Collective Impact
Collective Impact is an approach for bringing people together in a structured way to achieve systemic social change. The community of Grinnell is a nationally-recognized leader in successful collective impact initiatives, and together with the Greater Poweshiek Community Foundation, Grinnell College is proud to serve as a strong “backbone” for these cross-sector collaborations. Together the backbones maintain focus, foster collaboration, and ensure the initiative’s sustainability by guiding vision and strategy, facilitating aligned activities, establishing shared measurement, building public will, mobilizing resources, and strengthening internal capacity.
Some of these network-based coalitions for community change include:
Grinnell Education Partnership
The Grinnell Education Partnership (GEP) supports youth and families in Grinnell, Iowa, by aligning community organizations toward shared educational goals. Formed in 2015 as part of the national Campaign for Grade Level Reading, GEP is a network of over 20 organizations creating opportunities for children and families through transformative education partnerships. Local expertise comes from community organizations, funding is managed by the Greater Poweshiek Community Foundation (GPCF), and the network’s collaborative infrastructure is provided by Grinnell College.
Podcast
Listen to the Networks for Social Impact podcast with Northwestern University Professor Michelle Shumate as she interviews Monica Chavez-Silva to learn about the Grinnell Education Partnership. Chavez-Silva shares about the campaign and how this program originated and continues to evolve and thrive in the rural community of Grinnell. To hear the full podcast, visit Rural Networks for Social Impact in Education.
Build a Better Grinnell
Funded by the USDA’s Rural Placemaking Innovation Challenge (RPIC) along with Grinnell College, the City of Grinnell, Grinnell Mutual, and the Claude & Dolly Ahrens Foundation, the Build A Better Grinnell 2030 Community Visioning Project launched in 2022 as a multi-year, multi-sector, community-based initiative to assess and activate Grinnell’s strengths, needs, and aspirations for residents, workers, and those who rely on Grinnell’s resources. The research identified and prioritized issues, with specific goals of fostering community pride, strengthening collaboration, and driving community development. Along with serving as co-backbone with the Greater Poweshiek Community Foundation, Grinnell College played a pivotal role in securing and hosting the USDA grant, directing the community-based participatory research, and providing important back-bone coordination and support for the overall project success.
Grinnell Alliance
Created in response to a series of racial harassment incidents on and around the Grinnell College campus in 2022, a group of volunteers from all over the Grinnell community came together to identify ways to ensure Grinnell is a place where everyone knows they belong. Consisting of residents, leaders, and friends of Grinnell, the Grinnell ALLiance is a group of people who value the community and want to see it thrive. Bringing together a range of perspectives, the ALLiance is focused on connecting individuals, students, community, and systems to foster a spirit of collaboration and belonging.