However, I would venture to say that few of the attendees felt like experts. In fact, soon after explaining our projects, many attendees began asking questions of each other that to outsiders may seem rather elementary:<\/p>\n

“How do you describe your work?”<\/strong><\/p>\n

“How did you decide to take on this project?”<\/strong><\/p>\n

“How do you build buy-in in the community?”<\/strong><\/p>\n

“How do you work with funders to align efforts?”<\/strong><\/p>\n

These are just some of the questions and conversations we had in big and small groups and it made me realize that despite our best efforts to follow the StriveTogether framework, we are all still learning the best way to do collective impact.<\/p>\n

The work of improving educational outcome for children, given the various challenges in our communities, is inherently difficult. Doing that work as part of a collective impact partnership is inherently complex. We have to juggle many interests, prioritize between all important issues and galvanize others into action. We consider ourselves responsible for outcomes we mostly don\u2019t even impact directly as partnership staff. Framework or not, there is no perfect blueprint for each our communities.<\/p>\n

This is why I found the term \u201cExpert Convening\u201d to be ironic. Although many now consider themselves experts in the field of collective impact, the truth is that each community is its own unique subject. That feeling of ambiguity you feel is real and I bet most of us feel that way doing this work.<\/p>\n