Whether you’re working on a local collective impact initiative or a national public-private partnership; whether you’re a practitioner or a researcher; whether you’re looking for basics or a detailed look at a particular topic, our Resource Library can help you find the information and tools you need for your cross-sector thinking and practice. The Library — which includes resources from research organizations, advisory groups, training organizations, academic centers and journals, and other sources — spans issue areas, sectors, and partnership types.
Learn More
There are a number of academic courses, programs, and certificates offered in the United States in which cross-sector collaboration is a major theme. We hope this list will be useful for educators who are interested in how this topic is being taught at universities across the country…
In this paper, Living Cities offers “a strategic framework for cross-sector partnerships including describing and defining the traits that make up a strong foundation, factors that influence success, and behaviors of high-impact efforts. In addition to the theory, the paper steeps these ideas in four…
This landmark SSIR article introduced the concept of collective impact and its five conditions of collective success. “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…
✴︎ Available only with purchase from publisher “Theoretical and empirical work on collaboration has proliferated in the last decade. The authors’ 2006 article on designing and implementing cross-sector collaborations was a part of, and helped stimulate, this growth. This article reviews the authors’ and others’…
“This report focuses specifically on a cross-sector collaborative effort to significantly reduce traffic congestion in the Twin Cities metropolitan area of Minnesota. The organizers of the program concluded that a collaborative, multi-modal approach was crucial to making real headway on a longstanding, costly, nearly intractable…
✴︎ Available only with purchase from publisher In this contribution to SSIR, 100Kin10 Co-founder and Executive Director Talia Milgrom-Elcott discusses networked impact, an emerging model for social change, and offers five key principles for such efforts.
✴︎ Available only with purchase from publisher “The corporate social responsibility (CSR) literature has increasingly explored relationships between civil society and social movements, including non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and corporations, as well as the role of NGOs in multi-stakeholder governance processes. This paper addresses the challenge…
✴︎ Available only with purchase from publisher “The proliferation of public–private partnerships (PPPs) for development as an answer to many public challenges calls for careful evaluation. To this end, tailored frameworks are fundamental for helping understand the PPPs’ impact and for guiding corrective adjustment. Scholars…
✴︎ Available only with purchase from publisher “This article focuses attention on the institutional context of cross-sector collaboration and its effects on partnership management. Drawing on fieldwork and 54 interviews from 2011 to 2013, we investigate an innovative public–non-profit partnership within a local unit of…
In this article from The Collective Impact Forum, Emily Wexler offers advice for funders seeking to “spur collective action among the organizations they support.” She writes, “While funders might like to see more collaboration among their grantees, the reality is that too many non-profits lack…
“In early 2015, staff from Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO) and the Collective Impact Forum (CI Forum) came together to respond to their respective members’ interest in considering how grantmakers can support bringing an equity lens to collaborative efforts. Because neither GEO nor the CI…
This tool, part of the Smarter Grantmaking Playbook “outlines a variety of roles grantmakers can play in collaboratives” — including catalyst, weaver, expert, and more — and “offers tips for identifying the right role(s) for each organization.” Other relevant components of the Playbook are also…
✴︎ Available with free registration “The call for greater collaboration has been a persistent drumbeat in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors in recent years. … Grantmakers and nonprofits that want to be more collaborative need to ensure that their organizations offer an enabling environment for doing…
“Despite collaborative governance’s popularity, whether collaboration improves policy performance remains uncertain. This study assesses the link between collaborative decision making and licensed environmental management protocols in the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC’s) process for licensing hydropower facilities in the United States. Using results from a…
✴︎ Available only with purchase from publisher “Over the past few decades public-private partnership (PPP) models adopted by governments for infrastructure development throughout the world have evolved continuously. This article develops a dynamic framework which argues that PPP models evolve when some of the critical…