MINNEAPOLIS – July 14, 2015 – Today, Insightformation Inc., a leader in teaching organizations how to apply Collective Impact principals and providing services and solutions for managing community health, education and economic improvement Initiatives, announced that it has opened registration for its cutting-edge, 11-week (September 28 to December 18) online Community Strategy Management Training Program .

The goal of Insightformation’s Community Strategy Management Training Program is to teach community coalition leaders, public health professionals, community organizers, program managers and graduate students how to successfully design and implement cross-sector, multi-organization community improvement plans in order to achieve sustainable collective impact.

The fall training program is based on the pioneering work of Insightformation in collaborative strategy implementation and this summer’s pilot session that was attended by 45 professionals working in community health, education and economic improvement programs.

“We enrolled in Insightformation’s Community Strategy Management training course to more fully integrate collective impact into our community-driven process of health improvement. The teaching materials and structure of the course have proven to be invaluable tools to our process of collaborative change,” said Allie Perline, community health education specialist, Mason County Public Health & Human Service. “Armed with the five principles of collective impact and improved strategy mapping skills, not only can the public health department continue to work towards its public health accreditation requirements, but community partners can better align their goals and capacity to support Mason County’s community health initiatives.”

Complex issues, including obesity, mental health and the achievement gap, are difficult to address. Increasingly, public health professionals, hospitals and nonprofit organizations have started to understand that solving these complex issues takes more than just individual efforts and increased spending. Solving complex issues requires a collaborative framework. Mark Kramer, founder of FSG, and his colleague, managing director of FSG, John Kania, co-authored an article in 2011, describing the “Collective Impact” concept and published by the Stanford Social Innovation Review. This article provided the outline for a systematic approach needed to make a sustainable difference and has risen in popularity in the public health and community program sectors.

“We decided to create the Community Strategy Management Training Program, because we found that many communities effectively gather together their different organizations, analyze their data and even develop a plan,” said Bill Barberg, president of Insightformation. “However, the challenge for most organizations is in implementing their plan. The Fall 2015 Community Strategy Management Training Program reinforces collective impact theory, and guides participants in developing action-oriented plans that can be implemented in their communities.”

Training Overview

The Community Strategy Management Training Program consists of 11-weeks of background, coaching and networking with other leaders designing community initiatives using these principles. During the course, recipients will receive:

• Weeks 1 through 4: One training webinar each week followed by a choice between several, smaller discussion groups led by an Insightformation consultant. This first phase of training lays the foundation of knowledge about collective impact, strategy management, strategy map development and system leadership. In addition, participants are given background materials that support the webinar and discussion groups.
• Week 5: The chance to learn more about technologies available to support the management of collaborative social initiatives. The technology sampler week features several guest speakers, who present solutions that facilitate and enable collective impact efforts.
• Weeks 6 through 11: An opportunity to work within their own community group or another group to put the training into action. Each group creates a strategy map for an issue of interest, and each group receives customized coaching and feedback from Insightformation consultants to refine strategy maps and develop their skills. At the end of this phase, four projects are chosen by the training staff to be presented to the whole group.

“After nearly a decade of experience in working with these principles, we have a wealth of experience to bring to these organizations. Participants finish the training with a firm grasp on techniques and tools to help them overcome the obstacles that typically hinder meaningful and sustainable success,” Barberg added.

“The community strategy management training by Insightformation provided us with a valuable tool to create a shared community strategy and align our partners’ efforts. The strategy map framework provides a common language to effectively engage new and existing partners in collective action while also allowing the coalition’s leadership to more easily manage the complexity of working on numerous objectives and initiatives targeting social change,” Virginia Hartmere, coalition director, Pelham PACT Coalition.

Registration Details

Training begins on September 28 and concludes on December 18. Students and consultants are eligible to receive a $500 discount in exchange for volunteer service hours with Insightformation. For more information and to register, please visit insightformation.com/training-program/.

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While most organizations recognize that Collective Impact is invaluable in it’s ability to bring people together, encourage the sharing of resources and achieve wider results; however this approach fails to properly address the underlying fears and grant expectations that are placed on grantees. We know that in order to achieve a wide spread and real impact it will take collaboration with other partners and organizations, yet the underlying problem of how to remain competitive to win funding and show results has not yet been addressed.

Are these issues you have faced while trying to achieve Collective Impact? Below is an excerpt of the article Bill Barberg, President of InsightFormation, wrote for the Grant Managers Network blog.

We would encourage you to read the full article HERE

Some would say that if there is true Collective Impact, then no organization can claim the credit or take the blame for the results. Since most current funding models are based on demonstrating who gets credit, how can funders make rational decisions and hold grantees accountable in the world of Collective Impact? Should funders just give money to anyone who claims to take credit for some good outcome? Will we need mountains of data and super-computers crunching the statistics to try to assign credit?

