CREATING OPPORTUNITIES FOR OUR NEIGHBORS IN NEED
Together Creating Collective Impact Imagine that we are gathering with a group of friends. For fun, we decide to work on a puzzle. It is very large – with thousands of pieces – and needs a big surface and lots of initiative and persistence to assemble. Given the size of the project, parts of the puzzle are lumped together – top left, top middle, top right and so forth. We don’t know how the sections will connect; nevertheless, we take pieces and get to work, feeling that each of our efforts will contribute to the whole – and hoping that the table is big enough. As we build the puzzle, each of us references the big picture on the box for guidance, and asks for help when we need it (and when we are able to hold our competitive spirits at bay). While not all of us work as quickly as others, eventually each section is finished, we connect the parts, and the larger picture comes into view, a combination of individual and group effort. When it comes to large-scale social challenges like children and reading or older adult isolation, it seems like this is how we most often have tried to solve them: each of us taking a part of the larger project, working mostly by ourselves, wondering if our efforts will ever connect with those of others. While working this way can make a difference, as with the puzzle, the process is frustrating when the right pieces aren’t available, when we work at different paces, and when it is hard to see what overall progress is being made. As such, along the way it may feel like the puzzle will never get fully put together. Collective Impact is a method for large-scale community change that we are utilizing at United Way of Weld County. If it were a puzzle project, collective impact would begin with an overly large table, so that we know that everyone can see what is happening all of the time. We would have our individual parts; by design we would seek one another’s guidance and support while assembling the pieces. And from the start we would clearly see how each section of the puzzle is fitting with others to complete the whole.
Collective Impact in Action Collective impact is an important part of my United Way of Weld County experience. Previously, I served as the vice president of community impact, UnitedWay-Weld.org | 970-353-4300 PO Box 1944, Greeley, CO 80632 814 9th Street, Greeley, CO 80631
Melanie Woolman President & CEO “Successful collective impact results in other regions throughout the United States is what led the United Way board of directors to adopt a collective impact approach. I have seen first-hand how it can meaningfully and sustainably change our community for the better.”