Category Archives: tools

Collective Impact: A Game Changing Model for the Social Sector

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I recently asked NCDD supporting member Marty Jacobs to write a primer for the NCDD blog on “collective impact.” This strategy for large-scale collaborative change has been gaining momentum among funders and nonprofit thought leaders, and we wanted to make sure NCDD members are aware of the concept.

Marty Jacobs has been teaching and consulting for 20 years, applying a systems thinking approach to organizations. As of September 30th, Marty is bringing her Collective Impact expertise to the VT Department of Mental Health in her new role as Change Management Analyst. Marty can be reached at marty.jacobs.sis@gmail.com.

Workgroup at Sydney R&P meetingOne of the key distinctions between a for profit organization and a not-for-profit one is that the former is focused on increasing shareholder value while the latter is focused on creating community value or impact. Creating lasting impact in the social sector, let alone measuring that impact, is one of the biggest challenges facing nonprofits these days. Past practices often focused on measuring outputs as opposed to measuring outcomes. A new model called Collective Impact is rapidly changing how nonprofits consider their work.

The idea of Collective Impact made waves when the Stanford Social Innovation Review published the article “Collective Impact” in its Winter 2011 edition. It was then followed up with a more in depth article, “Channeling Change: Making Collective Impact Work,” in 2012. In the first article, the authors suggest that the social sector, funders in particular, need to shift their focus from one of isolated impact to that of collective impact. In order for collective impact to be successful, the following five conditions must be present:

  1. Collaborating organizations must create a common agenda.
  2. These organizations must also share a measurement system that tracks indicators of success.
  3. Stakeholders must work together in mutually reinforcing activities.
  4. They must also engage in continuous communication.
  5. There must be a backbone support organization that coordinates, supports, and facilitates the collective process.

The second article outlines more specifics about implementation of the Collective Impact model. In particular, it outlines three phases of Collective Impact:

  1. Phase I: Initiate Action
  2. Phase II: Organize for Impact
  3. Phase III: Sustain Action and Impact

Within those three phases, the follow components for success need to be continually assessed:

  • Governance and Infrastructure
  • Strategic Planning
  • Community Involvement
  • Evaluation and Improvement

While the social sector has been buzzing about Collective Impact, it’s important to note that it is not the answer to every nonprofit’s dream. Here are some questions to ask to determine whether or not Collective Impact is the right approach for your particular situation:

  • Is this a complex problem, that is, one that can only be solved by involving multiple stakeholders?
  • Do we have the capacity to create the five conditions of Collective Impact?
  • Do we have community support on this issue? Will we be able to engage stakeholders successfully in this effort?
  • Can we find backing for the backbone support organization?

Boston 2010 dialogue groupIf you’re convinced that Collective Impact is the right approach, then here are some questions to ask about your group’s readiness for each of the three phases of Collective Impact:

Phase I:

  • Governance and Infrastructure: Who would be willing partners and do they agree that Collective Impact would be effective?
  • Strategic Planning: What data do we currently have and what more do we need in order to assess current reality? Is this feasible?
  • Community Involvement: Are stakeholders receptive to this idea? How well networked are they?
  • Evaluation and Improvement: What currently exists for measuring impact? Do we have the capacity and the systems to track progress?

Phase II:

  • Governance and Infrastructure: What do we need in place for infrastructure and governance in order to keep this effort moving forward? What are we all willing to let go of with respect to control, turf, etc. and what is non-negotiable?
  • Strategic Planning: What have we identified as potential common goals? Is that supported by the data? Does that align with all the partner organizations’ missions?
  • Community Involvement: Who are all the stakeholders and how can we fully engage them in this process?
  • Evaluation and Improvement: Do we all agree on what the best measures for impact are? How will we track it and communicate progress?

Phase III:

  • Governance and Infrastructure: What is working well? What more do we need to do to improve governance and infrastructure?
  • Strategic Planning: How do we stay on track with implementation? How do we deal with setbacks or unanticipated problems? How do we communicate progress?
  • Community Involvement: How do we continue to engage stakeholders? What does meaningful engagement look like over time?
  • Evaluation and Improvement: What are our measurement systems telling us? How do we know when we need to course correct?

