2000115-Strengthening-Communities-with-Neighborhood-Data

A Framework for Indicators and Decisionmaking 143
Collective Impact
There has long been a concern that attempting to address fundamental
problems of American society through a collection of fragmented individual
programs is not going to work. But the conceptualization of a
forceful alternative has emerged only recently.
To be sure, performance management can improve individual programs.
But other goals are broader than any one level or branch of government
(let alone any one program) can handle. These agendas require
cross-sector engagement and support; that is, they need to be taken on
by civic leadership as a whole (i.e., by governing coalitions, as we have
discussed them in chapter 2).
This broader approach is called collective impact. Its most prominent
example so far is the Strive partnership, a Cincinnati, Ohio, coalition
involving child care advocates, school district superintendents, college
presidents, local philanthropies, business leaders, and social service providers
(Bridgespan Group 2012). Instead of focusing on the stated objectives
of their individual organizations, they have pledged to collectively
pursue, and be held accountable for, achieving broader educational
goals. Their mission is to “coordinate improvements at every stage of a
young person’s life from ‘cradle to career’ ” (Kania and Kramer 2011, 36).
One of the required conditions of the collective impact approach is
shared measurement. 16 “Collecting data and measuring results consistently
across all participants ensures efforts remain aligned and participants
hold each other accountable” (Hanleybrown, Kania, and Kramer
2012, 1). The collective impact approach is spreading beyond the realm
of education. For example, it has been recommended to address citywide
community development needs in a proposal by Brophy (2011) for Milwaukee,
Wisconsin. As more local coalitions adopt the collective impact
approach, that will also expand demand for a wider array of reliable and
frequently updated community information.
Evaluation
Where performance management emphasizes finding out how well a
program is working in the short term as a basis for making midcourse
corrections, program evaluation seeks to find out whether the program
was successful in meeting its objectives related to effectiveness