Giving Compass' Take:

• Stanford Social Innovation Review discusses alternatives to the backbone organization — one superstructure that coordinates collective impact efforts — in establishing better collaborations, using food insecurity in Houston as an example of what works.

• The aim is always to build sustainable impact, and the different structures described here can contribute to that effort. How willing are we to step out of our usual comfort zones? It'll take backbone!

• Here's more about how quality collective action can produce results.


Over the years, more and more funders, program directors, public officials, and scholars have pushed for collaborative approaches to achieve significant social change. The impetus for this has largely been the realization that despite multitudes of initiatives dedicated to issues such as improving educational outcomes for young students, eliminating hunger and diseases, and providing better employment opportunities for disadvantaged people, wide-ranging progress remains elusive.

To start, it is useful to define five elements we see as imperative for collaboration:

  • User focus. Collaboration impact is best achieved when the people an initiative aims to serve as co-creators, rather than just recipients or beneficiaries.
  • A common agenda. The more alignment there is between the definition of the problem and the goals of the collaboration, the more likely it is that participating organizations will achieve impact.
  • Self-reinforcement. Collaborative activities and outcomes that produce rewards for each partner make progress more sustainable without external support.
  • The potential for scale. Collaborations that can grow easily and quickly are more likely to produce impact.
  • A broad scope. Pursuing a broader scope of activities tends to provide more holistic solutions to social problems and address more root causes.

Using a range of structures addresses the limitations of any single collaborative form. For instance, creating a common agenda in the backbone collaboration is difficult because the metrics are imposed by the backbone organization on the service providers rather than emerging from them through a more collaborative process.

Read the full article about nonprofit collaboration and backbone organizations by Douglas A. Schuler, Balaji Koka, Rachel Buissereth, Charlie Card-Childers at Stanford Social Innovation Review.