Recognizing contributions in collective efforts may be a new and daunting challenge in the social sector, but it has been successfully addressed in other sectors. Individuals in all roles in the social sector—funders, evaluators, service providers, and researchers—can learn from how others have addressed these challenges. This article looks at two examples—large corporations and sports teams—to identify some practical lessons.

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Public Health Fall Webinar Series for 2014

[Recorded] After the CHNA.  How to Engage Communities in Health Improvement

Click here to watch the video on demand, and view when it fits your schedule

Are you feeling stretched and overwhelmed by the difficult challenge of improving community health and prevention?  Both hospitals and health departments are facing new requirements to engage both community partners and individuals in the journey to good health. Gathering data and convening community members to identify priority issues is an important start, but as most communities that have attempted to implement a Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP) have learned, the real difficulties is in co-creating an actual strategy that involves the “mutually-reinforcing activities” of many different stakeholders and then successfully implementing that plan.
Participants will learn about:
Co-creating a Shared Strategy in ways that enhance implementation
Improved Collaboration, Information Sharing and Communication
Better and More Efficient Measuring and Monitoring

[Recorded] Streamlining and Improving Your Journey to Accreditation with the PHAB 1.5 Standards

Click here to watch the video on demand, and view when it fits your schedule

For Health Departments seeking to achieve PHAB accreditation, the PHAB 1.5 Standards establish an even more challenging set of requirements than the initial standards.  But, for those that rise up to those standards, the results should be worth the journey.  This Webinar will share how two local health departments are using innovative information management tools and collaboration techniques to make the journey easier and more valuable.

[Recorded]Collective Impact for Community Health: Beyond SMART Goals and Static Logic Models

Click here to watch the video on demand, and view when it fits your schedule

This webinar focuses on upgrades to two commonly-used tools that have a deep history in evaluation practices that have focused on “isolated impact” and that can actually hinder the community teamwork that makes Collective Impact both possible and powerful.
Improving Logic Models
As both government and philanthropic funders move towards supporting collective impact rather than isolated impact, they are starting to see the value of improved techniques. Organizations and coalitions that hope to win future competitive funding opportunities would be wise to learn about these improvements.
Smarter than SMART Goals
The way that SMART Goals or SMART Objectives are typically crafted can make them a barrier to successful Collective Impact.  They tend to get organizations to focus on isolated and fragmented actions rather than see how their efforts can be part of a larger system of “mutually-reinforcing activities.” This Webinar will show a simple technique that will allow many different organizations to use a SMART strategic framework that will be a catalyst for alignment rather than fragmentation.

[Recorded]Collective Impact: From Theory to Practical Action

Click Here to view on demand and watch when it fits your schedule

November 25, 2014
The concept of “Collective Impact” has been rapidly gaining popularity, but most who are attracted to this approach struggle with how to make it a reality in their community.  This Webinar will show how communities are achieving each of the 5 conditions for Collective Impact:
 
Common Agenda:  Learn how to co-create a shared strategy in ways that foster teamwork and enable strategy implementation
Shared Measurement:  See how moving beyond agreeing on priority measures to leveraging a shared measurement system can greatly reduce waste, improve transparency, and help many organizations to align for greater impact.
Mutually-Reinforcing Activities: Learn how to pro-actively nurture “assists” and weave together multiple programs to turn struggling isolated efforts into successful and sustainable team efforts.
Continuous Communication: Learn how shifting from staff-based communication to appropriate use of technology can improve efficiency and transform meetings from boring status reports to high-value sessions to overcome obstacles.
Backbone Support:  See how “digital backbone” infrastructure can allow a community to have distributed backbone support (rather than having multiple organizations competing to be THE backbone organization).

[Recorded]Communities of HOPE: Economical Innovations to Bring Health to Affordable Housing

Click above to view on demand when it fits your schedule

December 9th, 11:30 to 12:30 Central Time
Breaking the intergenerational cycle of poverty and poor health is a huge challenge.  Doing it in Detroit and doing it with very limited funding make it even more daunting.   This inspirational Webinar will highlight some of the innovations that blend social entrepreneurship with Collective Impact to engage the resident of the “Communities of HOPE” to become a model for overcoming the obstacles to healthy living.  Hospitals, health departments and community organizations are increasingly focusing on trying to impact the social determinants of health. This case study of the Communities of HOPE project will show innovative and practical ways this can be accomplished without requiring unrealistic amounts of funding.
 
