United Way of the Greater Lehigh Valley featured in national Collective Impact study

Austin, Texas - The Collective Impact Forum has selected United Way of the Greater Lehigh Valley (UWGLV) as one of eight organizations nationwide to participate in a funders' openness project and share their lessons learned at the 2018 Collective Impact Convening, held April 3-5, 2018 in Austin, Texas.

"As we began the project, we learned that our partners wanted to see a more intentional focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and community engagement," explained Executive Vice President Marci Ronald-Lesko.

With support from the Fund for Shared Insight, the Collective Impact Forum has worked closely with UWGLV and seven other grantmaking organizations to create an “Action Learning Lab” for improving foundation openness. Each participating funder identified an “action learning project” as an area of their work where they focused on advancing their openness practices. 

According to Collective Impact Forum, funder openness is the process by which funders:

• Share their goals and strategies
• Share how they make decisions and measure progress
• Listen and engage in dialogue with others
• Make space for co-creation that builds more community buy-in
• Act on feedback they hear from current and potential grantees and the community
• Share what they themselves have learned
• Promote sharing between funders and grantees (funder-to-funder, grantee-to-grantee, funder-to-grantee) 

The details of UWGLV's Action Learning Project and Lessons Learned are shared here:







The Collective Impact Forum, an initiative of FSG and the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions, is a resource for people and organizations using the collective impact approach to address large-scale social and environmental problems. The organization aims to increase the effectiveness and adoption of collective impact by providing practitioners with access to the tools, training opportunities, and peer networks they need to be successful in their work. The Collective Impact Forum includes communities of practice, in-person convenings, and an online community and resource center launched in early 2014.