To create change in the community, it is essential to set our thinking around five fundamental ideas: collective impact - community involvement - community innovation - collaborative leadership - and community impact assessment .

 

Collective Impact is an advanced form of collaboration which brings together different sectors for a common agenda to solve large complex problems. It is built upon five interconnected components to produce strong alignment and lead to large scale results: 

Common agenda – Shared measurement – Mutually reinforcing activities –  Continuous communication – Backbone support 

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Community Engagement is about listening to the community’s needs and responding. Community Engagement increases community cohesion and allows for the community to have ownership over outcomes that better reflect their needs. Community Engagement is the process by which citizens are engaged to work and learn together on behalf of their communities to create and realize bold visions for the future.

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Community Innovation - An innovation community is a community within the workplace where ideas can be freely exchanged. It creates a productive discussion between management and employees.  Innovation Community Reduces Risk, Inspires Trust, Creates Open Communication, and Promotes Learning. 

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Collaborative leadership is a management practice which is focused on the leadership skills across functional and organizational boundaries.

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Evaluating community impact is to evaluate multi-faceted, large-scale community change initiatives. There are countless community change initiatives working on a diversity of issues, such as early childhood development, health care, education, poverty and homelessness, immigration and workforce development, and ecological sustainability.              Read more