E10: Inside the Impact Alliance

"We are practising our way into what the future will look like."In this episode, Kim Kucinskas, Thomas Jepson-Lay, and Ali Al Mokdad are joined by Vanessa Self, Project Director of the Impact Alliance, the collaboration between CARE, Mercy Corps, and Save the Children, created when three CEOs, Michelle Nunn, Tjada D'Oyen McKenna, and Janti Soeripto, came together aiming for deeper collaboration and efficiency.Vanessa Self is honest about the initiative: collaboration is slower, harder, and less intuitive than the slogans suggest. And about what it opened: while the sector talked about what to cut, this became a space for what could be. She walks through the three workstreams that survived the testing of 81 possibilities: collaborative procurement, with potential savings she puts at around ten million dollars over the coming year, a community insights engine she calls accountability, but not as you know it, and scale works, which takes interventions that already have an evidence base and helps governments scale them. Along the way, partnership mapping revealed the organisations share only around 2% of their partners.Ali Al Mokdad asks what it takes to scale the collaboration that already exists at country and field level, and draws the line between efficiency and transformation. Kim Kucinskas presses on how change happens in a system designed to keep organisations fragmented. Thomas Jepson-Lay calls the Alliance a canary in the coal mine, and asks why agility still needs a CEO.And when the conversation ends, the microphones stay on. Kim, Thomas, and Ali stay behind for a debrief: what excited them, what frustrated them, and what the Impact Alliance really signals about how willing the sector is to change.Honest thinking, shared without scripts and without talking points.-------------------Learn more about the Impact Alliance:The three CEOs on why they are uniting (Devex): https://www.devex.com/news/we-are-uniting-to-change-the-future-of-aid-and-hope-funders-will-follow-112655CARE: https://www.care.org/about-us/strategic-partners/impact-alliance/Mercy Corps: https://www.mercycorps.org/who-we-are/impact-allianceChapters:(00:00) Cold open(01:16) Where the Impact Alliance began(04:43) How the idea landed with staff(09:31) Practising, not theorising(15:53) Is this a merger?(17:25) From 81 possibilities to three workstreams(23:35) What it looks like at country level(27:10) The Somalia procurement story(30:28) Not survivalism(35:04) Just starting to start(41:29) Efficiency and transformation(45:09) Small-t transformation(47:22) A canary in the coal mine(49:24) The message to funders(51:38) Taking the Alliance to UNGA(55:59) The Hot Debrief(59:31) Panarchy and feedback loops(1:03:36) Wishing the Alliance well