This Webinar will feature content from a Presentation at the Communities Joined in Action national conference.  www.cjaonline.net
 

[Recorded]Next Generation Strategic Philanthropy: Pathways to Success in a Complex World

Click above to view on demand when it fits your schedule

December 16, 11:30 to 12:30 Central Time
The Stanford Social Innovation Review article in the summer of 2014 entitled “Strategic Philanthropy for a Complex World” proposed some major shifts in what funders should be doing to improve the success of efforts to address complex social problems like chronic disease, poverty and crime.  This Webinar will explore some of the practical pathways to accomplish these shifts in ways that work for both funders and grant recipients.

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If you read about Backbone Support for Collective Impact, the typical approach to providing backbone support relies on appropriately-trained staff to achieve the desired coordination. The staff of the backbone organization spends most of its time managing information and communication. As described in the earlier posts, most of this work can be done much more efficiently with “Digital Backbone” technology. Perhaps even more importantly, the use of technology allows the Collective Impact efforts to scale much more easily.

One U.S. city has a backbone organization that is focused on Cradle to Career efforts for achieving Collective Impact. They have over 15 people working to coordinate their community’s efforts for supporting educational success. The thought of taking on another issue—such as health—seems overwhelming. Their staff is already very busy with the education work. How could they take on health! And hiring another ten staffers would be very costly. In contrast, if they were using Digital Backbone technology and a consistent set of strategy management practices (like Strategy Maps), it would be much easier to take on additional topics. Consider eBay.com or Amazon.com. Once the on-line infrastructure is in place, it costs very little to add sellers, expand the categories of goods sold and so on. It is not an exact comparison, but once the Digital Backbone infrastructure is in place for a community, it is very efficient to have the community work on multiple issues with minimal need to add more staff.

Upgrading from Centralized Coordination (by the Backbone organization staff) to Distributed Coordination by the Partnering Organizations

If all the collaboration needs to be coordinated by the Backbone organization staff, that creates a huge bottleneck for Collective Impact. Certainly some coordination is better than none, but if the amount of collaboration is limited by the capacity of the Backbone organization staff, the work will seem overwhelming and slow. In contrast, when community partners have the framework, processes and Digital Backbone technology in place, they can much more easily organize themselves, and then the amount of coordinated effort can grow dramatically without the Backbone organization staff becoming the limiting factor on what can get done.
The big wave of “Web 2.0” technologies over the past decade has dramatically changed how the internet is used. In the early days of Web 1.0, most Website content was created by professionals, and other people were viewers of the content. If someone wanted to get new content on a Website, they had to work through the Webmaster. Today, the vast majority of information on the Internet is created by the millions of people who are adding comments, uploading videos, creating blogs, posting items to sell, and so on. This type of mass collaboration taps into the small amounts of intrinsically-motivated volunteer time to accomplish huge things.

To optimally achieve Collective Impact, a community should embrace a process that has some structure and control to create improved alignment but that is largely based on many different organizations using technology to collaborate among themselves and not being overly dependent or controlled by the Backbone organization.

Upgrading from funding efforts focused mainly on getting money for backbone staff to funding for shared infrastructure and results.

In typical efforts to achieve Collective Impact that rely on the staff of a Backbone organization, much of the need to raise funds focuses on money to pay salaries for staff and executives. This creates an internal focus for each organization and creates competition that hinders optimal collaboration. When funding for Backbone support becomes available, the different organizations that could potentially provide that Backbone support are often competing for the funding. Whoever gets the funding gets to hire more staff and grow in strength, influence and executive compensation. Those that don’t get the funding are weakened and may find it increasingly difficult to get future funding. Therefore, it is not surprising that, over time, organizations that share similar missions can become rivals rather than allies. And when funding is provided for one issue (such as tobacco cessation), it does little to support other issues (such as obesity, teen pregnancy, homelessness or gang violence). Thus, the competition for resources creates a dysfunctional dynamic that pits one issue against another when they are often interrelated and involve the same populations and have many of the same organizations as potential partners.

In contrast, when funding focuses on shared Digital Backbone technology, it really doesn’t matter who gets the funding. If the on-line Strategy Management System is funded by tobacco dollars granted to one organization, it can also be used, with little incremental cost, by those working on other issues like homelessness or obesity. And it matters little if the system is purchased by the United Way, a hospital or a local foundation—all the community partners can use it regardless of who purchased it. Funds from multiple programs can be combined—often using significantly less than would normally be spent on evaluation, measurement and reporting—to continuously fund a robust on-line infrastructure that supports many issues. When the focus is on a shared, Digital Backbone, it is much easier to come together and go after funding, because all the organizations benefit, regardless of which organization gets funded or which issue is the initial focus for Collective Impact. Also, once organizations like schools, local foundations or community-based organizations have learned to use one approach (e.g. Strategy Maps) and one platform, the learning curve is greatly simplified as they take on other issues.
With all of the savings and efficiencies that can be accomplished with Digital Backbone technologies, organizations face less pressure to focus their time on getting funding to pay salaries and can spend more of their time and resources working to achieve the priority community outcomes.

