View the Resource By Marwa Tahboub, Tatum Thomas, Lucia Koo, Qiwen Zhang, Michelle Shumate Veterans, service members, and their families often seek a wide variety of assistance, including access to health and benefits services from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), housing and homeless assistance, and financial and employment assistance. These needs frequently co-occur and require the delivery of services by more than one organization. This research examines the

Healthcare providers, organizations, and payers recognize the connection between social needs and health outcomes. These social needs are often described as the social determinants of health (SDOH). SDOHs are the environmental and social factors that influence health outcomes. Research indicates that improving social conditions— such as adequate food, secure housing and income, access to healthcare, and dependable transportation — is crucial to addressing health inequalities and outcomes. With the increasing

View the Resource By Joshua-Paul Miles, Marwa Tahboub, Zachary Gibson, Michelle Shumate The COVID-19 pandemic created massive disruptions across society. These disruptions put into focus integrated social service referral networks’, hereafter systems of care, ability to be resilient in times of crisis. This research examines 11 systems of care across the United States. The researchers compare network performance before and immediately following the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic using quantitative

Wicked problems are much like board games. Board games can look wildly different, but their inherent underlying premise–the nature of what it means to be a ‘board game’–stays largely the same. Wicked problems are classified by their multi-dimensionality, complexity, and inherent lack of solution. Like board games, wicked problems come in all shapes and sizes, but the inherent complexity of their nature–the nature of what it means to be a

View the Resource By Michelle Shumate, Shaun M. Dougherty, Joshua-Paul Miles, Anne-Marie Boyer, Rong Wang, Zachary M. Gibson, Katherine R. Cooper Increasingly, scholars and practitioners are interested in evaluating the effectiveness of interorganizational networks. We use a configuration approach to study network effectiveness. This research is a mixed-method study of 26 education networks in the United States. We measure network effectiveness by comparing 4th-grade literacy, 8th-grade literacy, and high-school graduation

Today’s nonprofit landscape is full of social impact networks– but not all of them are effective. Even if a network is making a difference in their community, there is always room for growth. In a landscape saturated with networks addressing a plethora of wicked problems, communities want to see impacts that are beneficial and substantive. When a network engages in high-impact practices, their operations thrive. High-impact networks have strong theories