By: Christian Ragland and Kayleigh Weaver
February 01st, 2023

Organizations engaging in Collective Impact know that effective collaboration and communication are critical to achieving impact within a large network of partners. This is also true when it comes to managing the data that informs performance and impact measurement efforts. One way to improve communication and collaboration in the Collective Impact process is to implement unified data collection and management software across a network. Unified data management improves data accuracy and accessibility and helps make data more actionable.  In this article, we will discuss five ways using Clear Impact Suite software supports communication, collaboration, and Collective Impact.

data communication collective impact

Table of Contents:

  1. Achieving Collective Impact with Results-Based Accountability
  2. What is Clear Impact Suite?
  3. Define, Share, and Report Your Common Purpose
  4. Institute Your Shared Data Measurement and Management System
  5. Ensure Your Strategies and Actions are Aligned
  6. Engage in Continuous Communication and Ensure Your Systems “Speak” to Each Other
  7. Backbone Support Organizations Need Support Too
  8. Helpful Links

Achieving Collective Impact with Results-Based Accountability

Popularized by John Kania and Mark Kramer in a 2011 article for the Standford Social Innovation Review, Collective Impact is a framework designed to help groups collaboratively solve social problems. Governments and nonprofits utilize Collective Impact to create measurable improvements in people’s lives. To create Collective Impact, groups must engage in effective communication and achieve alignment on five conditions.

Ask anyone how to achieve the conditions of Collective Impact, and you’ll get a different answer. At Clear Impact, we instruct our clients on how to achieve the framework using Results-Based Accountability (RBA) and Unified Data Management. In short, RBA provides the “how-to,” and Unified Data Management provides a standardized data management system to achieve the conditions of Collective Impact.

Here’s how we teach our clients to achieve each condition, utilizing RBA principles and Unified Data Management:

  1. Establish a Common Agenda: Designing appropriate Results (desired conditions of community well-being) and Indicators (measures quantifying the achievement of Results) provides a clear, practical, and measurable way of articulating a Common Purpose for a community.
  2. Institute a Shared Measurement System: Defining RBA Performance Measures for each community partner that clearly align with the Common Agenda provides the information needed to make decisions and revise strategies going forward. Groups can also achieve Shared Measurement by using data management software systems that “speak to each other” (data is easily transferred and shared among partners).
  3. Engage in Mutually Reinforcing Activities: Shared Measurement is just the beginning. Transparency in planning can help you use data to make decisions and guide your improvement strategies. Groups can use RBA’s signature Turn the Curve Thinking process to ensure their data improvement strategies and action plans are aligned. Unified data management software systems can facilitate the sharing of RBA Turn the Curve Action Plans. 
  4. Continuous Communication: Communication, not just between partners but also between funders and the public, is a key component of any successful Collective Impact initiative. Some data management systems are built to support social sector work by facilitating communication. They primarily accomplish this by enabling data sharing among partners and between partners and the public. 
  5. Backbone Support Organization: A backbone organization provides the supporting infrastructure for a Collective Impact effort and is a facilitator of a highly structured, data-driven decision-making process. Backbone support organizations are uniquely positioned to advocate the use of RBA and Unified Data Management across the Commentive Impact initiative. These tools help the backbone entity track progress on overall strategies and quickly identify opportunities for improvement and optimization.

What is Clear Impact Suite?

Clear Impact Suite is a two-in-one data management and reporting system. Compyle (our client-level data collection software) and Scorecard (our performance and Impact management system) combine to form one Unified Data Management system in Clear Impact Suite. Using these systems separately can certainly aid individual Collective Impact efforts. When used together, however, they can actually streamline, align, and improve efforts across an entire Collective Impact network.

Here’s how…

1. Define, Share, and Report Your Common Purpose

Clear Impact Suite’s Scorecard software is a performance management system that can help backbone support organizations design, track, and share their Results and Indicators. The system is built to support the principles of RBA and utilizes RBA-specific terminology to support the work of community improvement. Furthermore, organizations can share their progress and community impact by sharing their “Scorecards” (data dashboards) publicly on their website.

