Course – Lesson 7: IV. We Are Collective Impact

From 100% Community, “Chapter 31: Sharing the Vision to Achieve Collective Impact”

A shared vision is required for any successful social movement — and 100% Community is as much a movement as it is a mobilizing strategy.

For two decades since the original ACEs Study was published, the nation has essentially ignored ACEs. What little that has been done by large-hearted folks who understood the magnitude of the challenge represented by trauma but had very few resources was the art of the possible: workshops, lessons, websites and articles.

Even twenty years ago, data could identify so many suffering the consequences of ACEs who had also been side-lined in all aspects of life by health and education disparities. Yet we did not stare the disparities in the face. You’re reading this book because we, as a nation, did not build the services and systems shown to prevent and treat ACEs.

In the last few decades, we did learn to mobilize around wearing seat belts and ending smoking on planes. We were even pretty “Johnny on the spot” when we thought Ebola might enter the US. We as a nation know exactly how to focus our collective attention and millions of dollars on a problem and solve it.
But childhood trauma has not been a priority.

Until now.

No state, until New Mexico in 2019, had committed resources to developing a data-driven, cross-sector and county-focused strategy to prevent and treat ACEs and trauma-a model guided by the social determinants of health. Other states have funded workshops on being “trauma-informed” but this, as stated throughout the book, does not generate vital services families need to prevent ACEs and trauma.

Our work uses the lens of the social determinants of health and decades of research on reducing health and education disparities to guide local mobilization around 10 vital services shown to empower families and increase health, safety and education.

For those local leaders committed to trauma-free and thriving children, students and families, they are doing the data-driven and collaborative work of setting up action teams in each county to do both small-scale and large-scale, long-term projects. Those leading the 100% New Mexico initiative, our institute’s centerpiece program, are building the capacity to increase the services of health clinics, food banks and housing supports. They are working to support the development of full service community schools with behavioral health care among other initiatives in all ten surviving and thriving sectors. This community mobilizing work requires a framework shown to move people toward a shared goal and vision.

This process of sharing a vision has been packaged as a process called Collective Impact. It has decades of research behind it, and many meaningful projects have been completed by following its guidelines

In the article “Collective Impact,” written by John Kania and Mark Kramer and published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, developers of the collective impact model discuss how large-scale social change requires broad cross-sector coordination and the importance of social sector focused collaboration instead of the isolated intervention of individual organizations. They describe how successful collective impact initiatives typically have five conditions that together produce true alignment and lead to powerful results: a common agenda, shared measurement systems, mutually reinforcing activities, continuous communication, and backbone support organizations.

The 100% New Mexico initiative uses the collective impact model because it focuses on the power of strong leadership to get results through a shared vision and goals. The philosophy of collective impact can be applied to many large scale projects, such as creating a system of mental health services across the county to reduce childhood trauma, so we empower our 100% Community action teams with the collective impact model, along with the other tools in our toolbox.

As you mobilize around an innovation, you will find the collective impact model essential. Like so many of the frameworks that guide our 100% New Mexico initiative, the best ones are the simplest. And, what could be simpler (and more powerful) than sharing a vision?

10 Visions within a One Shared Vision

The 100% New Mexico initiative, as you well know by now, envisions a county where all residents have access to 10 vital services. Within that process are a thousand different moving parts. Some of those components are your ten action teams, each focused on one vital service. They function, in some ways, as county coalitions within one mothership coalition. Within each action team are innovations in various stages of development and implementation. The goal is to ensure that all activities are transparent and in alignment.