While these questions only touch the surface of implementing a Collective Impact effort, they will help create the thinking needed to dig deeper as the process evolves. Collective Impact is a practice – something that will deepen over time as you become more skilled, and with that, you will see greater impact. 

© Marty Jacobs 2013

Awesome Interviews from NCDD’s 2012 Conference

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looking_back_badgeDuring the 2012 NCDD national conference in Seattle, NCDD member and filmmaker Jeffrey Abelson sat down with over a dozen leaders in our community to ask them about their work, their hopes and concerns for our field and for democratic governance in our country, and their ideas about how we might effectively combine forces to make a greater impact — questions that were very much aligned with our conference themes.

The result was a series of wonderfully rich videos focusing on the current state of public engagement in the U.S., all currently available here on Jeffrey’s Song of a Citizen YouTube channel and in our NCDD 2012 Seattle playlist on YouTube.

Over the next month or so we’ll be looking back at our fantastic event in Seattle, which brought together 400 leaders and innovators in our field. In a series of blog posts, we’ll be featuring Jeffrey’s videos along with other items from the conference. We’ll also be looking ahead to the 2014 conference, and asking you to engage with us about our next event!

This compilation video will give you a taste of the interviews and presentations that we’ll be featuring in the coming weeks…

Making Municipal Laws More Accessible

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We were quite impressed with the updated version of an innovative tool that our friends at the OpenGov Foundation have been working on that is called BaltimoreCode.org.  The website is designed to make the laws that govern Baltimore not only open and transparent, but open for comment, criticism, or input from everyday citizens.

Today, BaltimoreCode.org doesn’t just give you a Google-level law search engine. It doesn’t just give you a modern, user-friendly experience. Now, you can speak out and comment directly on the laws of Baltimore City.

That’s right. When you discover a law that isn’t working well for Baltimoreans, or that is a massive headache for you, you can quickly and easily identify it right there on the same page.

With municipal, state, and federal laws and their interactions being more complex than ever, this nifty tool could provide a great jumping off point for broader accountability, transparency, and participation in our laws.

You can read the original post about the new update on OpenGov Foundation’s blog here, or go straight to the www.BaltimoreCode.org to find out more.

Engaging Students on Policy with Choicework

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We wanted to share a post from our friends at Public Agenda on the usefulness of their Choicework approach for teaching and engaging students in discussion about public policy, even when they are jaded on politics.  You can read more about the approach below or find the original post here.

PublicAgenda-logoLife on campus this fall will be very different from last year, when a forthcoming election enlivened debate from the dining hall to the lecture hall. But in an off year for national politics, how can you build your students’ interest in critical public issues?

Engaging students on public issues is not an easy task, and no wonder. It’s hard for most to connect with theoretical policy, especially when they see their political system as inept, broken, or otherwise unworthy of trust. For students enmeshed in social lives, academics, a job and, often, family responsibilities, talking about policy can seem even more hopeless. While many students may simply consider such matters as wholly theoretical abstractions far removed from the reality of their daily lives, we know they are not. Policy has the ability to change the answer to questions like: Will I have a job in my field when I graduate? Has technology forever changed the landscape of employment? What does the Affordable Care Act mean for me when I turn 26?

We’ve found that there are ways to make policy decisions come alive for students (as well as other members of the public). Together with the Kettering Foundation, Public Agenda developed the Choicework approach. Rooted in the theories of our co-founder, Dan Yankelovich, Choicework can be truly transformative for a few reasons. In the same way that storytelling can bring a news article, research or cause to life, Choicework roots policy approaches in finite and human choices, using accessible language and grounding the choices in essential values that people really connect with.

Choicework can make policy come to life. The point is not to choose one and only one approach; rather, by emphasizing the inherent choices and stakes in the issue at hand brings policy to life, Choicework helps students connect to it and envision how policy plays out in their own lives and the lives of others, and visualize other approaches and broaden the discussion.

In addition to Immigration, Public Agenda has published Citizen Solutions Guides on Jobs & The Economy, Healthcare, Education, The Federal Budget, and Energy. All of our CSG’s include introductory overviews of the topic, key facts, links to online supporting documentation, and illustrative charts and graphs.

