Collective Impact and Community Development Issues

Norman Walzer, Liz Weaver, Catherine McGuire

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780367234997
• eBook ISBN: 9781351623452
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Global Development Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Collective Impact is intended to help community leaders effectively engage participants in strategic planning initiatives and achieve desired results. It is a logical extension of, and builds on, earlier efforts that experienced difficulties helping groups implement actions identified in the planning processes. This book examines successful practices that apply Collective Impact principles to a variety of community development issues including reducing poverty, and similar topics. Contributing authors also examine techniques used in working with local groups to facilitate effective changes in their communities.

The discussions focus on settings in which Collective Impact efforts are likely to succeed using a variety of case studies that vary by intent, purpose, and location. Discussions of involvement by community and campus partnerships, regional planning organizations, and other groups can affect the ways in which Collective Impact principles are applied and how well they work. The discussions conclude with transformational changes within Collective Impact, moving from the individual to the system and future directions for Collective Impact approaches. Practitioners and scholars alike will find the discussions of various approaches and outcomes using Collective Impact useful in designing future efforts to bring about community change.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Community Development.

Collective impact approaches and community development issues

Norman Walzer, Liz Weaver and Catherine McGuire

ABSTRACT

Efforts to accomplish successful results from community change processes have caused researchers and practitioners to develop new approaches to engage local resources in ways that can bring about positive community development outcomes. Collective impact (CI) as an approach has been shown to lead to sustained improvements and is gaining use around the world in working on community development concerns. This volume examines the application of CI to a variety of development issues and offers insights into approaches that seem to have generated positive and sustainable outcomes. Of special interest is the applicability of the techniques in different governmental settings and locations.

Community development practitioners continually work with local leaders to bring about changes that adjust to demographic and economic trends. In some instances, the trends involve national economic conditions, while in other cases changes are triggered by population or economic issues in the community or region. Thus, community developers must be willing to try new approaches that engage leaders and residents in efforts to stimulate economic development, increase employment, and foster other sustainable practices that improve the local quality of life for all residents.

Strategies to improve quality of life, capacity-building efforts, and leadership development within a community are all regular topics of discussion in communities across the US and in other countries (Kubisch, Auspos, Brown, & Dewar, 2011). As part of these efforts, it must be recognized that some groups within the community are less likely to engage in public discourse or programs and therefore may be inadvertently overlooked in designing and implementing community change processes. The need for inclusive community change processes will likely be even more important in future with growth of elderly and minority cohorts.

This article examines principles of community change and practices that have been used to help community and business leaders promote local community development. In response to disappointments in the outcomes of some past strategic planning initiatives, special attention is paid to how innovative applications of a collective impact (CI) framework can help community groups gain sustainable results.

Efforts and techniques discussed in this volume document how local groups have succeeded in both short-term and long-term efforts to bring about community changes with special attention to the use of a CI framework. All too often, past initiatives focused on specific issues or concerns with limited recognition of how these issues are intertwined and affect other segments of the community (Kania & Kramer, 2011). The strategies sometimes brought results with specific agencies or local institutions but did not necessarily bring documented and lasting effects across the jurisdiction. The Aspen Institute has led the way in trying to identify and document successful alternatives for stimulating community change initiatives (Auspos & Kubisch, 2012; Kubisch, Auspos, Brown, & Dewar, 2011). Frustration with lack of evidence about long-term effectiveness led foundations sponsoring these projects to seek other approaches that would engage broad segments of the community and result in significant and documented changes.

Interest in new approaches for working with communities or groups on complex problems without an obvious and clear-cut solution led researchers and practitioners to design and promote a framework incorporating key elements successful in prior efforts. Research and dissemination organizations such as the FSG Social Impact Consultants examined successful and documented efforts to identify common components that contributed to successes (Kania & Kramer, 2011). The proposed framework was then adopted by other agencies and implemented in various efforts around the world (Gamble, 2010).

The CI approach gained international attention with the publication of several articles describing basic principles and practices (Kania & Kramer, 2011). These include establishing a common or shared agenda; utilizing measurement, engagement, and communication; and providing backbone infrastructure to support the overall approach within the community. With experimentation and practice by other organizations, these components were refined with a better understanding of how they interact and could be used to understand community change processes.

