Tools for Collaboration: The Intersector Toolkit

Routinely I scour the internet for ideas and reports about how collective impact implementation efforts are coming.  FSG (a Seattle-based consulting firm and home of Kania and Kramer, of collective impact fame) seems to own the market share on CI implementation--they have supported hundreds of networks across this country and the world in bringing this model to life.  Because of this, they serve as a rich resource of experiential learning.  However, like all of us, they're not perfect, and I often find myself pouring over new reports thinking, "I've already read this years ago."

If their model isn't working for you, they are limited in ability to help.

As I was performing my usual Monday morning google search of "collective impact implementation tool kits," the interwebs returned this to me for the first time and, upon a cursory glance, I was incredibly impressed with the breadth of knowledge and resources packaged up and tied with a bow by the Intersector Project, a non-profit dedicated to helping cross-sector networks learn how to collaborate.

The reality is that collective impact works most efficiently when all organizations are already in the same industry.  Environmental action organizations have long succeeded in clean air, water, and land projects using the collective impact model.  Cross-sector partnerships can be much weedier for obvious reasons--each partner needs to commit to dealing with the system as it exists in their own industry.  Cross-sector partnerships that focus on hospitals partnering non-traditionally with community organizations have been reporting increasingly good outcomes for patient care and holistic health. Academic research supports these findings as well.

What can be particularly hard for Cradle to Career networks (like but not limited to ours) is that we cross several major sectors: education, city government, healthcare, and a variety of non-profit partners.  Add in to that constraints that all of these players feel from policies regarding welfare benefits and subsidies for early education and family health.  

One's head spins from all of the ways implementation can be a bigger mountain than previously thought in the heady "golden mission" years.

Thus the value of the Intersector Toolkit, a collection of tools from around the world of collective impact designed to clearly outline and streamline (as much as it can) cross-sector collaborations.  With thoughtful questions for each section of the process, design ideas and checklists, examples, and case studies, this tool kit, if for nothing else, makes one feel not completely crazy in realizing just how much collaborative spirit is required to make steady progress toward shared goals.

As I think about EC2C, we're in the land of designing and implementing--consensus is a long road to cultivate.  But this could be a great resource for us going forward.