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Source: Upgrading Common Practice to Better Support Collective Impact 2014 Written by Bill Barberg

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When partners set out to achieve Collective Impact and review the five conditions; Continuous Communication can feel like the ‘freebie’ and little to no time is spent on figuring out how to achieve it.  Coalitions operate with the mindset that just having more meetings will bring about the type of communication that is necessary in achieving a bigger impact.  They invite more people to the table and spend lots of time talking about the issues and create big static documents that can never achieve the traction necessary to motivate and inspire the stakeholders into action.  Then they can check off the box for that condition and move on to some of the other areas of Collective Impact that seem harder to achieve.

This blog post will outline 3 ways to be better communicators and bring the tools to the table to manage the information and get more done.

Upgrading from Frequent Meetings of Partners to an Optimized, On-line Collaboration Platform for effective and Continuous Communication

Some successful Collective Impact coalitions were so committed to achieving success (and sufficiently funded) that they were able to pull partners together for frequent large meetings—sometimes twice a month.  Those meetings are not ideal for many types of information management.  The appropriately-designed strategy management platform can be much more efficient.  A strategy management platform is very different from a social media platform.  In far too many cases, coalitions launch a Facebook-type platform and believe that this will be the technology that keeps everyone connected.  This typically results in a new Website that people rarely visit and get little value from.  A strategy management system is entirely different.  It is designed from the start to accomplish something, and it should be integrated into a process for intentional collaboration.  When properly designed and implemented, an on-line collaboration platform can be a valuable resource that has important information at the fingertips of anyone who cares in a format that they can easily consume or update.

When people have this type of platform for sharing information, they can have fewer meetings but be much better informed.  The meetings they do have will be much more productive—because people can arrive having already learned the information they need for high-value discussions.  Also, the information, decisions, questions, updates and action items from the meeting can be entered into the on-line platform either during the meeting or immediately after.  This efficiently keeps everyone informed—even if they can’t attend all the meetings personally.

Upgrading from Large, Static Documents to a Dynamic, Zoomable On-line Information System

Aside from big meetings, the most common form of Continuous Communication among coalitions attempting to achieve Collective Impact is the document or PowerPoint presentation.  With a sufficient budget, these documents and presentations can be beautifully crafted with elegant formatting, photos and charts.  There may be concise executive summaries and lengthy documents with even more details in the appendices.  But, they share many characteristics that typically keep them on the shelf and not significantly contributing to action and outcomes.

• They are static.  Picking up the plan document two months after it was created is not going to provide any updates on what was accomplished or how different organizations helped flesh out details for the ideas that involved their organization.
• They are linear.  Readers of the large documents go through the same linear story regardless of whether they are an outsider who is just learning about the initiative or one of the core team members who was deeply involved with each step of the journey.  Different people may scan through it with different interests, but there is not the type of dynamic navigation you find in Wikipedia or Google Maps where users easily navigate to the information that is relevant to them and then zoom in to learn more as needed.
• They are not interactive.  If you are viewing the report, you can’t just update it, explain more details of the progress your organization made in the past few weeks, or add new data.

The limitations of the output documents are just some of the many shortcomings of typical information management practices of the early stages of Collective Impact.  There is often two to four months when people from dozens of organizations are interviewed and meet in groups to share information, discuss topics, envision opportunities and consider obstacles.  The vast majority of this potentially valuable information rarely ends up in the final document.  If it does, it may be in a long, linear, difficult to navigate appendix that few people ever look into.  An ideal practice would efficiently capture that content in a form that can be used and reviewed at any time by the people who need it.

The static reports that are usually delivered at the end of the process of developing a Common Agenda area also just a starting point.  They usually are filled with clauses such as:

 “Preliminary strategies under consideration to make progress against each outcome are defined in Appendix D. These strategies are drawn from stakeholder interviews and relevant lessons learned from successful national substance abuse collaboratives. They are intended only as a starting point for workgroup discussion, and are not prescriptive. Workgroups are encouraged to use any or none of these strategies, after researching and analyzing data…”

The documents are clear that they are just a starting point for the workgroups.  Unfortunately, the workgroups that are supposed to have discussions and move forward are rarely equipped with the information management tools and processes that help them succeed in building on the content in the document.

The alternative to static documents is a dynamic and “zoomable” on-line information management system that supports information as it is being gathered, organized, viewed and updated by different audiences.  The information management capabilities of a strategy management system are not designed as an output document, but as an interactive platform that supports each step of the journey.  Different audiences with different interests can “zoom in” to view the content they need and not be overwhelmed by other information.  Information may exist in the system once but be presented in multiple ways for different audiences—which will be elaborated on in the next upgrade.

