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White House Council for Community Solutions Collective Impact Session

John Kania leads a discussion of Collective Impact at The White House Council for Community Solutions inaugural meeting.

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Clare Gunther	(2/10/2011 8:12:35 AM)

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How do you fund the backbone organization's work? This involves a lot of staff time and expertise. It seems to me you would need to engage local philanthropists in this effort, in order to fund it.

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Mark Kramer	(2/10/2011 10:13:25 AM)

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Clare-

It's true that foundations and corporate donors have been the initial funders of the backbone organizations we've seen, but we envision that participating organizations could support the backbone organization, once established, through annual dues -- the cost of the backbone organization is so small compared to the aggregate budgets of all members of the collective impact initiative.

Ann Brackett	(2/10/2011 9:16:02 AM)

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What I'd love to hear more about is how you come up with a common measurement system that really works for all the different collaborating organizations and in which they can see their actual contributions reflected. Examples would be very helpful.

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Mark Kramer	(2/10/2011 10:15:24 AM)

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Ann-

Check out our report on Breakthroughs in Shared Measurement in the knowledge exchange at <http://www.fsg.org/tabid/191/ArticleId/87/Default.aspx?srpush=true> for examples of shared measurement systems. It turns out, however, that engaging organizations in developing the shared measures together is even more important than the measures themselves.

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Ann Brackett	(2/10/2011 10:59:17 AM)

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Thanks so much. I'll definitely check that report. Ah, and I've found the same thing when working with cross-constituency and cross-organization groups to develop logic models for projects--that the conversation is the most important thing, not the resulting document!

Wayne	(2/10/2011 9:25:21 AM)

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I think many regions are looking at the issue of alignment of programs serving youth, but the barrier is often the discrete/categorical funding streams - state, local and federal - that demand their own oversight and measurement. (And providers can't be expected to collaborate when their funders do not.) I'm interested to see the possible solutions to that issue.

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Mark Kramer	(2/10/2011 10:16:07 AM)

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Wayne-

You've described the core problem with nonprofit funding streams today -- but we are hopeful that collective impact initiatives can produce results better than isolated impact efforts, and so eventually bring funders to see the light.

Wayne	(2/10/2011 3:08:31 PM)

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I think many regions are looking at the issue of alignment of programs serving youth, but the barrier is often the discrete/categorical funding streams - state, local and federal - that demand their own oversight and measurement. (And providers can't be expected to collaborate when their funders do not.) I'm interested to see the possible solutions to that issue.

Dan Bassill	(3/25/2011 12:27:58 PM)

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Clare Gunther asked the key question of "how do you fund the backbone" work that an organization needs to do to build a group focused on collective action. I know how difficult this is because I've been trying to do it in Chicago for 18 years. For any collective action to take place someone has to have a database of the people who they are trying to bring together. We've been building a database of Chicago tutor/mentor programs since 1993. The information needs constant update. We've also been sharing the info in many ways. There's a cost to this.

I hope that by participating in national forums such as the SSIR event people who are doing this ground level work can be discovered by investors/leaders who share the same goals. That means people like Clare and I need to be connecting in many places to attract attention. That's a form of collective action too.