Is Collective Impact the Destination? A Typology of Interorganizational Collaboration

“Collective impact” has gained prominence as a particular means for organizations to respond to social problems in their community, though there is some concern that the term is over-used or improperly applied. In this study, we draw from research on collective impact, collaborative initiatives and network governance to suggest that what constitutes “collective impact” varies widely by community. We introduce a 2 by 2 matrix to describe a variety ways of organizing partners along two dimensions: a). the degree to which program planning and implementation are enacted by centralized leadership, and b). the degree to which cross-sector partners engage in collaboration. With interview and archival data collected from 28 communities across the United States, this study suggests that these networks may be classified according to one of four approaches: holistic coalitions, low-overhead coalitions, community-led coalitions, and multi-stakeholder coalitions.