When the economy was strong, the nonprofit sector experienced unprecedented growth. Now, in the midst of a long term economic downturn and prolonged recovery, the nonprofit sector will contract.

United Way’s role is to provide leadership in strengthening the nonprofit sector through mergers, acquisitions, dissolutions, and similar proactive steps. We have a long-term commitment to a strong and viable nonprofit sector – helping the sector reorganize, and even reduce in size, is the best strategy to help the sector remain strong and vital.

Download Mergers as a Means of Creating Sustainable Change: United Way’s Role (PDF)

Presenters: Frank Forsberg, SVP, Greater Twin Cities United Way and
Judy Alnes, Executive Director, MAP for Nonprofits

Launching April 16, 2012
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Minnesota had 17,400 residents that had been unemployed for more than six months in 2007. Four years later, in June 2011, this had increased to 75,800, including 47,700 that had been unemployed for more than a year.

Join us here on United Front for a series of conversations designed to stimulate and deepen thinking in response to poverty data recently released in United Way’s Faces of Poverty Report. LEARN MORE

It would seem “innovation” is the “it” word of the day!

We have innovation funds, summits and workbooks. We have awards for social innovators and the assumption that without innovation there is no forward movement, no radical insight, no champion of change. In truth, innovation is critical to the advancement of our society, organizations and each of us. But the challenge of embracing a call to innovation is that we must first understand what truly is innovative as opposed to simply old toys in shiny new boxes; the challenge of innovation is cultivating our ability to discern the wheat of heralded innovation from the simple chaff of latest enthusiasms.

There are at least two rules to maintaining our enthusiasm for innovation while restraining our inclination to over-sell or lose track of the ultimate goal (which is, of course, not simply innovation for its own sake, but innovation for the sake of moving us closer to the goals of sustainability, impact and justice…). The first rule is a fairly simple one: Know What You Don’t Know. This would seem, of course, to be a fairly fundamental truism, yet in today’s arenas of social entrepreneurship, venture philanthropy, impact investing, effectiveness measurement and so on, one is often struck by the number of supposed “innovations” which are not actually innovations as much as iterations around established themes.

To truly understand what is “new” one must have a historical perspective of past and current practices and only then may one be able to assess one’s thoughts, proposals and practices as to their relative innovation. This might be seen as obvious, yet in the past 20 years of working to advance “new” thinking and practice, I’ve been struck by how easy it is to be truly ignorant with regard to what exists. Indeed, I’m not afraid to say there have been moments in my life when I’ve been truly ignorant; not stupid mind you (that is for another essay!), but simply ignorant of the true state of knowledge or practice and thus deceived into thinking my “innovations” were unique or insightful.

When George Roberts and I first began working around the question of how to bring more of a business framework to community ventures, I spent five months simply reading and interviewing many of the leading lights in what is now our “field.” This effort at understanding what had come before and—most importantly—why it had failed, made it possible for us to develop and then execute a strategy of funding which supported risk taking and innovation. But let me be clear—we were not gambling in a risky manner. Rather, we took informed risks on innovators we had identified through research while structuring our support in a manner that was at odds with the traditional approaches to philanthropy that had taken root in the Bay Area in 1989. The first rule for us was the fundamental one of seeking to define the known and the unknown—and than placing ourselves on the learning edge of that divide.

The second rule is one many today appear to have forgotten: Do Not Pre-Sell. As I read various examples of “innovation” and listen to many of the discussions of the day, I’m struck by how rapidly people are willing to take their ideas to market—to prematurely promote ideas and confuse intent with impact. One of my favorite memories of working with George was the day he endorsed the creation of the Homeless Economic Development Fund (which laid the foundation for our creation of REDF several years later). In my enthusiasm, I boldly stated we should hold a press conference to announce his commitment that in 1990 was one of the first significant philanthropic investments in Social Entrepreneurship made in the United States. He wisely replied, “Instead of telling people what we’re going to do, why don’t we first just go do it and then we can show people what we’ve done!”. To this day, I really value the gift of that statement for it gave me several years of deep work, thought and strategy revision prior to going public with the 1996 release of our book, “New Social Entrepreneurs: The Success, Challenges and Lessons of Nonprofit Enterprise Creation.” In today’s TED-ified world and global Facebook community, I am often surprised to see how rapidly success is declared and the field of battle shifted to the “next big thing.”

Innovation is critical and must be affirmed; but in the process let us also reflect more deeply upon the known and spend more time building for deep, sustained value in our process of creating long term success.

One of the smartest investments and proven ways to support children, parents, and a growing economy is home visiting.

A network of home visiting programs that have what it takes to support and transform the lives of at-risk expectant and new parents and their babies and toddlers, the Coalition is a statewide organization that seeks to be a network of high quality, home visiting programs and services that promote learning and success for children in our community. Learn more about Who We Are

Mark Kramer

Jeff Edmondson

Thanks for joining United Front for an online conversation with Mark Kramer, FSG, and Jeff Edmondson, STRIVE. We hope the exchange between participants and experts provided you with more insights to further your understanding of Collective Impact and that you will join us for future conversations on United Front.