There are multiple technologies for creating zoomable dynamic content.  Ideally, these technologies should be integrated with the other concepts, like Strategy Maps to create a consistent structure.  An on-line system should have templates that simplify the work for the various teams that are working on sub-sets of the strategy.  Those templates help provide consistency of structure even though many different teams are working in parallel.  A good on-line strategy management should support this type of information management—not just measurement or dashboard.

Upgrading from hand-crafted, customized presentations for each audience to a self-service, presentation-ready on-line platform.

The typical approach to improving Continuous Communication in coalitions attempting to achieve Collective Impact is to have carefully-crafted presentations for each unique audience.  Some presentations are crafted to communicate with community leaders or elected officials.  Others are geared toward funders or for recruiting new partners.  Some presentations or documents are intended for internal reviews or for just answering questions among various participants or stakeholders.  Each presentation tends to become another static information island, with the potential for information to change, get out of sync or be inaccurate.  The amount of time spent creating the spreadsheets, documents, and presentations can consume a huge amount of staff time (and budget).  Because it is so time consuming to prepare for a meeting, the meetings tend to be infrequent, hindering the goal of Continuous Communication.

The upgrade is to have information in an on-line platform that keeps most information in one place, but able to be viewed in many different formats for different users with different levels of detail.  The information should not need to be re-crafted into a chart or merely used as a source document for creating a presentation.  It should automatically be in formats that are useful for the people who need the information–whether they are checking on their smart phone or using their laptop the night before a meeting. If the wide range of stakeholders can click to view the close-to-real-time information they need in a format that is relevant to them, the efficiency of Continuous Communication is dramatically improved.

The chart below is a conceptual example that illustrates the cost of hand-crafting each presentation versus using presentation-ready on-line tools.

Stay tuned next week when we look at how to have a better Backbone Support and how new techniques can help to start moving the needle and creating the real impact.

Source: Upgrading Common Practice to better support Collective Impact 2014 Written by Bill Barberg

Make sure you check out the previous posts in this series:

introduction to upgrading for a Collective Impact

Moving the needle with Mutually Reinforcing Activities

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When partnering organizations have a clear understanding of their responsibilities, and the strategy is both well-defined and easily monitored,  there is greater accountability for each partner to accomplish the assigned tasks.  By blending high-value in-person meetings with the appropriate use of IT to support collaboration and monitoring, groups can much more efficiently develop the trust and teamwork that encourages and sustains “Mutually-Reinforcing Activities.”

Upgrading from Organization-centered Planning to Community-centered Planning

While there are clear benefits when community organizations agree on a Common Agenda and Shared Measurement, the real leverage of Collective Impact comes when different coalition members agree to engage in differentiated and Mutually-Reinforcing Activities. This reduces redundancy and allows the strengths of organizations to be more effectively leveraged.

Unfortunately, even when Collective Impact is the stated goal, the planning processes that are most commonly used by government and community organizations tend to minimize the degree to which Mutually-Reinforcing Activities take place. Strategic planning processes for non-profit, government and other community organizations almost always revolve around the needs and vision of the individual organization. Leaders and planners who attend conferences and read articles on how to do strategic planning will usually end up learning techniques that are obstacles to Collective Impact. Therefore, most strategic planning process (and the resulting strategic plan for each organization) reinforces isolated impact. With enough extra effort, the works of multiple organizations can be coordinated for greater impact; but this happens in spite of the organization-centered planning process, not because of it.

Lacking a process to develop innovative multi-organization teamwork, organizations naturally gravitate to an inward-focused process that involves their own budgets, their departmental structures and what they can accomplish on their own. The lack of tools for maximizing Collective Impact leads to behavior that reinforces isolated impact. The concept of organizations working as a team makes logical sense to most organization leaders, but very few have experience in how to optimize their role in a broader community coalition.

In contrast, the community-focused strategic planning process and the alignment techniques refined in the Community Balanced Scorecard methodology provide a proven process to enable multiple organizations to find their most productive role in a larger, shared strategy.  This also taps into the relatively abundant community resources (volunteers, faith communities, small foundations, meeting rooms, etc.) that could support the strategy in a partial way but are not able to achieve impact on their own, so their potential contribution typically goes unused.

The process of “cascading” a strategy allows the coalition to pool their best thinking on how the strategy can be implemented and what contribution each individual organization can best make to achieve the objectives on the Strategy Map that they all helped create. Another area where this type of cascading process is ideal for is maintaining alignment between a State Health Improvement Plan (SHIP) and Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP) to the objectives and measures for partner organizations and departmental objectives. This community-centered process changes to conversations and questions to generate far more Mutually-Reinforcing Activities than would typically be the case.

