What is Collective Impact?

Collective impact brings people together, in a structured way, to achieve social change. It starts with a common mission.

Collective impact was introduced in 2011 by the Stanford Social Innovation Review. It has been widely adopted as an effective form of cross-sector collaboration to address complex social and environmental challenges, resulting in transformational change and efficient delivery.

Too many organisations are working in isolation from one another.  Collective impact brings people together, in a structured way, to achieve social change.

It starts with a common mission

That means coming together to collectively define the problem and create a shared vision to solve it.

It establishes shared measurement

That means agreeing to track progress in the same way, which allows for continuous improvement.

It fosters mutually reinforcing activities

That means coordinating collective efforts to maximize the end result.

It encourages continuous communication

That means building trust and relationships among all participants

“There is a common mission, we really want to help organisations, economically and socially in Scotland. The CAN DO Collective provides a great forum where we can open up and have those conversations and form really good partnerships.”

Siobhan Jordan, Interface

Measuring Collective Impact

Each year we set out to produce a Can Do Impact Report by collecting and aggregating Partner data. The report helps articulate our case for investment, provides insight into gaps and opportunities in the support system, and enables us to tell our ‘Scotland Can Do’ story. These figures represent 2019-2020.

Why do we want to measure our impact? Good social impact evidence can help organisations of all kinds to:

Improve their services

Compare achievements with similar organisations

Communicate the difference they are making to be able to attract further investment.

% Participation rate across active members

No. of organisations our members collaborated with

Industries supported

Estimated no. of businesses and individuals collectively reached