Collective Impact is working with the Joint Commission on Sports Medicine and Science (JCSMS) to engage its membership in the Collective Impact approach. JCSMS serves as a convener and catalyst for cooperative ventures. The Collective Impact approach is a commitment of a group of individuals from different sectors to a common agenda for solving a specific social problem, using a structured form of collaboration. The concept of collective impact hinges on the idea that organizations need to coordinate their efforts and work together around a clearly defined goal if they are to create lasting solutions to social problems on a large-scale. This approach was highlighted in a Stanford Social Innovation Review article titled “Collective Impact”. More recently, with financial support from the Wallace Foundation, the Teachers College of Columbia University engaged in research relating to collective engagement around education reform. Their report (Collective Impact and the New Generation of Cross-Sector Collaborations for Education) describes the development of cross-sector collaborations and presents findings from a scan of initiatives across the United States. With assistance from Collective Impact, JCSMS membership is exploring how the model might be used to address relevant issues facing their member organizations.
Mountwest Community & Technical College (MCTC) contracted with Collective Impact to provide professional assessment services to support its Attendance Pays Project. MCTC is a public institution of the West Virginia Community and Technical College System. MCTC wanted to understand how better to improve and streamline its attendance tracking and reporting process for faculty, students, financial aid, counselors, and other stakeholders. The Attendance Pays Assessment Project was carried out over a 5 month period and involved a review of internal attendance policy documents, data systems currently used for attendance reporting and tracking, stakeholder interviews for information collection, and a review of “best practices” used at colleges and universities across the country.
"The Indiana County Department of Human Services has been a long time customer of Collective Impact; we have used their branding communication and Venue Internet services (website) for over fifteen years. The website is very easy to manage and to make changes to. More importantly, our customers tell us how easy it is to navigate our website to search our human services directory (by topic or name) or find our flyers and brochures. The few times that we've had problems, the Collective Impact team is quick to respond to correct any issues. We've also contracted with Collective Impact for project evaluation. The cost is reasonable, their time and commitment to the project is sufficient and the outcome is a quality report." ~ Bonni S. Dunlap, Ph.D. – Director, Indiana County Department of Human Services, Indiana, PA
The Teachers College of Columbia University was the first and largest graduate school of education in the United States and is perennially ranked among the nation’s best. With financial support from the Wallace Foundation, the Teachers College engaged in research relating to collective engagement around education reform. The report describes development in the new generation of cross-sector collaborations for education and presents findings from a scan of initiatives across the United States. In this report, Collective Impact, LLC is identified as the first entity to coin the term "Collective Impact" in the early 2000's (page 6, footnote 7). This is an instructive example of how cross-sector collaborations have been bubbling up for several decades. Read the article by clicking here!
