Collective Impact Strategies to Achieve Systemic and Sustainable Health Improvement—Part 1

Collective Impact is the commitment of a group of actors from different sectors to a common agenda for solving a complex social problem. In order to create lasting solutions to social problems on a large-scale, organizations need to coordinate their efforts and work together around a clearly defined goal.

Collective Impact is a significant shift from the social sector's current paradigm of 'isolated impact,' because the underlying premise of Collective Impact is that no single organization can create large-scale, lasting social change alone. There is no 'silver bullet' solution to systemic social problems, and these problems cannot be solved by simply scaling or replicating one organization or program. Strong organizations are necessary but not sufficient for large-scale social change. Applicants heard about the five conditions for Collective Impact Success. Collective Impact is more rigorous and specific than collaboration among organizations. There are five conditions that, together, lead to meaningful results from Collective Impact:

1. Common Agenda: All participants have a shared vision for change including a common understanding of the problem and a joint approach to solving it through agreed upon actions
2. Shared Measurement: Collecting data and measuring results consistently across all participants ensures efforts remain aligned and participants hold each other accountable
3. Mutually Reinforcing Activities: Participant activities must be differentiated while still being coordinated through a mutually reinforcing plan of action
4. Continuous Communication: Consistent and open communication is needed across the many players to build trust, assure mutual objectives, and appreciate common motivation
5. Backbone Organization: Creating and managing collective impact requires a separate organization(s) with staff and a specific set of skills to serve as the backbone for the entire initiative and coordinate participating organizations and agencies

Presenter:

• Lalitha Vaidyanathan, managing director at FSG

This presentation was a featured keynote address at the Association for Community Health Improvement's national conference in March, 2013. View the schedule for the 2014 national conference.

To view part 2 of this series click here.