Giving Compass' Take:

• This Stanford Social Innovation Review uses StrivePartnership as a good example of yielding to the decision-making authority of communities and trusting in their expertise.

• Are we willing to relinquish power in this way? It starts with recognizing that those closest to the problems we're trying to solve often have the greatest insights to give.

• Here are the results of quality collective impact.

Some scholars, consultants, and practitioners who seek collaborative solutions to improve communities have argued that this weakness is irreparable and a reason to dismiss collective impact. We think that conclusion is an overreach. We see the exposure of this deficiency as evidence that what we have been practicing has not been collective impact in its most durable and effective form. We believe the underlying premise of collective impact is sound. However, the field’s notion of what constitutes the “collective” has been shortsighted.

Arriving at this understanding is more a matter of collective impact’s growing pains than evidence of its ultimate failure. It is as much a by-product of its foundational intention to promote institutional collaboration than a rejection of community. But our experience in applying collective impact has shown us that community participation must become a much more integral part of any such collaborative effort. Institutional leaders must empower residents and grassroots leaders as peers with shared authority, shared responsibility, and shared accountability. Doing so requires cultivating a broader, more diverse, deeper collective of actors who can ensure even greater impact than collaborations where institutional leaders dominate. StrivePartnership has taken responsibility for advancing this model, and StriveTogether has supported and encouraged the efforts of other community partnerships in its national network to do likewise.

Read the full article about elevating community authority in collective impact by Byron P. White, Jennifer Blatz, & Mark L. Joseph at Stanford Social Innovation Review.