We have the honor of working with communities all over the country looking embrace the concept of collective impact and establish cradle-to-career civic infrastructure to achieve better outcomes for children. Unfortunately, the energy around this work has led to a new political challenge in many communities: jockeying among partners to become the backbone. In one community that reached out to us, they noted they had NINE backbone organizations in the education space! As we all know, a body that has nine backbones is really going to struggle to move forward effectively. The same is the case for a community working to improve outcomes in a specific issue area like education. We fully embrace that a community may likely need multiple backbones for multiple issues — health, public safety, housing, education, etc. — but we strongly advise against having multiple backbones in just one issue area.
So how might we think about the different roles organizations looking to take up leadership can play in order to capitalize on all of this interest? We have developed one way to think about this that has helped numerous communities find a way through this challenge. The visual below captures the concept at a high level, but the key is to differentiate between the role of backbone organizations and conveners. The primary difference is that a single backbone entity is needed to help support the overall development of civic infrastructure to have collective impact. Conveners, on the other hand, are focused on working with the relevant partners — practitioners and other interested stakeholders — to build comprehensive and data-driven outcomes around a single outcome along the continuum. See a summary of the roles in the visual below:
The role of the backbone
The key roles of a backbone organization are outlined in detail below. Before going into the roles, it is important to note that while the backbone often is perceived as a position with the most power in a collective impact effort, it is most effectively played by an entity that embraces the principles of servant leadership. In essence, the backbone needs to play a very quiet and behind-the-scenes role, lifting up others who are doing the work so they get the well-deserved credit for the data-driven work they are doing on the ground to support children. In the end, an entity willing to take this servant-oriented stance, instead of being more visible, will be able to play the following roles much more effectively as partners across all sectors and at all levels will feel respected for the contributions to the partnership vision:
- Connect and support leaders: The core function of the backbone is to ensure leaders at all levels playing a variety of roles within the community keep the vision, mission and outcomes of the partnership front and center when making major decisions. This takes regular meetings with any and all key stakeholders who contribute to the vision so they feel supported by the work of the partnership instead of threatened. This also means addressing political fires that that regularly emerge when partners are struggling to communicate or unexpected drama emerges in the press.
- Establish the data management infrastructure: At an early meeting in a community we have partnered with to take on this work, one of the funders in the core group of leaders was almost in a state of shock at the end of the civic infrastructure overview. It turned out she was worried that she and her peers were going to be asked to pay for data experts and systems to work in each and every individual nonprofit and related partner in town. But she quickly realized the backbone enables you to avoid such an expense by centralizing the development of the data management system and supporting partners to help collect, manage and report data effectively.
- Advocate for technical support: As practitioners work together to build action plans, invariable challenges emerge related to items such as engaging key partners, getting access to data and other key resources, and communicating the work. The backbone can help advocate with leaders to help address the issues or offer technical support like facilitation or experts from the business community to help overcome what can seem like small, yet show-stopping hurdles.
- Marshal investments: When StrivePartnership was started in Cincinnati, we heard from directors of nonprofits who many spent over 90 percent of their time fundraising. Over time, as action plans emerge from practitioners to improve specific outcomes, the backbone can help reduce this burden on individual providers by advocating with public and private investors to support comprehensive and cohesive action plans where each partner plays a clearly defined role.
The role of the convener
The convener, on the other hand, plays a much more specific and frequently more visible role in building action plans. Because practitioners are looking to bring attention to their work, the convener can be out front with the work they do to help develop comprehensive action plans because it will invariably raise awareness both for the importance of the work and the contributions of the partners. So entities looking to be more visible and play a leadership role may very well be better positioned to become a convener to do the following:
- Engage practitioners. Practitioners have more than enough work to do on a daily basis; adding the work of a network initially can be burdensome. The convener can focus more on the specific needs of practitioners to actively engage in this work, while ensuring they are willing and able to use data to shape their individual and collective action plans. In the end, the convener is focused on making it as easy as possible for partners to actively engage, helping them to overcome specific obstacles and ensuring the necessary incentives are in place to make this worth their while.
- Facilitate multi-sector networks. Once networks are formed with practitioners and other relevant stakeholders to focus on a specific outcome, expert facilitation is needed to ensure the partners use data to build an action plan that is focused on scaling what works. Conveners help to ensure this support is in place, often in the form of expert facilitation, so the network stays focused and develops an action plan the full partnership can advocate for among a host of critical local and national stakeholders.
- Update action plans. Once the action plan is completed, it can’t just sit on a shelf. It is critical to update the plan every time new data becomes available to inform decisions around what is working to improve the outcomes the partnership has embraced. It is this continuous improvement of action plans that leads to the long-term, disciplined use of data at the heart of making civic infrastructure valuable.
It is important to note that in each of these roles, the backbone and the convener, the entities in question must be a) un-biased toward specific partners or strategies; b) willing to use data to drive decisions and navigate the many challenges that come with such a role; and c) have resources to fund the basic staffing roles needed to do the work. This often can narrow the pool of potential players to fill these roles. But if partners can meet these criteria, they can find a way to lead. Not everyone has to be the backbone. In the end, given the state of the outcomes most communities hope to move, there are plenty of leadership roles to play to realize the improvements we all so desire.
 See definition in “Collective Impact” by Kania and Kramer at http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/collective_impact/