiring Communities in New Zealand are supporting collective impact efforts as well.
The Tamarack Learning Centre is an active member of the Collective Impact Forum’s co-catalyst network and regularly contributes to the growing collective impact practice. Over the past eight years, Tamarack has developed several tools and written numerous papers to advance collective impact knowledge and capacity. In 2019, Tamarack is launching the Collective Impact Compendium Series.
The Collective Impact Compendium Series will bring together key resources, papers and tools which are currently used with the outcome of building knowledge and capacity. The first in the Collective Impact Compendium Series focuses on the five phases of collective impact and identifies resources that collective impact practitioners can use to advance their work across these phases. The second in the series focuses on Leadership, Governance and Backbones.
Future topics covered in the Collective Impact Compendium Series will include:
- Building Community Readiness for Collective Impact
- Engaging Community Stakeholders to Build Movements for Change
- Evaluating Collective Impact Efforts
- Building Resilient and Sustainable CI Approaches
The Collective Impact Compendium Series is designed as a living document. If you have tools, papers or resources that build the capacity of collective impact practitioners, please share them with us at tamarack@tamarackcommunity.ca. Together we can continue to grow the collective impact field.
Learn More:
- Access the first in the Collective Impact Compendium Series: The Five Phases of Collective Impact
- Access the second in the series: Collective Impact Compendium Series Part Two: Leadership, Governance, and Backbones
- Build your Collective Impact practice and leadership by registering for: Collective Impact: Leading Theory to Action, a Train-The Trainer workshop, March 19 – 20, 2019 in Toronto, Ontario.
- Visit Tamarack’s Collective Impact website page
Have more resources to share or recommend? Let us know in the comments.