The community-centered process builds on concepts such as appreciative inquiry and Asset-Based Community Development, but it enhances them with the use of strategy mapping and on-line collaboration tools.

Upgrading from Loosely-defined Collaboration to Publicly-visible “Community Compacts” among Partners

It is an important step toward Collective Impact when multiple organizations can identify differentiated and mutually-reinforcing ways that they can work together for Collective Impact. Unfortunately, in many cases, those commitments often are not solidified and made public.  Without that added level of clarity and accountability, inward-focused pressures can lead to organizations failing to follow through on the good intentions to collaborate.  As informal agreements fade into forgotten promises, it is not surprising that it becomes increasingly difficult to establish more Mutually-Reinforcing Activities and organizations return their focus to things that don’t depend on the actions of others.

In contrast, some communities have adopted a technique of taking a couple of extra steps to greatly increase the likelihood of the good ideas for collaboration turning into the successes that lead to increased trust and expanded collaboration.  When multiple organizations work out a plan to work together in mutually-reinforcing ways, those expectations can be clarified in simple documents called a “Community Compacts Agreements” or “Handshake Agreements” that can be made easily available to the community via a Website or on-line Strategy Management platform.  This added step of improving clarity, commitment and transparency greatly increases the likelihood of real action taking place.  That improvement is enhanced even further with the next “upgrade.”

Upgrading from Meetings to Monitor Progress among Inter-dependent Partners to a Shared Strategy Management, Measurement and Monitoring System

The early successes in Collective Impact generally relied on a lot of face-to-face meeting time to establish and maintain each of those contributors to enabling “Mutually-Reinforcing Activities.”  While some level of face-to-face meeting time is likely to be necessary for building relationships, those large-group meetings are an inefficient way to accomplish the ongoing monitoring that builds the accountability for progress that enables the relationships to mature into real long-term teamwork.

The larger the coalition, the more opportunities to be more efficient arise. Meetings to communicate status updates and share information on progress and obstacles are a prime example.  If you’re one of 50 organizations giving an update, even a brief 2-minute overview from each participant would require a two-hour meeting.  Most people who have experience with any sort of coalition have experienced the tedious meetings where you sit for 2 hours to hear 10 or 15 minutes of information that is relevant to you and spend your 3 minutes giving your update.  A properly-designed online platform can be vastly more efficient.   Each organization can have clearly-defined responsibilities, milestones and measures, and the people and partnering organizations can view the appropriate level of detail of just the work they are concerned about.  With a superior method for sharing status and updates, meetings can be fewer, shorter, and focused on high-value collaboration and relationship building—not boring status updates.

If you missed our previous Post on the importance of Mutually Reinforcing Activities you can read it here: http://insightformation.com/power-source-collective-impact-mutually-reinforcing-activities/

and stay tuned for Next week!

Source: Upgrading Common Practice to better support Collective Impact 2014 Written by Bill Barberg

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The concept of “Collective Impact” (CI) as articulated in recent articles in the Stanford Social Innovation Review has been rapidly gaining momentum among organizations attempting to address the complex issues facing our society. The researchers at FSG Social Impact Advisors identified 5 characteristics that have come to define Collective Impact:

• Common Agenda
• Shared Measurement
• Mutually-reinforcing Activities
• Continuous Communication
• Backbone Support

While these conditions clear and compelling, achieving the benefits of Collective Impact has been relatively rare and usually quite costly. One reason that communities find it so difficult is that most practices they use either were developed in an era of isolated impact or are early practices for Collective Impact that have significant opportunity for improvement.

Since the concept of Collective Impact is still relatively new, the most effective practices for operationalizing these conditions and achieving the desired benefits are still being discovered and refined.  The purpose of this blog series is to examine practices that are typically being used by coalitions that are aspiring to achieve Collective Impact and suggest practical upgrades that enhance collaboration and enable coalitions to be more successful.

Each of the practices listed in the left column of the infographic above has the unintended consequence of driving organizations and programs to become more isolated rather than fostering the collaboration needed to achieve their Collective Impact goals.  Yet, many of these are still being taught as best practices, and they are often embedded in grant guidelines that shape the environments where communities are working to address their grand challenges.

Until these common practices that reinforce isolated impact are upgraded, achieving Collective Impact will be greatly hindered, and countless billions of dollars will continue to be spent in fragmented, redundant and largely ineffective efforts to affect change.

Fortunately, each of these outdated practices has a proven alternative that can greatly enhance the type of collaboration and teamwork that will strengthen Collective Impact.

This blog series will provide details on each of these practices, explaining why typical practices are counterproductive and how alternatives can and dramati­cally improve the efficiency and effectiveness of coalitions attempting to create positive community change.