Scorecards can also help backbone support organizations ensure all partners are aligned by analyzing the connection between partner performance data and overall Collective Impact strategies. How? Partners can track programmatic Performance Measures, and then the backbone support (or whoever is the main account administrator) can link these measures back to specific Results and Indicators to view everything in one place.

2. Institute Your Shared Data Management and Measurement System

If you decide to use Results-Based Accountability to guide your performance measurement system, Scorecard and Compyle are perfectly aligned to support the effort through aligned data management.

Considering the formula for Collective Impact, having organizations on one system like Clear Impact Suite satisfies most of the five steps. Compyle facilitates communication by making client-level results and program performance data immediately available to backbone support organizations for further analysis and strategy. Scorecard supports the entire RBA process from start to finish and can help standardize performance measurement across collaboratives.

 

Clear Impact Software Suite

Collect, organize, analyze, and report your data to make a Collective Impact.

Schedule a custom, private demo of Clear Impact Suite. 

Book Private Demo

3. Ensure Your Strategies and Actions are Aligned

In the previous sections, you already heard about how Scorecard can help connect individual actions and performance to network-wide strategies.

In order to create alignment, partners in a Collective Impact initiative must be able to easily share accurate data and information and connect individual efforts to high-level goals. Scorecard and Compyle both offer functionality that supports data-sharing and communication.

In addition to client-level data collection and tracking, Compyle allows organizations to store information about organizational partners and grantees. Organization tracking is the easiest way to track partner success because it allows users to view outcomes, notes, documents, and history for individual organizations and organize them into Groups for further analysis. Compyle also has referral functionality for partners using the same system.

For backbone organizations, this means getting a birds-eye view of all of the organizations in your network. For organizations, this means transparency of results and a single place to store and track your information. 

4. Engage in Continuous Communication and Ensure Your Systems “Speak” to Each Other

Data is only valuable if it can be easily shared among the relevant parties. As we have already discussed, Clear Impact Suite makes it easy to see the status of groups, partners, and organizations. But Compyle and Scorecard are also powerful data analytics tools. Compyle presents program-level analytics via “Compylations.” Compylations present chosen data in various ways so that organizations can track program outcomes and use the data to make improvements.

For further analysis and strategizing, Compyle can automatically transfer data into Clear Impact Scorecard (our performance and impact reporting system). In other words, the two systems are designed to “speak” to each other to automate the performance measurement process and improve accuracy. Compyle and Scorecard compatibility means organizations can “set it and forget it.” Whenever new data comes into Compyle, your Scorecards will automatically reflect the new data. 

Continuous communication is also relevant when it comes to transparently sharing results and engaging with the public. Scorecard’s embed feature is extremely helpful for maximizing communication and increasing data transparency. With Scorecard embeds, you can display your results, along with key information, such as the “Story Behind the Curve,” online. This makes it easy for stakeholders and community members to view data. It also helps create buy-in for a Collective Impact cause and, potentially, encourages philanthropic giving.

See how SisterWeb provides transparency to the public by sharing “SisterWeb Goal Scorecards” on its website.

5. Backbone Support Organizations Need Support Too

Designing and tracking Results-Based Accountability and Collective Impact initiatives is hard work, especially in larger networks of partners. The bigger a collaborative effort grows, the harder it can be to maintain alignment and measure shared impact across programming. That’s why the use of Unified Data Management systems is so important.

Briefly, Unified Data Management can mean either or both of the following:

  1. Partners use the SAME software systems to collect, manage, track, and report their data.
  2. If partners are using multiple types of data management systems, these systems are perfectly integrated. This improves data accuracy and accessibility and makes data more actionable.

Clear Impact Suite is designed to help Collective Impact partnerships engage in both types of Unified Data Management so that they can worry less about data inconsistencies and focus on what matters: working together to improve the lives of children, adults, and families in their communities.

Helpful Links: