“This brief draws on the experiences of five committed collective impact communities participating in the Ford Foundation’s Corridors to College Success initiative to expose some of the practical challenges of translating the theory of collective impact into action. … Our research has … uncovered challenges that make a collective impact approach difficult to execute, despite the willingness of organizations and communities to engage in these efforts. This brief highlights those challenges and in doing so provides a lens for understanding why well-intentioned collective impact efforts may not take root.”