Speakers: Chris Thompson, Civic Collaboration Consultants and Liz Weaver, Tamarack Institute
One of the core conditions of collective impact is the investment in backbone infrastructure to help support the collective effort to move forward. Backbone leaders play unique roles in community change efforts. They navigate from the middle, engaging community champions to drive forward the change, and also coordinate the efforts of community-based partners to align their programs and services.
In 2012, Stanford Social Innovation Review published a series of four articles called Understanding the Value of Backbone Organizations in Collective Impact. Since 2012, there have been resources developed to strengthen backbone leadership and conversations about the unique role of backbone resources. And yet, many collective impact efforts struggle to find the right balance between collective leadership and backbone infrastructure. The default practice is that the backbone staff leaders are looked to as a core resource to drive the collective impact effort forward.
Join Chris Thompson and Liz Weaver in a lively discussion about the essential mindset and skillsets of backbone leaders. Together they will challenge our notion of backbone leadership and how leveraging the collective capacity of leadership table members and the backbone staff is instrumental to community change efforts.
For More Information:
• Read Re-reading Collective Impact: Three Lessons by Chris Thompson
• Read the SSIR series Understanding the Value of Backbone Organizations in Collective Impact
• Read the Collective Impact Forum – Backbone Starter Guide
• Learn more about Civic Collaboration Consultants