An attractive feature of the CI framework is that it incorporates and builds on previous elements that both researchers and practitioners already understood but perhaps had not recognized as a systematic approach. The main focus of the CI effort is collaboration among participating agencies when dealing with complex issues without a clear solution to build a base for solid implementation practices.

Articles in this special issue of Community Development were selected to illustrate ways in which the CI framework has been applied to diverse community development issues. They were compiled from a call for abstracts in 2014 that generated more than 50 responses from around the world. Each article addresses a specific aspect of the CI framework and illustrates ways in which that component can be used, sometimes in relatively unique ways, to bring about change both in outcomes as well as behaviors. Along the way, limitations or difficulties in using this framework are also discussed.

Important to note is that CI is not a specific technique or tool used in working with community leaders on a specific local issue. Rather, it is a systematic framework that strategically engages diverse segments within a community interested in triggering long-term adjustments over several years. In this regard, it is not a one size fits all approach; rather, it must be tailored to meet specific needs and desired long-term outcomes.

Components of successful community change

The uniqueness of each community situation and desired outcome makes it difficult to define successful community change and hard to determine the most suitable approaches. Often, an influential group of change agents in a community initiates an effort to gather broad-based local support to identify a desired future outcome or status and then explores ways to reach this vision or goals. It is possible, however, that decision makers and/or change agents are leaders but do not mirror the community characteristics. Some groups do not actively participate in the change process even when efforts may have been made to engage them.

Even when proper procedures have been followed, strategic planning efforts do not always bring about desired or expected outcomes for various reasons. Turnover of residents and leaders within a community can mean loss of commitment to action and seeing the process through to completion. Likewise, conflicting goals among participants and agencies can cause friction with delays that prevent actions. Each participating group or agency may have its own priorities and/or expectations and thus measure success differently. Lack of communication among participating agencies can also be a barrier in implementation (Morrison, 2011).

In 2010, university research staff and practitioners in the Midwest region of the US organized a Community Change Network to identify key elements considered important in successful community visioning-planning efforts (National Rural Assembly, 2015). This group included 13 agencies with many years of experience in conducting successful strategic visioning-planning programs and change processes mainly in rural communities. The programs had documented success with a variety of approaches and agreed on several key ingredients that lead to successful achievement of community goals (Walzer, 2011).

First, communities must be prepared and ready to commit to a change process. Participants must understand and recognize a need for change and be open to new approaches. Likewise, an inclusive and broad-based cross-section of the community is needed for the process to bring about lasting positive changes. The preparation phase also requires a well-informed community and informed local leaders with the capacity to execute the change program.

Second, the program content must have a solid theoretical foundation and clearly differentiate between program, process, and products to build professional respect within the community and gain support (Anderson, n.d.). The process must be sufficiently flexible to recognize diverse local issues but with sufficient direction to prevent being sidetracked on specific local issues of a temporary nature. A “break-through” mentality and philosophy can help the program become a major effort with credibility throughout the community.

Third, delivery of the change program is crucial to success since it must mobilize community assets and develop strong networks in the community. The process must encourage and reward risk-takers and leaders to help them find and implement new approaches. In this regard, serious recognition should be paid to indirect results such as building social capital and decision-making capacity rather than focusing strictly on jobs, investment, and other direct measures (French & LaChapelle, 2012).

Fourth, successful community change programs require follow-up activities and accountability. They should focus on the future rather than try to correct the past and should pursue an agenda with long-term sustainability and resiliency. The programs can document and celebrate outcomes as well as communicate them regularly to participants and stakeholders to build credibility and support for future efforts.

Strategic planning approaches and techniques

Many programmatic techniques and tools have been used in working with community leaders seeking changes that improve the quality of life. A recent article documented and briefly compared more than 30 programs most often used by university agencies. The list is far from inclusive (Sudhipongpracha & Walzer, 2015). Historically, programs involved determining a local vision with subsequent goals, strategies, tactics, and metrics to document success and outcomes, although specific techniques and approaches changed over the years (Walzer, 1996; Walzer & Hamm, 2012).