Interested in experimenting with this approach in your classroom? Our nonpartisan Citizens’ Solutions Guides on some of our nation’s most hotly contested issues make great discussion starters in the lecture hall and are free to download. We’d love to hear your stories putting Choicework to use. Let us know how it works out!

Group Decision Tip: Credit the Group

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In principle, members of high-functioning groups are focused on the success of the group as a whole rather than on who should get credit or blame within the group. Harry Truman said, “It is amazing what you can do if you do not care who gets the credit.” Similarly, groups get more done when unconcerned with assigning blame.

Group Decision Tips IconRather than spend energy accounting for past individual credit or blame, it is better to invest lessons from the past into future good group decisions. When I believe in my group I know that, over the long run, what is good for the group will be good for me—probably better for me than I could ever have achieved on my own.

Practical Tip: Give your ideas and efforts to the group without conditions, without lingering ownership. Welcome contributions from others without jealousy, without resentment. Show public appreciation for others in your group. Own your share of things gone wrong and credit the group for things gone right.

A mark of a high-functioning team is that each member wants to make other members look good.

Group Decision Tip: A Way to Say No

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In principle, it is generally much harder to say no than to say yes, either in a group or as a group. As an individual in the face of group sentiment – sometimes called peer pressure – it is much easier to quietly agree than to take an opposing stand. As a group faced with adding things or cutting things, saying yes to new things is much easier than saying no because we get instant credit for new intentions but the liability – the responsibility for implementing the new initiative – is spread out over many individuals, put off into the future, underestimated, or simply overlooked.

Group Decision Tips IconBut when we say yes without proper accounting for the liabilities they pile up, become due, spread us too thin, and water down our focus resulting in failure to achieve our most important goals.

Practical Tip: Identify and continually affirm your most important goals. Groups do this by establishing strategic plans, decision criteria, performance objectives, and other means. With every opportunity to say yes or no to new things, ask, “How does this help achieve what is most important?”

Practice saying things like: “That’s a good idea, I understand and appreciate your perspective, but that simply doesn’t fit with our priorities right now. Perhaps it could be addressed by someone else or at another time.”

Jim Collins, author of Good to Great and other books, reminds us that great organizations have “piercing clarity” about what they want to achieve and “relentless discipline” to say no to diversions.

A way to say no is to have something more important to which you are saying yes.

The Newest NIF Issue Guide: Bridging and Bonding

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NIF-logoWe encourage you to take a few moments to find out more about the latest issue guide from the National Issues Forum Institute. The new guide, titled “Bridging and Bonding: How Can We Create Engaged Communities in a Time of Rapid Change?”, is a collaborative effort between the General Federation of Women’s Clubs and the Kettering Foundation that is designed to help guide conversations about creating better connected and integrated neighborhoods, towns, and communities despite contemporary challenges and shifting divisions.

This excerpt from the introduction gets to the heart of what this newest guide is about:

Changing economic conditions and technological innovations, including the ever-increasing pervasiveness of mass and social media, have transformed our personal lives and our communities. This has affected how families interact, how and where we work, and how we form and maintain relationships, both public and private. Today individuals may bond more strongly with an online community or colleagues at work than with their neighbors. The blurring of distinctions between work and home, made possible by technology, consumes time once spent on social and civic pursuits. Public spaces and even our own neighborhoods don’t seem as safe as they used to be. And a lack of trust in others makes bridging differences between those with differing social, political, religious, or cultural beliefs and experiences more challenging.

What we need to deliberate about is this: how can we create engaged communities in a time of such rapid change?

As with other NIF guides, three options for moving forward are laid out for further deliberation.  The guide challenges participants to deliberate and decide on one of three courses of action:

  • Option 1: Embrace Change and Affirm Differences
  • Option 2: Strengthen and Renew Traditional Ways of Connecting
  • Option 3: Meet People Where They Are

For a deeper look at how we might weigh these options, check out the NIF’s full blog post about the guide here: www.nifi.org/news/news_detail.aspx?itemID=24688&catID=23664.

You can also find more issue materials, including moderator guides and questionnaires at this link: http://www.nifi.org/issue_books/detail.aspx?catID=15&itemID=24676.

Happy reading, and best of luck as you move forward engaging your communities in deliberation about how to better bridge gaps and bond with each other for the common good!

