Collective Impact

Servant Leadership: A Core Competency to Achieve Collective Impact

May 28, 2025

I recently had the privilege of serving on a panel at the annual United Way Worldwide Staff Leadership Conference. Melody Barnes of Aspen Forum for Community Solutions - among a hundred other key roles she plays so wonderfully to support our democracy – facilitated beautifully. She helped us dig into a host of questions about [...]

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Quality Benchmarks for Cradle to Career Collective Impact

April 23, 2026

When the Collective Impact article appeared in the Stanford Social Innovation Review back in early 2011, our phones began ringing off the hook with communities wanting to learn more about the work of building cradle to career civic infrastructure. Thanks to support from Living Cities we had already worked to capture lessons and work with other [...]

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Is “Cat Herding” the Best Analogy for Collective Impact?

March 11, 2026

Back in 2006 when we started the work in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky on The Strive Partnership, we came to the realization this work was in great part an engineering challenge as much as anything else. There were many moving parts and they all needed to be “corralled” in such a way that we could [...]

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Head Start Report Recommendations Aligned with Cradle to Career Collective Impact

December 5, 2025

The Advisory Committee on Head Start Research and Evaluation, established two years ago, recently released an outstanding final report containing recommendations for the future of the federal Head Start and Early Head Start programs. U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius lays out 3 broad recommendations: a data-driven focus on school readiness and [...]

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The Difference between Collaboration and Collective Impact

November 12, 2025

We recently hit the benchmarks of having over 150 communities reach out to us and 80 communities having completed the Site Readiness Assessment to join the Strive Network. As we start our discussions with each community on the work of collective impact through building civic infrastructure, I would estimate at least half have declared “we [...]

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Highlights from Day Two of the Cradle to Career Convening

September 28, 2025

As the last day of the 2012 Cradle to Career convening comes to a close, I wanted to share some second day highlights: In the breakfast plenary, Reba Dominski of Target, Stacey Stewart of United Way Worldwide, and Michael Robbins of the USDoE spoke about how the business community uses data to impact practice, and [...]

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“Helping kids succeed is everyone’s business”

September 27, 2025

As we’re nearing the end of our first day at the 2012 Strive Convening, I wanted to offer up a couple highlights. This morning’s opening session, “Moving from Proving to Improving,” was filled with introductions - of both people and ideas - as well as inspiring stories of how Strive communities are using data to [...]

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Cincinnati’s Collective Impact Efforts recognized by Education Nation

September 25, 2025

Cincinnati’s efforts to improve academic achievement in the region’s urban core received recognition this past weekend by NBC’s Education Nation. Highlighted by NBC are the many improvements seen throughout the community, including a nine percent increase in kids ready to enter kindergarten and a 24 percent increase in eighth grade math scores. NBC’s story talked [...]

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Kalamazoo Promise: An Inspiring Story, an Important Social Experiment

September 18, 2025

The story of the Kalamazoo Promise is utterly inspiring. It’s a story about the power of community to dramatically alter the future of its children. It’s a story about giving students and families, regardless of income or history, the opportunity to hope. It’s a story about a city’s aspiration to build itself up by investing, [...]

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North Carolina Politicians Come Together To Support Reading

September 6, 2025

This guest post was written by Becky Smothers, Mayor, City of High Point. In Guilford County: Collective Impact In Action, Brian Cockman wrote about the importance of collective impact and how it’s helping to shape Guilford County Schools’ 3 Million Books Challenge. Members of the local media support the reading campaign through guest blog posts and [...]

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