The term “collective impact” gets thrown around a lot. But much less is said about what makes a collaborative effort on a big social challenge truly effective.
In Santa Clara County, a committed partnership bridging local government, nonprofits, housing developers, and the private sector among others is demonstrating how sustained collaboration has built the runway for our community to dramatically increase deeply affordable and supportive housing options and get closer to housing more people than are pushed into homelessness.
While there is still urgent work to be done by us all, our ability to come together in pursuit of a common goal has connected more than 25,000 people to permanent housing, prevented the experience of homelessness for more than 30,000 people, and dramatically increased shelter options.
Our coalition of partners have worked to document this unique story of collaboration and the lessons we’ve learned along the way as a case study we hope inspires bold action moving forward.
When our feeds are full of failure, it’s easy to lose hope that we can solve our most vexing challenges. But by looking back on how we’ve more recently transformed our system of care for homeless individuals and families across the county, we see what’s possible for the work ahead.
“Ending and preventing homelessness is painstaking work, requiring system-wide coordination, shared funding, and trust,” writes Destination: Home CEO Jen Loving and board chair Ben Spero for Stanford Social Innovation Review. Read their op-ed to gain more insight into our community’s collaborative approach and the key components for success.
