Opportunity Chicago held up as model of “collective impact”

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Stanford Social Innovation Review recently highlighted the “collective impact” of Opportunity Chicago as an example of successful collaborative efforts around the country.

Workforce development initiative Opportunity Chicago, established in 2006 by the City of Chicago, Chicago Housing Authority and The Partnership for New Communities, helped more than 6,000 public-housing residents find quality employment in five years.

After receiving an overwhelming response to a recent article introducing the concept of collective impact, SSIR published an online follow-up – “Channeling Change: Making Collective Impact Work” – that goes in depth about what it takes to achieve it. In it, the authors point to Opportunity Chicago as a notable case of highly structured, multi-partner efforts that had substantial impact. (PDF of the article here)

The authors, all managing directors at nonprofit consulting firm FSG, observe that, “collective impact is not just a fancy name for collaboration, but represents a fundamentally different, more disciplined, and higher performing approach to achieving large-scale social impact…In fact, we believe that there is no other way society will achieve large-scale progress against the urgent and complex problems of our time, unless a collective impact approach becomes the accepted way of doing business."

In its initial article, SSIR probed isolated impact versus collective impact, and identified five conditions of the latter: common agenda, shared measurement, mutually reinforcing activities, continuous communication and backbone support.

“Channeling Change” digs deeper, exploring pre-conditions for collective impact, bringing collective impact to life, setting a common agenda, keeping collective impact alive, shared measurement systems, and the essential intangibles.

In the discussion of setting a common agenda, the article uses Opportunity Chicago as an example of setting boundaries around an issue. “The initiative’s leaders realized that new [public] housing would not help if the residents could not meet the work requirement established to qualify for residency. As a result, they included workforce development within the housing initiative’s boundaries and established Opportunity Chicago, the collective impact initiative that ultimately placed 6,000 residents in jobs.”

The authors remind readers that despite a laying out of clear steps in the process, implementing collective impact is a “messy and fragile process,” and that many attempts may fail. However, they also note that, “even the attempt itself brings one important intangible benefit that is in short supply nowadays: hope…For many who are searching for a reason to hope in these difficult times, this alone may be purpose enough to embrace collective impact.”

SSIR is an award-winning magazine and website that covers cross-sectors solutions to global problems. Published at Stanford University, SSIR focuses on collaboration as a key to solving environmental, social and economic justice issues.

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