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 draws from the author’s book, which “introduces a methodology for establishing ‘blueprint’ that maps out a problem and a common language for defining unmet needs of the individuals and organizations involved” in a cross-sector collaboration. “While cross-sector collaboration is central to solving…
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…
“Public-private partnerships aren’t new in higher education. But, in 2012, some especially compelling financial reasons accelerated development of public-private partnerships between public universities and private entities in their communities. Public institutions have never been under more pressure to find alternative sources of revenue to help…
“Addressing community problems increasingly requires cooperation among the private, public, and not-for-profit sectors.” In this article from McKinsey Quarterly, “three executives explain how a civic alliance in America’s Minneapolis-Saint Paul region [called the Itasca Project] may point toward an operating model.”
This article — part of Deloitte’s “Business Trends 2013” report — discusses how the “growing complexity of social and economic challenges is driving new, innovative forms of collaboration between governments and businesses. … Both sides seem to realize that business problems are now government problems…
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…
“Leaders and organizations are acknowledging that even their best individual efforts can’t stack up against today’s complex and interconnected problems,” writes Living Cities President & CEO Ben Hecht in this contribution to HBR.org. “They are putting aside self-interests and collaborating to build a new civic…
“Drawing on extensive work over the past decade, BCG has identified a series of best practices to help leaders successfully design and implement such partnerships,” write the authors of this contribution to bcg.perspectives. “In addition to embracing these best practices, public-sector leaders must also address…
✴︎ Available only with purchase from publisher Whose job is it to solve society’s biggest problems? ask William D. Eggers and Paul Macmillan in this contribution to HBR.org. They write, “For decades, the answer to that question has been simple: government. Until relatively recently, governments…
This article looks at public-private partnerships from the private sector’s perspective: “There is a massive gap between the need for infrastructure investment around the world and the ability of governments to pay for those investments. Public-private partnerships, in which the private sector builds, controls, and…