Constructing Collaborative Success for Network Learning: The Story of the Discovery Community Self-Assessment Tool

· Despite conversations about the importance of community collaboration, foundations continue to struggle with how to best frame and support collaborative success. · Existing tools to assess collaboration may not fit with either a foundation’s values or a specific program strategy. · From a foundation perspective, developing a community self-assessment tool reinforced the idea that collaborative functioning is crucial and deserves attention. · This article shares a story of the development and initial use of the Discovery Community Self-Assessment Tool as a process of social construction critical to collective action and a possible indicator of network learning

Engaging Youth in Community Change: Outcomes and Lessons Learned From Sierra Health Foundation's REACH Youth Program

Assesses the REACH: Connecting Communities and Youth for a Healthy Future program's outcomes, including new skills and community awareness; lessons for the field, including the role of coalitions and adult supporters; and suggestions for funders

Empowering Effective Teachers: Readiness for Reform

Outlines a spectrum of conditions needed for the successful implementation of teacher effectiveness reform, including shared leadership, vision, and commitment; a culture of data-driven decision making; stakeholder engagement; and supportive policies

Understanding the Value of Backbone Organizations in Collective Impact

Effective backbone support is a critical condition for collective impact. In fact, it is the number one reason that collective impact initiatives fail. In this publication, we provide communities and organizations engaged in collective impact with guidance on the role of the backbone and how to understand and support its effectiveness.In the Greater Cincinnati region, collective impact has become the "new normal," and The Greater Cincinnati Foundation (GCF) has made a commitment to support the infrastructure of collective impact - the backbone organization itself - in an effort to sustain and scale long-term systemic change and impact in the community. However, the role of the backbone organization in collective impact is complex and can be difficult to explain.In early 2012, The Greater Cincinnati Foundation and FSG began a partnership to define the value of backbone organizations and better understand back-bone effectiveness by working with six local backbone organizations and collective impact initiatives

From viability to sustainability: the contribution of the viable systems approach (VSA)

The current dynamics of business systems require new ways of conceiving the role of single entities. On this basis, a complex of interactions between the company and the reference context must be activated to guarantee survival dynamics. From these considerations re-emerge the ideas of Peccei (2013) and King (2013) that recognise in the systemic thought the foundations for a sustainable society. The present study derives from these considerations, and aims at contributing to the advancement of the knowledge necessary to overcome the challenges in the sustainability field. The methodological approach, albeit heuristic, can be traced back to the positive scientific and constructivist method. The results of the study showed the prevalence of qualitative and subjective techniques, accompanied by the so-called inductive method, testifying to the intense interaction between the scholar and the object investigated. With regard to future research, it would be interesting to construct a flexible, scalable and extensible model to recover both a database and an ontology for the theoretical framework

Resources for Child Caring: An Early Childhood Intermediary?

While Minnesota's early childhood (EC) system has many assets, the existing high degree of fragmentation creates resource accessibility problems for both families and providers. Recently, there has been a growing call for a unified voice to facilitate change in Minnesota's early childhood system. This presents an opportunity for an organization like Resources for Child Caring (RCC), a well?established regional organization, to assume a prominent role in efforts to reform the EC system by becoming an intermediary organization. Becoming an intermediary would provide RCC an opportunity to grow and become a leader in efforts to improve services and outcomes for Minnesota's children.Before taking this path, RCC will need to carefully consider the benefits and consequences of such a change and whether such a move would fit the mission and vision of the organization. To help RCC assess its capacity for growth and to fulfill an intermediary role, we conducted an in?depth study of the organization's current state, as well as research on the Minnesota early childhood field and existing models of intermediary organizations. This report presents our literature review, organizational audit of current conditions, and organizational gap analysis