What is Collective Impact?
Why Collective Impact? It Works!
Since 2001, Healthy Peninsula has served as the "backbone" organization for many local collaborations. We helped plant the seeds for Sedgwick Head Start, Friendship Cottage, and Ready by 21, all successful community-owned programs following initial Healthy Peninsula support and collaboration. Collective Impact principles continue to guide us now, as we hold more direct service projects, including Age-Friendly Coastal Communities, Bridging Neighbors, the School Garden & Greenhouse Project, the Childcare Provider Network, and other projects. This commitment to partnership and collaborative activities underlies all of our current programming.
Healthy Peninsula uses the Collective Impact model because we believe that more can be accomplished when organizations work together than when they work separately. Collective Impact has been explained as follows:
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The commitment of a group of actors from different sectors to a common agenda for solving a specific social problem.
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Unlike most collaborations, collective impact initiatives involve a centralized infrastructure, a dedicated staff, and a structured process that leads to a common agenda, shared measurement, continuous communication, and mutually reinforcing activities among all participants.
Healthy Peninsula’s work has generally followed a collective impact philosophy, although a hybrid model. Healthy Peninsula is a strong backbone organization that can lead cross-sector collaborations, encourage information- and resource-sharing, and create solutions to complex problems. When resources are lacking for an essential piece of a collectively designed initiative, we have stepped in as a partner to provide direct services to meet the need.
Not every Healthy Peninsula initiative or program is a stand-alone “collective impact initiative” but our overall philosophy of recognizing the value of collective impact tools and approaches informs all of our work. There is an important relationship between our collective impact work and our direct service work: The direct service projects generally flow from our collaborative community work and are designed to fill gaps that cannot be addressed through partner organizations’ programming. This unique hybrid model is perfectly suited for our small, rural service area, where community-based resources are scarce and innovative partnership design is essential.