PODCAST · business
Collective Impact Forum
by Collective Impact Forum
The Collective Impact Forum is here to share resources, tools, and stories to support social change makers working in cross-sector collaboration.
Episodes
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How Empathetic Agility Can Help Leaders Navigate Change
When circumstances change quickly, leaders face pressure to make decisions and adjust plans while supporting people who may feel uncertain or overwhelmed. How can leaders keep the work moving while remaining connected to the people and purpose for doing it? In this episode, we explore “empathetic...
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How Does Emergent Learning Help Collaboratives Learn and Adapt?
When collaborative partners come together to tackle complex challenges, learning must be part of the work itself and not an afterthought. In this new podcast episode, we talk with Lauren Gase of Mindful Metrics and Lori Fuller of Fuller Impact about Emergent Learning and how the principles and...
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How Can a Collaborative Radically Restart?
What does it look like for a collaborative to shift from nearly sunsetting to achieving a vibrant renewal? We tackle this challenging question in the 100th episode of our podcast, where we dive into the realities of what it means to rebuild collective work from the ground up. To explore this…
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How Can Your Collaborative Strategy Be Both Structured and Emergent?
What does it look like for a collaborative to balance planned strategies with new and rising needs? In this new podcast discussion, we talk with Melissa Darnell, Heather Equinoss, and Luzette Jaimes from the organization CoCreative, and learn how they work with collaboratives to blend structured...
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Building Belonging through Conversations
In a time when so many are grappling with division and polarization in their communities, where does one start to build connections to better understand when and why do you feel like you “belong” in your community? In this new podcast conversation, we talk with Anjum Rahman and Atarau...
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How to Influence without Authority
A backbone’s role in a collective is often to facilitate collaboration among partners and help the group make progress toward a shared goal. This can be a complex challenge, as the backbone doesn’t hold formal authority or decision-making power. Instead, it must rely on its central coordinating...
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How Collaboration Can Support Communities Through Economic Transitions
How can a community shift their economic future? In this episode, we explore how communities heavily reliant on a single industry can come together to diversify and build a more resilient economy. This kind of transformation is complex and requires collaboration across a broad range of partners…
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Defending and Advancing Democracy and Equity in Collective Impact Work
Collaboratives based in the U.S. that are working to solve for and reduce disparities in their communities are facing compounding challenges with the current chaotic sociopolitical climate, including sudden funding cuts, mass job losses, mis- and disinformation campaigns, demoralizing messaging...
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Why Community Listening is Critical to Achieve Effective Philanthropy
Listening to community members and tapping into community expertise are key factors when trying to understand why social issues are happening, and what potential solutions may be best to address these challenges. This is especially true for philanthropy, a sector committed to traditionally…
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Why is Backbone Leadership Different?
What are the skills and mindsets necessary to be a backbone leader for a collaborative? In this new podcast discussion, we talk with Paul Schmitz and Dominique Samari, authors of the recent report, “Backbone Leadership Is Different.” We explore how backbone leadership is unique and why It differs...
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Partnering with Companies to Advance Collective Impact
Companies can be a critical partner in collective impact work. However, working with companies can pose unique challenges, from understanding how to initiate these partnerships to understanding how to best partner to sustain these relationships over time. To learn more about how collaboratives…
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How to Foster Effective Partnerships with Government
Achieving long-term change requires having government—whether local, state, or federal—at the collaborative table as a key partner. However, many collaboratives share that building these partnerships can be challenging, intimidating, or confusing. To better understand how to build and sustain...
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Reflecting on a Career Committed to Collective Change
Later this fall, Tamarack Institute’s Co-CEO Liz Weaver will retire, closing a chapter that includes many decades supporting community change, collective impact, and poverty-reduction work across Canada and beyond. Liz is a long-time collaborator and dear friend of the Collective Impact Forum…
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Connecting Advocacy and Data to Advance Collective Goals
Last year, Independent Sector published research on how advocacy by the nonprofit sector has evolved over the last 25 years, and specifically, how it has severely declined, with only 31% of nonprofits reporting advocacy activities over the last 5 years. Compare that to the year 2000, where more...
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Designing to Inspire Community Joy and Connection
How can inclusive design spur community connections and build stronger partnerships in the process? During the COVID pandemic, the Van Alen Institute and the Urban Design Forum collaborated to launch Neighborhoods Now, a program shepherding resources, both funding and people, toward pandemic...
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How Practicing Futurism Can Strengthen Your Collaborative Strategy
When building a collaborative strategy or working through your implementation plans, it might feel like what you need most is a crystal ball (or a mystically accurate Magic 8 ball) to reveal which activities will work, which won’t, and where you can pivot so you and your partners can keep making...
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Advancing Equity in Times of Polarization and Division
Without proactively removing the structures and systems that have contributed to inequity, place-based collaboratives can not make a meaningful impact on the lives of those most excluded and underestimated in communities. However, given the increasing anti-DEI political and cultural headwinds...
