Aspen Institute

Launched in late 2012 at the Aspen Institute, the mission of the Aspen Forum for Community Solutions is to support community collaboration - including "Collective Impact" - a term popularized by the consulting firm FSG in a 2010 Stanford Social Innovation Review article. Collective Impact is defined as taking a systemic approach to a challenge that focuses on the relationships between organizations and shared objectives, versus a more "traditional" way of tackling a problem which might include funding individual organizations in isolation. Collective Impact initiatives usually include key local government and nonprofit leaders that meet regularly and align around a common set of outcomes. The Aspen Forum’s first project to support Collective Impact work nationwide is to create the Opportunity Youth Incentive Fund (OYIF). Opportunity Youth are defined as young people between the ages of 16 and 24 who are neither enrolled in school nor participating in the labor market. Without intervention, these 6.7 million youth are all but destined to end up entrenched in a cycle of poverty. The goal of the OYIF is two-fold: 1) to build evidence of success for utilizing the Collective Impact community collaboration strategy in education and employment for Opportunity Youth, and 2) to make the case (especially to philanthropy) for increased adoption of Collective Impact and community collaboration as an effective model for community change. In this, it’s first year, OYIF will make 12 to 18 grants to Collective Impact initiatives across the country (with a 1:1 match requirement) to support strong existing community collaboratives/backbone organizations focused on building and deepening education and employment pathways for opportunity youth. "Backbone" organizations are essential to collective impact work as they convene meetings and organize other key activities. OYIF will also bring together grantees to participate in learning communities. This Hewlett Foundation Serving Bay Area Communities grant will support the planning, design and launch of the OYIF and directly support the Bay Area Collective Impact work aimed at Opportunity Youth, likely in Oakland via backbone organization Urban Strategies.