Abstract
There has been considerable hype in Australia recently accompanying the North American-informed Collective Impact (CI) approach and its claims to deliver real transformative social change for individuals and communities. CI actively promotes its principal incentive and distinctive trait, namely to concentrate the energies of its collaborators to achieve real, long-term, measurable and sustainable outcomes, often quoted as a Social Return on Investment (SRoI). Not coincidentally, the rise of CI’s visibility has emerged alongside diminishing public funding for social change initiatives, with a corresponding and somewhat belated turn to the philanthropic sector to partially meet this funding shortfall. Early signs across Australia indicate that philanthropic funds are no less driven by a ‘value for money’ imperative than governments that in turn, has left many lamenting the shift in community organisations working to satisfy donor expectations rather than working with and for local communities. In this context, some serious questions have already been raised about the Collective Impact approach and ambition, particularly how CI can meaningfully engage with long-term disadvantaged local communities and realistically agree on what successful outcomes would look like for such communities. Community cultural development (CCD) would seem to offer a useful counterpoint to the CI approach with its enduring emphasis on authentic process and bottom-up solutions but CCD too has received its own share of criticism for an obsession with process to the exclusion of real and tangible social outcomes. Whatever approach’s claims are to be tested, this paper starts from the standpoint that their veracity will only be significant if they can actually demonstrate they are making a difference in our most disadvantaged communities and populations.
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Notes
- 1.
From Beyond Empathy’s webpage, www.be.org.au.
- 2.
- 3.
Data drawn from NSW Office of Aboriginal Affairs (2018) Community Portrait of Moree, accessed at https://www.aboriginalaffairs.nsw.gov.au/new-knowledge/facts-and-figures/community-portraits.
- 4.
Via email from BE Exec Director, February 2015.
- 5.
ibid.
- 6.
Close the life expectancy gap within a generation.
Halve the gap in mortality rates for Indigenous children under five within a decade.
Halve the gap for Indigenous students in reading, writing and numeracy within a decade.
Halve the gap in employment outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians within a decade.
Within five years, all four year olds in remote Indigenous communities have access to quality early childhood education programs.
At least halve the gap for Indigenous students in Year 12 or equivalent rates by 2015.
- 7.
As articulated in UNDP (1996, p. iii).
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea Grant, funded by the Korean Government (NRF-2013S1A3A2054622), and the CCD organisation, Beyond Empathy.
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Woolcock, G. (2019). Shredding the Evidence: Whose Collective Impact are We Talking About?. In: Kee, Y., Lee, S., Phillips, R. (eds) Perspectives on Community Well-Being . Community Quality-of-Life and Well-Being. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15115-7_8
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