Getting to Impact: The Collective Impact Fieldwide Evaluation
Date: April 24, 2018 | 1:00 - 2:00 p.m. EDT
Guests: Terri Akey, ORS Impact and Lauren Gase, Spark Policy Institute
Host: Liz Weaver, Tamarack Institute
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The Evaluation Team from ORS Impact and the Spark Policy Institute have spent the past eight months evaluating the impact of Collective Impact efforts across the United States and Canada. This evaluation effort was designed to seek answers to the following five questions:
1. To what extent and under what conditions does the Collective Impact approach contribute to population level outcomes?
2. What systems changes have contributed to the population level outcomes being achieved?
3. What are the other positive or negative impacts, intended or unintended, on the community and system?
4. What evidence is there that the Collective Impact effort has contributed to these systems and population changes?
5. What evidence is there that the population changes would not have been achieved if the Collective Impact approach hadn't been used?
The Evaluation Team reviewed the results of 25 Collective Impact efforts including three in Canada and conducted deeper dive visits with eight sites. Join us on this webinar to learn about when Collective Impact has an impact and the lessons learned from this extensive evaluation effort.
Host
Liz Weaver, Tamarack Institute
Liz Weaver is the Co-CEO of Tamarack Institute where she is leading the Tamarack Learning Centre. The Tamarack Learning Centre has a focus on advancing community change efforts and does this by focusing on five strategic areas including Collective Impact, collaborative leadership, community engagement, community innovation and evaluating community impact. Liz is well-known for her thought leadership on Collective Impact and is the author of several popular and academic papers on the topic. She is a co-catalyst partner with the Collective Impact Forum and leads a Collective Impact capacity building strategy with the Ontario Trillium Foundation.
Guests
Terri Akey, ORS Impact
Dr. Akey is a Director at ORS Impact. She holds deep expertise in educational policy research, program evaluation, and evidence and data use to promote organizational and systems learning and change. She is a nimble and flexible researcher who conducts complex, mixed-methods studies, formative/developmental evaluations, assesses large-scale systems change, and advises intermediaries, nonprofits, and state and local education agencies and other stakeholders on how to better serve communities, families, and children.
Dr. Akey specializes in collaborative approaches to research and evaluation, working side-by-side with community and education partners to obtain and use actionable evidence to define and achieve success and create access to opportunities and capacity to reach those success goals. Across all her work, she collaborates with partners to solve complex education and social problems and is deeply committed to social justice and equitable opportunity and outcomes for all children, families, and communities.
Lauren Gase, Spark Policy Institute
Lauren Gase is a senior researcher at Spark Policy Institute. She has expertise in quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods research and evaluation, having led a number of studies at the national- and local-level to improve health, educational, and social outcomes. She enjoys using approaches, methods, and data analysis techniques that meaningfully facilitate stakeholder engagement, influence policy and program decision making, and foster organizational improvement.Much of her work has focused on identifying ways to improve the holistic health and well-being of youth and families in partnership with multiple sectors, including the education and juvenile justice systems.
Lauren holds a B.S. from University of California–Santa Barbara, a Master’s in Public Health from Emory University, and a Ph.D. in Health Policy from the University of California–Los Angeles.
Resources
- Read the report When Collective Impact has Impact
