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.
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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 “Adaptation and the adaptive capacity of human and environmental systems have been of central concern to natural and social science scholars, many of whom characterize and promote the need for collaborative cross-boundary systems that are seen as flexible and…
“The literature indicates that social capital plays a crucial role in facilitating collective action in collaborative governance. Despite this important role, the extant literature has not systematically conceptualized what forms of social capital exist in the context of collaborative activities and when and where such…
In this Government Executive article, authors John D. Donahue and Richard J. Zeckhauser call attention to the potential for collaborative governance to move the United States past the debate over how big or small government should be, and to unleash “the unpredictable resourcefulness of an…
“In the spirit of stewarding collaborative change, Alberta Education, the Alberta School Boards Association (ASBA), the Alberta School Councils’ Association (ASCA), the College of Alberta School Superintendents (CASS) and the Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA) formed the Collaborative Practices and Partnership Team. The team’s goal is…
In this blog post for the Harvard Business Review, The Intersector Project’s Chairman Frank Weil discusses the need for collaboration among government, business, and the non-profit sector to solve society’s most pressing challenges. “All it will take is tri-sector leaders and ordinary citizens who want…
✴︎ Available only with purchase from publisher “There are growing pressures for the public sector to be more innovative but considerable disagreement about how to achieve it. This article uses institutional and organizational analysis to compare three major public innovation strategies. The article confronts the…
✴︎ Available only with purchase from publisher “The growing use of collaborative methods of governance raises concerns about the relative power of participants in such processes and the potential for exclusion or domination of some parties. This research offers a framework for assessing power that…
“This teaching case presents recurrent points of tension around resident representation in a community planning process: the Santa Centro Community Change Initiative. The case is relevant to current public policy, as outside funders ranging from private foundations to the national government increasingly focus their funding…
✴︎Available only with purchase from publisher “Collaborative governance is becoming a primary motif in public administration research and practice. There is widespread recognition of the need to develop leaders for collaborative governance, yet clear guidelines or standard operating procedures are elusive. However, while the literature…
“Today’s managers must find ways to identify and sustain productive relationships within multi-sector collaborative arrangements. This paper explores empirically the activities of a convener based on tasks identified by Agranoff and McGuire (2001) and applies this framework to the case of Virginia’s Coastal Zone Management…