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…
This SSIR piece takes a critical look at backbone organizations: “Are these structures useful, not useful, or actually destructive? Each of the attempts at codification, it seems, comes with its own problems of misplaced priorities and blindness to contextual realities that are lying in wait…
✴︎ Available only with purchase from publisher In this book, “Tynesia Boyea-Robinson shares tools, ideas, and best practices from her years at Living Cities as well as her experience in the private and social sector.” “Just Change is a collection of stories and case studies…
This article, from the Nonprofit Quarterly’s Winter 2016 edition, presents a set of six principles “drawn from decades of research, organizing, and experience in a wide range of fields” that “facilitate successful cross-sector collaboration for social change in a way that explicitly lifts up equity…
✴︎ Available only with purchase from publisher “Due to local, state, and national accountability measures, school reform efforts have become critical of many legislative agendas. Local community members are getting off the sidelines and becoming part of the game to support local schools districts to…
“Despite the sizeable financial and human capital investment in the nonprofit sector, large-scale social issues, such as poverty and hunger, continue to plague our society. Collective impact, a framework for cross-sector collaboration that emerged in 2011, offers an approach that harnesses the capabilities of each…
“Since the collective impact framework was introduced in a 2011 Stanford Social Innovation Review article by John Kania and Mark Kramer, hundreds of collaboratives around the world have used it to structure approaches to persistent social issues. Being a relatively new social-change framework, however, only…
“Working group co-chairs are not simply symbolic leaders; the success of a collective impact initiative hinges on co-chairs bringing their commitment and leadership to a range of tasks. Built on [the authors’] experience with numerous [collective impact] working groups, this kit provides detailed tools, templates,…
“This article shares insights from a five-year evaluation of the Oral Health 2020 network, an effort by the DentaQuest Foundation to align and strengthen efforts in service of a national movement to improve oral health. The evaluation helped to place the foundation’s journey in the…
✴︎ Available only with purchase from publisher “The United States—one of the world’s wealthiest and resource-richest nations—has multiple food-related problems: declining food quality due to industrialization of its production, obesity across all age groups, and a surprisingly large number of households suffering from food insecurity….
“Over the years, more and more funders, program directors, public officials, and scholars have pushed for collaborative approaches to achieve significant social change. The impetus for this has largely been the realization that despite multitudes of initiatives dedicated to issues such as improving educational outcomes…