Collective Impact with a Dragonfly Strategy
Written by Tim Buckley, January 2024
Paul Schmitz got our attention quickly, saying that CBEL needs to imitate a dragonfly if we want to continue making “collective impacts” throughout the city. Ok, before explaining how that’s supposed to work, you need to know that CBEL’s aim is to strengthen families and to foster world-class education throughout Salem and Keizer. Achieving those two things will go a long way to improving safety, health, academic achievement, and financial security for all who live here.
According to Schmitz, who presented to CBEL’s Collaborative meeting in January, the dragonfly is a good model for demonstrating collective impact because, “it is the only insect able to propel itself in any direction when its four wings are working in unison.”
Let’s say the dragonfly’s body represents one specific community-wide goal: closing the school achievement gap for all students, for example. Each of its four wings are independent but cooperate to move where the brain directs. And just like the versatile insect, a successful collective impact effort can adapt quickly, moving laterally, up, or down as ever-changing situations and new data arise.
So, if we want to budge the academic needle into the excellent zone, CBEL (one of the wings) must work in concert with three other wings to get the job done. The second wing is comprised of three Neighborhood Family Councils (each representing thousands of households in three distinct areas of Salem and Keizer). A third wing is the School District (and elementary school administrators in those three neighborhoods). And the fourth wing, at least for this issue, is the Marion/Polk Early Learning Hub, which provides materials, training and mentoring of parents to become effective at-home teachers for their little ones, before they reach kindergarten age.
Each of the dragonfly wings was fully represented at the Collaborative gathering, where Schmitz addressed a curious and motivated group of about 100 people.
Each of the dragonfly wings was fully represented at the Collaborative gathering, where Schmitz addressed a curious and motivated group of about 100 people. To create a quick sense of unity and shared purpose, Schmitz asked each small group to make a list of traits a community would need to create dysfunction. The exercise quickly established wide agreement about what we’re trying to avoid – things like racial bias, autocratic leadership, no interest for compromising, or no intention to learn.
Then Schmitz, the author of Everyone Leads: Building Leadership from the Community Up, outlined key things necessary to build momentum on what CBEL has accomplished since it began, in 2019. The Building Community Resilience model we’re using says a city of our size must have a number of things working together to achieve population-wide results:
We must attempt to bring positive change to the demographics that experience improvement more slowly. In theory, by elevating this group, we can move the resilience needle for the entire population.
CBEL has done that by starting with three neighborhoods most challenged in their struggle to succeed.
We must also decide what partners are key to success, with each specific goal, and how to assure that equity is in place along the way.
CBEL is working with three nonprofits we call Impact Initiatives, to address financial, academic, family and housing stresses in those neighborhoods.
CBEL’s Definition of Equity:
Equity is fairness and justice, gained systematically by looking at disparities in opportunities, outcomes, and representation in our entire population, then going about dismantling those disparities through targeted, collective actions.
Notice the use of the word equity above. There’s a lot of chatter about what that means, and how CBEL is using the concept in building community resiliency. So here’s what we’re doing about it by not avoiding it:
CBEL has defined equity, and how it relates to integrity, fairness and TRUST. We’re integrating it into the process of building resilience throughout the city.
Equity is fairness and justice, gained systematically by looking at disparities in opportunities, outcomes, and representation in our entire population, then going about dismantling those disparities through targeted, collective actions.
And here are things we’re practicing while seeking equity:
Listening to and acting with the community’s wishes, in this case, the three neighborhood family councils (eventually growing to 4, 6 and more)
Building equity leadership and accountability. Our Executive Board, Collaborative, and neighborhood family councils each reflect our commitment to equity, fairness and inclusion
Recognizing new leadership and shifting power within the organization regularly
Focusing on systems change, in addition to specific neighborhood programs and services
Grounding the work in data, both neighborhood-specific and in the broader sense.
Collective Impact – the Dragonfly Effect
Here are some things that characterize a collective impact effort:
A common agenda for solving a specific social problem with a shared vision
Shared measurement, based on agreement between all network partners to track and share progress information in the same way
This fosters continuous learning, improvement and accountability
Mutually reinforcing activities, through which a coherence is found amid diversity
Continuous communication to build trust and solid relationships
A “backbone” team, dedicated to aligning and coordinating the work of the network group.
CBEL’s dragonfly is certainly hovering nicely but the success numbers we see in neighborhoods (student attendance, family involvement, social activities, projects completed, etc.) are not yet significantly moving the needle in citywide statistics (homelessness rates, gun violence, academic achievement, housing statistics, etc.) But the strides being made, the lessons learned, the objectives accomplished, and the relationships forged have us fired up for 2024, as collective impact continues its lift off.