In addition to these upgraded practices for each of the five conditions of Collective Impact, there are two other major factors that hinder successful collaboration.  While these are both mentioned in the Stanford Social Innovation Review’s January 2012 article, “Channeling Change: Making Collective Impact Work”, they also deserve to be identified in this series. Those two factors are the grant-giving practices and the evaluation practices that drive organizations and communities to work in isolation and competition rather than as cooperative partners.

Source: Upgrading Common Practice to better support Collective Impact 2014 Written by Bill Barberg

Stay Tuned for the post next week where we will discuss the importance of Common Agenga and share our thoughts on emerging best practice.

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If you’re pursuing the PICH (Partnerships to Improve Community Health) grant or the CDC’s other Chronic Disease Prevention grants, this 30-minute Webinar will give you practical tips and tools to quickly improve your application be more successful in your health improvement efforts.

The Five Topics We Will Cover in this Webinar:

1. Building and Using a Better Logic Model. Learn how to move beyond a typical, static one-page logic model that is of limited value, and demonstrate how you’ll take advantage of a technology-enabled, dynamic, “zoomable” logic model that is integrated with performance monitoring and strategy execution.


2. Making Your SMART Objectives even Smarter. By using techniques that are ideal for multi-organization coalitions working to have collective impact—rather than techniques for isolated programs—you can more clearly define your strategy and more easily meet the PICH implementation and performance management requirements.
3. Delivering More Bang for your Evaluation Buck. (Impacts 15 points!) Learn how to leverage research-based improvements in evaluation techniques and tools that factor in the importance of Collective Impact, Developmental Evaluation, and Emergent Strategies.
4. Making Performance Management a Strength and Differentiator (Impacts 10 points). Not only is performance management one of the best areas to outscore other applicants, it is also an area where you can greatly simplify the work it will take to manage this program and more efficiently work with a large, multi-sector collaboration.
5. Including Strategies to Leverage Additional Resources to Improve Sustainability. Applicants must demonstrate how they will have resources to continue the work when this 3-year funding ends. Learn key ways to accomplish this (and tap into resources even if you don’t win this funding).

Sign Up Now! Choose from 2 Webinars.

This Webinar will be offered twice and also made available as a recording. So, register even if you can’t be available on the times it is offered.

• Friday, July 11 at 2:30-3:00PM CST [button color=”blue” size=”small” gradient1=”” gradient2=”” link=”https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/820506030″ target=”_blank”]Register for Friday, July 11 at 2:30-3:00PM CST Webinar[/button]
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We know you’re busy and that the timeline to get this application submitted is very short. This presentation will provide practical action steps to quickly make improvements in your grant application and collaboration effectiveness.

This Webinar is not endorsed by the CDC nor is it an official Webinar for the PICH grant. We can’t guarantee that these steps will improve your score, but if you’re applying for the PICH grant, investing 30 minutes to learn about these valuable differentiators could give you an advantage. Otherwise, you may be at a disadvantage to those who do.

The post 5 Ways to Boost the Score of your CDC PICH Grant Application appeared first on Insightformation, Inc..

By Bill Barberg, June 12, 2014

Register for an amazing keynote and workshop with Bill Eggers and Bill Barberg on June 25, 2014 at the University of Minnesota!

The concept of Collective Impact fits in very well with the inspiring new book, “The Solution Revolution” by William Eggers, one of the most brilliant thinkers in the social space who is currently responsible for research and thought leadership for Deloitte’s Public Sector industry practice.  His past books include “Governing by Network” (2004) and “Government 2.0” (2007) and “The Public Innovator’s Playbook” (2009).

The sub-title of this most recent book is “How Business, Government, and Social Enterprises Are Teaming Up to Solve Society’s Toughest Problems.”  In the book, Mr. Eggers and co-author Paul MacMillian describe a framework that is different from Collective Impact but very complementary.  Where Collective Impact tends to come from a more traditional funder/program approach, the concepts behind the Solution Revolution draw more heavily from concepts of social entrepreneurship and describes a “Solution Economy” where value is created.  Here is a link to a brief overview and video of the Solution Revolution framework shown below.

The most important point of overlap between conditions for Collective Impact and the principles of the Solution Revolution framework is what Eggers and MacMillian call a solution ecosystem, which draws strength “from the diversity of contributions that collectively target all aspects of a given social challenge.”  In the solution ecosystem, elements that would not solve a big social problem by themselves can merge together in powerful ways—much like the Mutually Reinforcing Activities in Collective Impact.  Just as the other characteristics of Collective Impact largely achieve impact through increasing mutually reinforcing activities, the other principles of the Solution Revolution framework come to life in the solution ecosystem.  If they are not blended together in a multi-stakeholder ecosystem, the other principles—such as the wavemakers, new business models, new technologies or impact currencies—would be much more limited in their impact.

