Impact Networks

This practical guide shows how to facilitate collaboration among diverse individuals and organizations to navigate complexity and create change in our interconnected world.

We face complex problems today that resist linear solutions. They involve a variety of actors, organizations, and sectors, each focused on their own piece of the puzzle. Addressing homelessness, for example, requires coordinated action from unhoused people, healthcare workers, educators, police, local governments, businesses, residents, religious institutions, and nonprofits. This book explains how to create impact networks, the structures that enable diverse groups of people and organizations to connect, coordinate, and collaborate to do more together than is possible alone. A network approach combines the strategic rigor and agility of modern organizations with the deep connection and shared purpose of communities. Drawing on his experience working with over fifty impact networks over the past decade, David Ehrlichman describes how to cultivate a network mentality. He then goes deeply into the five Cs of creating impact networks:
- clarify purpose and principles
- convene the people
- cultivate trust
- coordinate actions
- collaborate for systems change
Given the increasing urgency of the issues we face, impact networks have never been more essential.