Early strategic planning efforts in public agencies involved adapting the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) programs common in strategic planning activities in private businesses in the 1960s and 1970s. This deficiency-based technique became almost synonymous with strategic planning initiatives even though significant differences in organizational structure between public and private agencies limit its effectiveness in some cases (Sudhipongpracha & Walzer, 2015).

Hierarchical structure and other decision-making differences between public and private agencies made users aware of the shortcomings of a traditional SWOT approach in community change settings (Stavros & Hinrichs, 2009). Mayors and other local leaders typically have less direct control and must negotiate new programs with a council and/or other groups sometimes with conflicting interests. This scenario makes pulling resources together and pursuing a common vision more difficult in public agencies. Leaders in the private sector can rally around a common goal such as profitability; public agencies have multiple, and sometimes conflicting, goals to meet the needs of diverse populations.

In 1990, in response to rural declines and a farm crisis in the US, the North Central Regional Center for Rural Development organized a strategic planning initiative called Take Charge that was marketed nationwide to rural communities through Cooperative Extension agencies (Ayres et al., 1990). The program used a “Where have we been?, Where do we want to be?, and How can we get there?” approach. It was deficiency-based and helped local leaders identify a vision and an action plan to overcome local obstacles during a rural crisis.

Take Charge was revised in 2001 as Vision to Action: Take Charge Too using an asset-based model focusing more on preserving positive aspects in the community and building an action plan to promote community development with metrics to measure outcomes (Green et al., 2001). The focus on positives in the community that should be maintained was later expanded to include other tools by Green and Haines (2012).

Significant changes in approaches to community change and strategic planning had occurred with the Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) approach developed by Kretzmann and McKnight (1993), shifting the focus from correcting past deficiencies to building local capacity to better use current community assets. The ABCD approach quickly became the standard operating basis for strategic planning and community change models (McKnight, n.d.). Incorporating techniques such as Appreciative Inquiry into the goal-setting process enabled participants to better understand and assess the potential of various strategies and actions designed to improve welfare in the community. Building social capital and enhancing the decision-making capacity became key ingredients in many, if not most, community change models.

While ABCD approaches provide a strong foundation underlying many community change processes, various other techniques and methodologies were also used in working with community groups depending on local situations. Several are described next.

The Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations, and Results (SOAR) approach shifted attention from focusing on weaknesses and threats, as in the SWOT analysis, to building strategies based on community strengths (Stavros & Hinrichs, 2009). Likewise, the focus is more on results and types of strategies and resources needed to reach desired goals and vision. The basic stages of the SOAR process – initiate, inquire, imagine, innovate, and inspire to implement – focus on measuring outcomes with room for adjustments as indicated by metrics (Stavros & Hinrichs, 2009). The SOAR approach has the flexibility to address multiple issues within a community and harness the power of local groups to generate desired outcomes.

Most recently, the importance of networks in local economic development and community change programs has been recognized since participants bring important networks to the community change initiative. This approach has been termed Strategic Doing and incorporates these networks into the change process, helping them take ownership for what they can add (Morrison, 2011).

The Strategic Doing process (Morrison, 2011) raises four basic questions: What could we do together?, What should we do together?, What will we do together?, and When will we get back together? The intent is to commit participants to an action plan where they see the types of assets and networks in which they participate and how they can add to the change process. Groups form around specific action plans and then meet regularly to evaluate past progress and set directions for the next time period.

Strategic Doing as an ap...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• 1. Collective impact approaches and community development issues
• 2. Community-campus partnerships, collective impact, and poverty reduction
• 3. The why and how of working with communities through collective impact
• 4. Community indicators and collective impact: facilitating change
• 5. Collective impact facilitators: how contextual and procedural factors influence collaboration
• 6. Re-examining power and privilege in collective impact
• 7. Using collective impact in support of communitywide teen pregnancy prevention initiatives
• 8. Collective impact capacity building: Finding gold in Southwest Florida
• 9. Possible: Transformational change in collective impact
• Index