Funding the Long Game in Collective Impact

One of the challenges many collective impact efforts face is having the financial support over a long enough period to make real progress on their stated results.

The Advancing Healthier Wisconsin Endowment at the Medical College of Wisconsin has developed a promising model that made substantial eight-year-long investments in ten collective impact efforts coupled with extensive technical and capacity-building support. At a time when many backbones are still seeking one to three-year grants to move population level results that will take much longer, the AHW story is a promising approach to philanthropic support and partnership.

This paper is a case study on the experience and lessons of this promising grant program, and a call for more funders to consider longer, larger, more engaged partnerships with collective impact backbones.

You can also view a recorded webinar here with Christina Ellis and Tim Meister from the Endowment along with other materials on the partnership.