“Mark – I agree. There is increasing political will to support more collective initiatives. Locally, we have applied for Social Innovation Funds to take a model we know works (Hospital to Home) to a much larger scale. Hospital to Home programs target housing stability and supports to frequent users of expensive medical systems (who are homeless) in hopes of increasing their stability and finding a more cost-effective and sustainable health care home. I also think the Obama Administration’s focus on ending homelessness for veterans is a good example – brings together the VA, public housing authorities, HUD, and local homeless outreach and service providers. There has been a 12% reduction in homeless veterans nationwide and a 33% reduction of homeless veterans here in Minneapolis/Hennepin County.”  Cathy ten Broeke, Minneapolis/Hennepin County Office to End Homelessness 

Download Mark and Jeff’s Collective Impact Q&A (PDF)
Channeling Change: Making Collective Impact Work Article by Fay Hanleybrown, John Kania, & Mark Kramer

Talking About Collective Impact

Conversation Topic: Transition Strategies/Models

What are some effective strategies or approaches for causing the sort of “mind shift” amongst partners; from isolated impact to collective impact?
Mark Kramer: Creating “urgency for change” or, in other words, a need for a collective impact approach to solving the complex problem at hand is one effective strategy. In some cases, a crisis might have broken out that convinces people of the need of an entirely need approach. There might be the potential for substantial funding that might entice people to work together. Conducting research and publicizing a report that captures media attention and highlights the severity of the problem is another way to create the necessary sense of urgency to persuade people to come together.

Another strategy includes bringing examples of successful examples that have used collective impact to address similar issues. A strategy we use at FSG is a collective impact role play exercise where participants are split into groups of 7, each given a specific role in “education” within a community. For example, one participant might represent a community college president, another participant might represent a student parent, another participant might represent a superintendent, etc. All participants “have their own agenda” and goals but must work together to find common understanding on how to fix the education system in their community. Through these exercise participants are able to see how inter-related each of their problems are, and how a cross sector collaborative approach to addressing failing education across the community is needed.

Talking About Collective Impact

Conversation Topic: Collective Impact ROI

Nonprofits are being held accountable for developing and meeting specific, measurable outcomes, including (and especially) measuring return on investment for their individual programs. There is also a growing movement amongst public and even private funders towards a “pay for performance” model. What implications will this have on developing a collective set of metrics against which success of the collective effort will be measured? How might communities, particularly funders, reconcile conflicting interests?
Mark Kramer: I’m very enthusiastic about the pay for performance model – there are some serious challenges to financing services in advance of getting paid – especially when payment is contingent on results – but it certainly aligns the incentives in the right way if the financing can be managed. One of the interesting side-effects of pay for performance is that the ultimate result often depends on multiple organizations’ efforts, and so it naturally leads to a shared measurement system among multiple organizations that work toward a common definition of success. This again helps align everyone’s incentives behind the ultimate social outcome, rather than their individual organizational agendas.

It is quite true that different funders have different definitions of success – just as different grantees do – and so it is not easy to get agreement on a shared measurement system and single vision of success. But this is just a matter of patient and persistent facilitation. Ultimately, we have seen, time and again, that different funders and grantees can come to agreement on a set of shared measures that are perceived as fair by all participants. Often, it is a pretty basic set of measures: For example, we might argue at length about what a good education looks like, but we can usually agree that basic reading competence by third grade, and math competence in eighth grade, high school graduation, and similar milestones are key indicators of success. Often there is solid academic research to back up what key success factors are on a range of social problems and that can serve as a starting point. Each organization may still have other specific goals it strives to achieve above the common measures, but getting agreement on the basic measures is a huge step forward.

Talking About Collective Impact

Conversation Topic: Identifying Resources

Are there resources to help organizations do a collective impact process to address an issue?
Jeff Edmondson: Communities can find local assets to leverage from a variety of sources. As an example, the backbone organization has three key roles that need to be played and these could come from existing resources:

• Chief “Cat Herder”: Someone who wakes up thinking about this every day. There may be an existing non-profit well positioned to lead such work or a community leader in the Chamber or District recognized for building consensus. Having partners who would be willing to loan or donate such talent is ideal.
• Data Analyst: Universities are ripe to play this role, but corporations often have experts in this area as well who could provide critical support.
• Facilitators: If a funder is interested in a particular outcome, such as kindergarten readiness, they could consider funding an expert facilitator to guide practitioners through the process with the expectation a collaborative action plan will emerge.

Talking About Collective Impact

Conversation Topic: Data Collection

To what extent is the Harlem Children’s Zone an example of collective impact?
Mark Kramer: The Harlem Children’s Zone is a terrific organization, and it certainly embodies the idea that a comprehensive approach – much like Strive’s cradle to career approach – is needed to ensure that children succeed in school and in life. HCZ provides many different services that would typically be provided by different organizations, and it is therefore able to better align its different activities in mutually reinforcing ways just like a collective impact initiative.

But HCZ is still just one organization – however remarkable it may be. It does not engage other nonprofits, corporations and school districts as full participants in designing the solution. It operates in a relatively small geographical area, much smaller than many of the collective impact initiatives we have studied – which include global examples like GAIN in our newest article — and it depends on the remarkable leadership of Geoffrey Canada rather than a dispersed model of leadership in which all the organizations involved share accountability. So, we see it as capturing some of the benefits of collective impact but it isn’t really a full example of it.

Starting Monday, February 27

Mark Kramer

Jeff Edmondson

Collective Impact experts Mark Kramer and Jeff Edmondson are joining United Front for a special online conversation generated by the United Against Violence Summit and United Front 2011 events last year. Mark and Jeff will be on hand to share additional insights and answer your questions on a range of topics including accessing resources, data collection, backbone organizations and transition models.

Think About It.
United Front’s interactive platform is an ideal learning space for deep, critical thinking about how to solve complex problems in our community. Come with your questions and curiosity. We will have resources available to help ground you in the most current thinking about Collective Impact.    

Cathy ten Broeke

Johnathan Sage-Martinson

Talk About It.
Spend some time talking with people in our own community like Cathy ten Broeke, director, Minneapolis/Hennepin County Office to End Homelessness,and Jonathan Sage-Martinson, Central Corridor Funders Collaborative and others who will help to expand our discussion.

Take Action.  Register Now!
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