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The Necessary Skills to Navigate Change
Navigating and managing change is key to a collaborative’s journey, but it’s also one of the most challenging as each partner’s relationship, personal history, and ability to participate in change can vary. Differences in how partners navigate change, if not recognized and explored, can make it...
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For Philanthropy to Succeed, All Strategies Must Address Disability
Addressing issues related to disability and access are often cordoned off within the social sector and philanthropy. Disability is often deemed as “separate” from issue-specific systems change work, such as education, climate, economic mobility, or health equity. Funders supporting causes like...
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Why Understanding Local Context Is Critical for Collective Impact
Understanding a community’s “context” and its readiness for complex change work is a critical factor for launching and advancing collective impact work. Knowing the local context is necessary to support work with and within a community--who is part of the community, what are they experiencing…
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Why a Policy Agenda is an Important Part of Collective Impact Work
A core element of collective impact is changing systems in the pursuit of equity. Pursuing policy change and advocacy efforts are some of the key levers to effectively change how systems operate. But how can cross-sector partners within a collective impact initiative work together to co-create a...
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Mental Health is Important for Every Collaborative
May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and we wanted to highlight the importance of recognizing and supporting mental health as a critical and necessary element of a robust and sustainable collective impact effort. We frequently receive questions from a wide variety of collaboratives that are...
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How Belonging, Meaning, Wellbeing, and Purpose (BMWP) Can Empower Youth and Their Communities
For more than a decade, The Opportunity Youth Forum at the Aspen Institute’s Forum for Community Solutions has been working with a growing network of urban, rural, and tribal communities across the U.S. to build and scale reconnection pathways that achieve better outcomes in education, employment...
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Pivoting to Build a Stronger Collaborative
We welcome back members of the Healthy Food Community of Practice to hear what they learned from their multi-year collaboration and how the way they worked together changed over time. Launched in 2020, the Healthy Food Community of Practice is a network of more than 50 organizations working…
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Shifting from Competition to Partnership in Private Sector Collaboration
The Millers for Nutrition coalition is working with 100+ millers and other partners to achieve an ambitious goal—getting nutritious, fortified food to 1 billion people by 2026. One of the critical questions that Millers for Nutrition has grappled with is how to get private-sector partners, many…
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The Ongoing Practice of Building Movements and Solidarity
What does it mean to build a movement? How is movement building connected to organizing and practicing solidarity with others? And why are these concepts important to make progress on collective work? In this deep dive conversation, we discuss core aspects of movement-building with Adaku Utah,...
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Exploring the Four Voices of Design to Solve Complex Problems
Getting to the heart of complex problems can be tricky. How does one untangle the many threads that can be involved? How do you uncover what the real pain points are so that you can address them? In this discussion, we explore the approach of human-centered design and how it can be used to both...
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How Community Leads the Way with Participatory Action Research (PAR)
Communities can be “researched,” engaged, and surveyed to explore a variety of questions such as what barriers are preventing students from graduating? What are the local economic and health impacts of having only a few grocery stores in the area? It’s important to rigorously explore these types…
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What Collective Change Can You Make in 100 Days?
Addressing homelessness in rural areas has multiple complexities including scarcity of funding, support services, and shelter options, as well as facing a common misconception that rural homelessness does not exist. To better understand how homelessness was affecting their community, partners...
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(Replay) The Role of Narrative Change in Collective Action
During the winter break, we're replaying some of our favorite past episodes. This replay episode features a dynamic discussion from the 2021 Collective Impact Action Summit, and focuses on the importance of narrative in collective social change efforts. This discussion is led by Melody Barnes of...
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(Replay) Leading From ‘Languishing’ to Beloved Community with Rev. Dr. Starsky Wilson
During the winter break, we're replaying some of our favorite past episodes. In this episode from 2022, we hear from Rev. Dr. Starsky Wilson, who serves as President and CEO of the Children’s Defense Fund. Dr. Wilson reflects on the challenging times that many of us experienced earlier in the...
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Achieving Transformational Results in Housing Through Partnerships
In a time when many cities across the United States are facing a growing housing crisis, one community has challenged the status quo, working across divides to bring partners together to raise millions of dollars - with a goal of building 10,000 housing units by 2028 in California’s Coachella...
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What Makes an Effective Backbone Leader
To find out what contributes to an effective and sustainable backbone, the EdRedesign Lab at Harvard University interviewed backbone leaders and field-building organizations about their experiences. Earlier this year, they released a report on the most critical skills and competencies required…
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(Replay) The Power of Parent Engagement
During this holiday week, we're replaying one of our favorite episodes from last year that focused on the power of parent engagement. In this 2022 podcast conversation, we learned about the parent engagement work of Child Safety Forward in Hartford, CT - one of five demonstration sites for the...
