In this SSIR article, authors John Kania and Mark Kramer write that while “the solutions we have come to expect in the social sector often involve discrete programs that address a social problem through a carefully worked out theory of change, relying on incremental resources from funders, and ideally supported by an evaluation that attributes to the program the impact achieved,” collective impact works differently. “The process and results of collective impact are emergent rather than predetermined, the necessary resources and innovations often already exist but have not yet been recognized, learning is continuous, and adoption happens simultaneously among many different organizations.”
“The question of how to collaborate across boundaries admits no easy, universal answer. There are, however, striking similarities between the types of challenges that different collaborations face. From 2018 to 2020, the authors of this article—researchers from the Harvard Business School and the Harvard Kennedy…
“It’s still early days for governments experimenting with pay-for-success (PFS) projects, in which governments ask private funders to foot the bill for social programs, and then agree to repay those funders if the programs achieve agreed-on results. As public budgets tighten and social challenges remain…
“From climate change to terrorism, the difficulties confronting policy makers are unprecedented in their variety, but also in their complexity. Our existing policy tool kit seems stale and outdated. Increasingly, it is clear, we need not only new solutions but also new methods for arriving…
“To mitigate negative impacts and anticipate opportunities arising from high levels of global migration, we need a better understanding of the various factors contributing to the international movement of people and how they work together. Data—specifically, the widely dispersed data sets that exist across governments,…
“Social impact bonds—also known as ‘pay-for-success’ contracts, since they are not true bonds, but rather performance-based contracts—aim to help governments experiment with new ways of providing social services. The basic concept is this: Private investors provide the original funding, and the government only pays if…
“As previous briefs in the Corridors of College Success Series have described, collective impact is a collaborative, place-based model for addressing common social problems (Kania & Kramer, 2011; Karp & Lundy-Wagner, 2015, 2016). Place-based efforts to provide wide-ranging social services date back to the settlement…
“When it partnered with Kentucky for new bridges across the Ohio River, Indiana exercised its authority to use a public-private partnership (P3) contract, as explained in this article that discusses this groundbreaking deal. The Lewis and Clark Bridge is a cable-stayed tolled bridge that is…
“Context: The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill triggered numerous concerns regarding the health and well-being of citizens within the already vulnerable Gulf Coast region. Four Mental and Behavioral Health Capacity Projects (MBHCPs) united to form the Quad-State MBHCP component of the Gulf Region Health Outreach…
“Successful social innovation at scale requires partners from the public, private, and social sectors to work together through flexible models that evolve to meet shifting requirements and address changing risks.”
✴︎Available only with purchase from publisher “The book seeks to demonstrate the ways in which collective impact approaches have guided the development of literacy coalitions over time. Since community collaboration strategies developed to address social issues, coalitions have grown from small networking organizations to powerful…