Collective Impact: A Model for 21st Century Communities

The buzz about collective impact is growing. Greater Cincinnati is embracing this model for long-term systemic change – a model that focuses the efforts of diverse organizations working together toward a shared vision.

We should all pay attention because collective impact tackles big, important issues that can positively impact our region for decades to come.

The phrase “collective impact” was coined in a seminal article by John Kania and Mark Kramer in the Winter 2011 issue of the Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR):  

Collective impact is the commitment of a group of important actors from different sectors to a common agenda for solving a specific social problem. Collaboration is nothing new. The social sector is filled with examples of partnerships, networks, and other types of joint efforts. But collective impact initiatives are distinctly different. Unlike most collaborations, collective impact initiatives involve a centralized infrastructure, a dedicated staff, and a structured process that leads to a common agenda, shared measurement, continuous communication, and mutually reinforcing activities among all participants.

Cincinnati has at least two collective impact initiatives in place and two that are emerging: 

1. The Strive Together Partnership – where the vision is that every child in the urban core of Greater Cincinnati is educated, cradle to career. KnowledgeWorks is the “backbone” or managing organization. Strive has achieved national recognition in promoting academic success and has scaled its model to other cities. In our region, Strive has focused on three school systems: Cincinnati, Newport and Covington. 
2. Cincinnati Preschool Promise – Decades of research by economists, neuroscientists and educators prove that investments in the first five years of life – including high-quality preschool – result in long-term gains for students and produce significant savings for governments and taxpayers. According to 4C for Children, the backbone for this initiative, “… couldn’t be clearer. If we want to improve outcomes for generations, fix our talent pipeline, strengthen our schools and communities, and produce long-term, meaningful savings to taxpayers, we have to invest in quality preschool for all of our children.”
3. The Health Collaborative has been tapped as the backbone organization for developing a regional health collective impact initiative. The goal is for Greater Cincinnati to achieve breakthrough progress toward the national healthcare standard known as the triple aim: better health, better care and lower cost. Community-wide data collection and analysis will involve scaling up a pilot initiative called “Your Health Matters,” funded by Bethesda Inc. 
4. Cradle Cincinnati recently launched a collective impact initiative focused on stemming the high rates of infant mortality (defined as death during the first year of life), an effort complemented by the goals of StartStrong, a partnership of Cincinnati Children’s Medical Center, Every Child Succeeds and TriHealth. Infant mortality is highly correlated to poverty. Cincinnati has the third highest poverty rate in the United States—34.1 percent of people here live below the poverty line. Further, we rank No. 2 in the country for child poverty, with more than half of the city’s children living in poverty in 2012.  

In addition to these four initiatives, many citizens would call these efforts examples of collective impact: 

• The successful turnaround of Over-the-Rhine led by 3CDC. 
• The Homeless to Homes plan, a sustainable solution to homelessness, led by Strategies to End Homelessness.

Successful collective impact initiatives have several things in common per the SSIR model:

• A common vision/agenda for community improvement.
• Shared measurements, using consistent data collection for evidence-based decision making.
• Mutually reinforcing activities that are coordinated yet differentiated.
• Continuous communication, leading to collaborative action, learning and improvement.
• A backbone organization that staffs the initiative and drives broad community investment in and ownership of the results.

As citizens, we should all be cheering the leaders, volunteers and organizations stepping up to improve our most intractable problems. My hope is that more of us get involved.

Susan Ingmire is President of Ignite Philanthropy Advisors, LLC, a consulting firm that facilitated more than $9 million in charitable grants in 2013 on behalf of the family foundation and healthcare philanthropy clients it serves.