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Sustaining Impact for the Long-Term with Child Safety Forward
How does a collaborative effort start planting the foundation for sustainability early on? In this podcast episode, we learn about the work of Child Safety Forward, a four-year demonstration initiative that engaged five sites across the U.S. in research, planning, and implementation around...
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System Catalysts - The Moth: Storytelling Leads to Change
We’re excited to share with you an episode of another podcast that we think you’ll find very valuable for your social change work. System Catalysts is a show that shares compelling stories from philanthropists and change-makers who are promoting systems change in their communities. They just...
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Centering Equity in Challenging Times
In this episode, Director of Programs and Partnerships Courtney W. Robertson talks with Jamilica Burke and Melody Freeman from Seeding Success, an organization focused on supporting the wellbeing of children and families in Memphis, Tennessee. In this conversation, they discuss how Seeding…
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Partnering with Local Governments to Advance Collective Goals
Local governments can play a critical and necessary role in advancing system and policy changes to support communities, but it can be challenging to understand the complexities within local government and how best to work together. In this episode, Forum Director of Programs and Partnerships,...
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How Homelessness is Solvable with a Collective Approach
Complex issues like homelessness can feel unsolvable or intractable, but that does not have to be the case. Through a commitment to a collective approach and strategies, communities can end homelessness. We take a deep dive into this collective approach required to solve homelessness with…
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Measuring What Matters With Community-Led Monitoring
In this episode, we discuss the practice of community-led monitoring, and how this practice can help inform and influence collaborative change efforts. To learn more about community-led monitoring, we talk with the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition (ITPC), a global network that works...
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Heeding the Call for Community Partnerships
In this episode, we discuss the power of community partnerships, and how necessary they are when working to support better outcomes for the whole community. In this discussion, we learn about the community partnership work of JumpStart, a service organization that focuses on supporting folks...
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Building Capacity to Support Community Listening
What can it look like to build capacity to support authentic community listening? In this podcast discussion, we learn about the community listening work supported by Foundation for a Healthy St. Petersburg, based in St. Petersburg, Florida. We hear from a group of partners that worked together…
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Krista Tippett: Collectively Remaking Our World
How can you imagine and create a world for everyone? In this new podcast episode, we’re sharing our conversation with Krista Tippett, which was the closing keynote conversation from the 2023 Collective Impact Action. Krista is a journalist, a National Humanities Medalist, a bestselling author…
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Imani Barbarin: Creating Accessible Spaces for Belonging
What does it mean to create truly accessible spaces within your collective work? At the 2023 Collective Impact Action Summit, we explored this question and more in a keynote conversation with Imani Barbarin (Crutches and Spice), who is a disability and inclusion activist, speaker and content...
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Creating Purposeful Spaces of Inclusion and Belonging: A Conversation with Ruchika Tulshyan
What does it mean to create a culture of “belonging” within your collective work? At the 2023 Collective Impact Action Summit, we explored this question and more in a keynote conversation with Ruchika Tulshyan, award-winning inclusion strategist, speaker, and author of the bestselling book,...
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Strengthening Relationships through a Community of Practice
Communities of practice are a valuable way of bringing partners together to connect and learn from each other to strengthen their collective work. It can also be very challenging to navigate the complexities that come with bringing a wide spectrum of partners together. Founded in 2020, the…
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Learning to Share Power Within an Organization
In this episode, we explore the topic of sharing power, which is a key component and strategy when advancing equity in collective impact work. But what can sharing power look like in practice? How are decisions made, and how is power distributed amongst a broad set of colleagues? To explore this...
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Centering Parent Voice and Leadership to Support Early Relational Health
In this episode, we learn about how to build and strengthen partnerships with parent leaders so that the wide spectrum of parent voices and needs are kept at the center when supporting early relational health for families. To explore this topic and more, we learn from the national collective...
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Building Collective Power to Strengthen Collaboration
In this episode, we talk about building “collective power,” including what it means to build collective power and what factors can contribute to building it. To explore those questions and more, we learn about the Child Care NEXT coalition and how through advocacy work, they have developed a...
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Supporting a Sustainable and Resilient Collaboration – Part 2
This episode is the second part of a two-part discussion that explores what practices can help a collaborative be more sustainable and resilient. For part 2, we welcome back our colleagues from the Tamarack Institute, Liz Weaver and Mike Des Jardins, who recently authored a new, free-to-access...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
The Collective Impact Forum is here to share resources, tools, and stories to support social change makers working in cross-sector collaboration.
HOSTED BY
Collective Impact Forum
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Collective Impact Forum have?
Collective Impact Forum currently has 101 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Collective Impact Forum about?
The Collective Impact Forum is here to share resources, tools, and stories to support social change makers working in cross-sector collaboration.
How often does Collective Impact Forum release new episodes?
Collective Impact Forum publishes regularly with 101 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to Collective Impact Forum?
You can listen to Collective Impact Forum on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Collective Impact Forum?
Collective Impact Forum is created and hosted by Collective Impact Forum.
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