Groundwater Infographic a big hit – wins best overall poster award at EPA 2013 Community Involvement Training Conference

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This post was submitted by John Blakinger, co-founder of CivilSay (an NCDD organizational member) via the Add-to-Blog form.

On July 12th, I met with the local “Citizens Action Group” in La Pine, Oregon to present the citizen advisory committee recommendations for groundwater protection.

Fortunately, they meet in a legion hall that has no facilities to use a slide show.

Recently Teresa Blakinger of Concepts Captured created an infographic of the story of groundwater protection and we created a vinyl banner of the drawing. Graphic below (see larger version here).

So without my standard PowerPoint crutch, I took the graphic, hung it from some log beams, and used it for the presentation.

Here are some comments from an attendee:

I have heard so many positive comments about John’s presentation at the CAG meeting. Let me tell you folks, he was spot on. He did a great job! Probably one of his best! The other great thing was the graphic. Lots and lots of positive feedback. Some comments were, “Easy to follow”, “You can follow the progression”, “Organizes the process”.

A few days later, Greg Ranstrom and I presented The Moment of Oh! workshop at the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2013 Community Involvement Training Conference in Boston using the graphic as a case study. The infographic won the Best Overall Poster Award. Congratulations Teresa!

This graphic is the perfect example of the core principle “Leave Tracks” described in Greg and my book The Moment of Oh!

Also check out the 3-minute video describing the graphic, or the live blog (recorded) of the EPA session.

Stakeholder Mapping for Collaboration – A tool for inclusiveness & diversity

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This post was submitted by NCDD member Michelle Miller of MMBD Consulting via the Add-to-Blog form at www.ncdd.org/submit.

When mapping stakeholders for various initiatives, I found that existing stakeholder maps do not help identify all of the voices in a system – they do not help me as a facilitator in my quest to create the diversity and inclusiveness I need for an initiative. They do not help ensure that the whole system is represented and, even worse, they often use the language of control. As most facilitators know from experience, you cannot control stakeholders. Levels of control can vary, but control in general is anathema to collaboration. We need a fit-for-purpose stakeholder mapping tool that helps foster collaboration.

The stakeholder map for collaboration is based on three main ideas:

1) We can identify the stakeholders of a system by the questions they help us answer about an initiative.

  • Why are we doing this?
  • What are we doing?
  • How will we do it?
  • What’s possible?
  • What’s going on in reality?

2) Using a traditional symbol of the whole system, a circle, we indicate the (permeable) boundaries of a system

3) These questions create a set of “Voices” which categorize perspectives by their role in regards to an initiative:

  • Voice of Intent
  • Voice of Customer/User (or Citizen)
  • Voice of Experience
  • Voice of Design

Read the blog for the basic idea: http://bit.ly/17NFXWb

For full detail, read the paper presented at the 2013 ISPIM Conference in Helsinki: http://bit.ly/19tq51P

StakeholderMap

Group Decision Tip: Straw Vote

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In principle, the best group decisions are based on shared understanding of everyone’s perspective, and a good way to get a quick read of where everyone stands is to take a straw vote. A straw vote is not a real vote; it doesn’t count over the long run, like straw. Someone might say, “Let’s just see how people feel about the latest idea. All those who tend to like it, show a thumb up. If you tend not to like it, show a thumb down. If you are neutral or undecided, show a horizontal thumb.” Count the thumbs in the three categories. That’s a straw vote.

Group Decision Tips IconIt lets everyone in the group see, in a quick and general way, if the latest idea is worth more group time and energy. It also shows where the concerns are (the down thumbs) so we know who to call on to hear concerns.

Some groups use color cards for straw votes. Some use high-tech remote keypads and the results are graphed instantly on a screen in front of the room. The most efficient groups use straw votes often and with ease.

Practical Tip: Don’t hesitate to call for, or participate in, a straw vote. Before calling for a straw vote, make sure the question is clear and simple; you don’t want to waste group time haggling about: “What are we voting on?”

When calling for a straw vote, remind everyone that it does not count over the long run; that everyone has the right to change their mind later; that it is simply a quick and blurry snapshot of how we feel at this moment. Still, even a snapshot can be worth a thousand words.