What is a collective impact alliance and how can it accelerate positive outcomes?
It’s GO time.
You have a stellar cast of team members ready for action. You have effective bi-lateral partnerships. You have a competent board of directors dispensing wisdom and guidance. You have committed investors providing the capital necessary to sustain your mission.
So why in the world would you bother to partner with other organizations?
It’s a fair question. Collaboration with organizations in traditional ways can result in considerable drawbacks. Adding more people to the mix could potentially bog down operations. Melding multiple teams may complicate work and elongate delivery timelines. Anything could go wrong—pitfalls may be aplenty.
To avoid those commonly faced issues that arise with partnerships, a radical and different approach is needed. Building resilient partnerships through the new paradigm of a collective impact alliance, organizations can shift away from the mindset of unnecessarily creating multiple programs, trying to prove oneself and creating additional work.
This new method of aligning your organization with likeminded partners looking to achieve the same goal can foster substantial benefits:
- Leaning into shared capacity and effective teamwork can accelerate enriching, life-changing work in neighborhoods, nations, and the world.
- Careful planning and thoughtful coordination on the front end can make a decisive difference in maximizing results and addressing issues when time is of the essence.
- Working in tandem with compatible organizations can lead to a more cohesive and powerful use of resources, whether it be brainpower, time, technology, or funds.
- Together, various organizations can bring their respective strengths to the table and examine how they might reinforce one another’s areas of need.
These benefits are just a few of the many dividends that can sprout from a collective impact alliance—multiple organizations teaming up for a common cause. Such alliances harness the innovation, practicality, and passion of each member organization and help achieve their shared goal or combat an identified challenge more efficiently and effectively.
Collective impact alliances are multiple organizations teaming up for a common cause.
It must be noted that just because multiple organizations are working toward a common vision, a resounding win isn’t guaranteed. Nor should every organization working toward a particular vision align themselves with every other organization working toward that same vision!