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From Common Goals to Uncommon Results The Collective Impact Forum exists to support the efforts of those who are practicing collective impact in the field. While the rewards of collective impact can be great, the work is often demanding. Those who practice it must keep themselves and their teams motivated and moving forward. The Collective Impact Forum is the place to find the tools and training that can help achieve success. It's an expanding network of like-minded individuals coming together from across sectors to share useful experience and knowledge and thereby accelerating the effectiveness, and further adoption, of the collective impact approach as a whole.

Successful community collaboratives require resources and support for their infrastructure needs, as well as the opportunity to engage with like-minded practitioners to share ideas that will amplify their collective impact. To address this need, and build on the work of the White House Council, the Aspen Institute launched the "Aspen Forum for Community Solutions," chaired by Melody Barnes, former Assistant to the President and Director of the Domestic Policy Council for President Obama. Stephen Patrick - formerly with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation - is the Executive Director and drives the mission of The Aspen Forum for Community Solutions.

Since the 2011 Stanford Social Innovation Review article introduced the concept, collective impact has been widely adopted as an effective form of cross-sector collaboration to address complex social and environmental challenges. Though collective impact has proven to be a powerful approach in tackling a wide range of issues in communities all over the world, many practitioners are searching for the tools they need to be successful in this work. The thought leadership and resources below, and in the Resources and Blog sections of this website, will help you build a foundation for doing this work

In this article, I articulate ten important issues and concerns which Collective Impact fails to adequately acknowledge, understand, and address. These failings have serious consequences for the engaged communities. I welcome the community of activists and scholars who are engaged in coalitions, partnerships, and collaboratives to react, disagree and/or to add to the list of concerns.