Real World Partnership Examples, Ideas, and Summaries

Collective Impact Case Studies

The Franklin County Communities that Care Coalition (case study #1) was started 10 years ago because teen substance abuse was too high in Massachusetts, well above the national average.  A local community foundation and local businessman stepped up to give local and national funding, respectively, and that quick action brought other local organizations into the fold.  Two agencies took the lead, acting as the backbone, and ran the collective impact group that was focused on healthy, happy youth with focused outcomes on preventing teen substance abuse, with concentration on 8th graders 30 day use rates of alcohol, tobacco and marijuana, and 12th grade binge drinking rates. The 40% drop in teen substance abuse rates was their pre-determined goal, but the bringing together of such such a diverse group of agencies in the coalition was an unspoken goal, because it allowed them to reach more of the community and realize that 40% decrease.  Their cross-sectoral, volunteer staffed groups led to a greater understanding of the community at large and their needs. Through my research of this case study I learned how truly important each of the 5 elements of collective impact are; common agenda, continuous communication, backbone support, mutually reinforcing activities, and a shared measurement system. Without any one element of the 5 this organization would not have continued success like they have seen over the years.

(Collective, 2017)

The goal of the Vibrant Communities/Tamarack Institute (Case Study #2), the goal of the collective impact organization was to build the capacity of communities to work together and to identify issues that are important, but bigger than any one agency can work on alone.  Their main focus is on poverty, crime prevention, early childhood development and the environment.  Vibrant Communities is a multi-layer collective impact initiative focused on unleashing the potential of communities across Canada to reduce poverty and ensure a good quality of life for all citizens.  Vibrant Communities shares an overarching goal of connecting 100 cities and communities to reduce poverty for one million Canadians. They started with a goal of impacting 5000 individuals, but at the end of 10 years they had actually positively impacted 202,000 lives.  Their Collective Impact framework contains five core conditions including the development of a common agenda; using shared measurement to understand progress; building on mutually reinforcing activities; engaging in continuous communications and providing a backbone to move the work forward. The most important take-away from this
case study was how above all else, common agenda is the MOST IMPORTANT part of collective impact organizations. Their common agenda consists of 5 key points: they had to work comprehensively, you need to relook at the measure and move their thinking from poverty alleviation to poverty reduction (less poor not better poor), you don’t solve problems but harness assets (bring together the best in a community and focus it towards a common problem, it needed to be a multi-sector process (for example, not just volunteer or government, and this couldn’t be about solving things, it had to be about learning together.  Each partner organization shared the common vision and implement it into the context of their day-to-day work, leading to the sustainable success they have had over the years.	(Norman, n.d.)
Community Partnership Project (31:01 minutes long)
	Completing this research project was a lot of fun and a very enriching experience. I learned quiete a bit about education initiative partnerships in the process. Having processed the video in several different forms, and cutting the entire project into segments for the induividual pages for this website made me listen to their words several times. It made me realize that the day-to-day tasks of these partnerships are nothing without the pillar of the utmost importance in a collective impact organization; constant communication. From a smaller town in Connecticut's Senior Center to a presidential campaign on the national stage; these organizations and their partnerships couldnt achieve anything if the werent constantly communicating, talk and touching base with each other. Now the different forms of communication are even more important, to either getting the organizations the attention they deserve or carrying out campaign activities from a quarantine, shelter in place order. Zoom digital meatings were used by both organizational leaders, but both interviewees mentioned social media, email and text messages as the prefered mode of communication.
Yellowdig Conversation
Through the engaging conversations I was able to have on YellowDig, the consensus I got from most of the partnerships discussed on the forum was that this pandemic we are currently embroiled in is going to make us come out of it as a stronger, more united country, if not world. On each page I put a screen shot of my Community Partnership post on the bottom of every page, with a reaction to the real-life partnerships that are happening today. I focused most of my articles on the COVID-19 pandemic currently going on because those are now and will be the most important partnerships for education going forward; education as we knew it has changed. When you click on the post it goes to the article I summarized and brought attention to, such as the one at right. It was a lot of fun talking to classmates on this platform as I was able to see what they saw as important in modern day educational initiative partnerships and we shared the same ideas for why they are important. I actually did about 4 or 5 posts extra so i could have a fresh partnership for every page of my website, so i had the pleasure of learning more about similar partnerships in different parts of the country.	This Week's YellowDig Community Partnership Post (CLICK POST TO VIEW ARTICLE)