Source: The Solution Revolution, Eggers and Macmillan, Harvard Business Press, 2013

What strikes me as both important and encouraging are the significant differences between each of these frameworks.  They are not in conflict.  Instead, each brings valuable power to contribute to addressing grand problems that have resisted countless efforts over the past several decades.  The combination of these two frameworks makes each of them stronger.  Those of us who have become big fans of Collective Impact should make sure that we’re not so narrowly focused on the five conditions for Collective Impact that we miss out on another set of powerful factors and stakeholders that could also contribute to achieving the outcomes we’re aspiring to achieve.

On June 25, 2014, in Minneapolis, William Eggers will be delivering the keynote address in a powerful half-day workshop called “The Solution Revolution and Collective Impact: Where do we start?” Here are the details and information on registering.  I will be co-leading an interactive workshop that follows that keynote address.  This will hopefully be the start of a nationwide series of workshops that will help to accelerate progress towards the next generation of strategic philanthropy and social enterprise.  Stay tuned (by subscribing to this blog) to learn about other cities where we will bring this content to you.

Meanwhile, keep looking for ways to improve teamwork, sharing, and pro-active collaboration to gain breakthrough results in your community!

–          Bill Barberg

The post The Solution Revolution, Collective Impact and Solution Ecosystems: Nurturing Innovation and Mutually-Reinforcing Activities appeared first on Insightformation, Inc..

It should come as no surprise that effectively managing mutually reinforcing activities is usually the most difficult part of Collective Impact.  This is where the actions happen, resources are deployed, sharing and vulnerability are required, and the proverbial rubber meets the road.  Communities can spend countless hours in agreeing on a common agenda, deciding on some shared measures and having endless communication meetings organized by a backbone organization; with very little to show in the way of mutually reinforcing activities.  Each organization can still work in isolation, with fragmentation, redundancy and poor alignment hindering their progress and standing in the way of the teamwork that would lead to breakthrough results.

There is no panacea or simple switch to help organizations work together in mutually-reinforcing ways.  It is hard – but the payoffs can be enormous.

First, many organizations can experience both savings and enhanced results when they team up and leverage each of their organization’s strengths.  Just one of my professional experiences is in working with two different organizations that provided “bundled services” (meals, shopping, pharmacy and book delivery as well as companionship and light homemaking) to senior citizens in the same geographic area.  One organization was very efficient at delivering, but had high administrative costs related to scheduling.  The second organization had high delivery costs, but was great at scheduling.

We were able to bring the organizations together (without merging or eliminating either of them) and have them support each other with their strengths.  The net result was nearly twice as many senior citizens being served by this Collective Impact team.  The expanded reach of both organizations working together in a mutually reinforcing way was a great thing for the community.

Second, there are many organizations and individuals that are not even engaged in efforts to achieve priority community outcomes because they lack the ability to be successful in a world that emphasizes and funds isolated impact interventions.  By themselves, they can’t deliver measureable improvements in the outcomes, so they can’t get funded and don’t have a clear role in contributing to the success of others.  In communities seeking to collaborate for Collective Impact, vast amounts of resources that have not been involved with advancing a particular issue can become engaged and harnessed.  A faith community may bring close relationships and trusted advisors to help reach a disadvantaged population that needs the services of another organization.  A local business may offer an auditorium for an event, or the endorsement from a local neighborhood organization may provide the added credibility needed for a program to attract participants.

These underutilized community assets are typically much greater than those directly funded by an organization working in isolation.  In order to increase mutually reinforcing activities regarding a particular issue, backbone organizations should intentionally look for how the efforts and aspirations of existing organizations can be aligned and harnessed to their unique and differentiated strengths to the contribution of a larger team.  By blending an Asset-Based Community Development mindset with the other conditions of Collective Impact, communities may tap into a goldmine of local resources that don’t come with all the encumbrances that normally come along with funding.

So how does this all happen?  We start by recognizing our strengths.  We should be proud of our strengths whatever they may be!  When we recognize our strengths, we also have to be willing to examine our weaknesses.  There is room for everyone in the sandbox; in fact there is a need for everyone in the sandbox.  In fact, we can make the sandbox bigger, with better sand and toys when we work together through mutually reinforcing activities.

In future articles, we’ll share more details on how each of the other characteristics of Collective Impact can be approached in a way that increases the likelihood of having a surge in mutually reinforcing activities that can be the difference between disillusionment and enthusiastic success.

The post The Power Source for Collective Impact: Mutually Reinforcing Activities. appeared first on Insightformation, Inc..