Collaboration Toolkit

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Working toward solutions for entrenched societal problems can be daunting. Individuals who want to make a difference often find it difficult to know where to start or what to do. Common hindrances to effective change efforts include lack of direction, inadequate planning, and working in siloed environments.

Collective Impact is a proven collaboration framework used to tackle complex social problems. The Collective Impact framework suggests five key components: common agenda, shared measurement, mutually reinforcing activities, continuous communication, and backbone support. These are concrete elements that you can implement and monitor in your collaborative work.

“Behind the scenes” of Collective Impact are ten elements that can be incorporated into everyday work to enhance collaboration. These ten aspects appear easy to incorporate. However, we often overlook them in favor of checklist-type approaches to working together. When critically thinking and intentionally looking at your work, determine how and why the ten elements can be beneficial to achieving effective collaborative relationships and collective impact.

This toolkit offers descriptions of each of the ten elements along with tools and resources. The toolkit is designed to help facilitate thinking in terms of collective impact and to introduce new terms.