However, because The Contingent serves as the backbone organization that supports the collective impact of Every Child Oregon. This project aimed to answer the following question: “How does The Contingent, as a backbone organization, identify and address competing logics among members of the collective impact initiative Every Child Oregon?”. For example, the Every Child Oregon initiative includes partners from church organizations (religious institutions) and government agencies (bureaucratic institutions), and even corporations (operating within a business logic).
We have deliberately put together a step-by-step process, starting with a general understanding of The Every Child Oregon Initiative and The Contingent's role as the backbone organization, and then narrowing our focus to specific partner organizations. The Contingent provided access to The Every Child Oregon manual and the current working version of The Every Child's Theory of Change Model. A 60-minute interview was also conducted via Zoom with the founder of the collective impact initiative The Every Child Oregon, who was invited to the focus group but was unable to attend.
During the focus group and individual interviews with The Contingent staff, interviewees spoke strongly about the need for more culturally specific organizations in the Every Child Oregon initiative – especially from the African American community. On the surface, the goals of the Every Child Oregon initiatives seem clear: “Every Child mobilizes the community to support children and families affected by foster care in Oregon.” By participating in the Every Child Oregon initiative, churches have been able to reap the benefits of The Contingent's initiative. close relationship with ODHS.
One of the conversations was: “What do we need every child at this moment. Leveraging these two competing logics as a means of community engagement was a key driver of the Contingent's success in expanding the Every Child Oregon initiative. How do we mobilize the faith community?” In the Partnerships section of the Handbook for Every Child, the Contingent mentions two different types of partners and outlines specific steps for.
When we delved into the founding story of the Every Child Oregon collective impact initiative, analysis of power structures and equity were not at the heart of the model. This contradicted the response of an African-American pastor we interviewed who is not involved in the Every Child Oregon initiative. In this way, the power dynamic of the partnership appears to be tilting toward ODHS and away from the faith and business partners who are also involved in the Every Child Oregon initiative.
In the case of the Every Child Oregon initiative, ODHS operates as the business with church partners operating as a non-profit organization.
To expand and establish a fair metaphorical table, we recommend that The Contingent create a task force tasked with bringing a more meaningful understanding of the communities most impacted by child welfare to the collective involved in Every The Child Oregon Initiative. These steps help The Contingent address power asymmetries within the collective impact initiative and encourage a partnership logic by speaking to diverse stakeholders, connecting with community-level discourse, and filling institutional voids. Although The Contingent and ODHS may understand, the 14 different activities in The Every Child Handbook are intended to influence success.
The Contingent shared a working draft of their theory of change for the Every Child initiative. After completing a logic model, the Contingent must establish performance measures for all activities identified in the model. ODHS cited the ability to share data and track statistics as one of the strengths of their partnership with The Contingent.
As the Contingent works with partners from White evangelical churches, the data must be presented with historical context. Our data clearly shows the Christian religious institution as a critical partner in the success of the initiative. For example, in the case of the church that thought they could not affirm gender.
As The Contingent seeks to fill institutional voids that the bureaucratic state cannot through the Every Child Oregon initiative, they should consider what type of institution they would like to build. Although the contingent wants to find the “third way,” the contingent is often caught between competing institutional logics and obliged to choose sides. In our data, we saw that when competing logics cannot be resolved among the institutions, the contingent engages in forced isomorphy.
A Tale of Two Cities: Competing Logics and Differences in Practice in the Professionalization of Mutual Funds. Which goals and values are immediately shared by the Contingent/Every child and the partners.
The church partners told us that beyond the number of foster parent evening activities they host each year, they did not share data with The Contingent and little data was shared back. Performance measures link activities to goals and objectives (Matthews, 2011) and help track movement toward those goals (Yoskovitz, 2013). There was a need back in 2012-2013 for 883 more foster families in the Tri-County area..So the goal would be, what if we had foster families waiting.
Examples of possible metrics include the number of households registered for guardianship versus partners.
These measures must be easy to report, create low barriers to entry and ensure that data can be easily collected from partner organisations. Such a dashboard can serve as a practical visualization of a shared partnership logic and demonstrate value creation. When we spoke to partner organisations, they seemed to lack clarity about The Contingent's role as a backbone organization and why they needed The Contingent to continue.
However, ODHS has identified the contingent as the most important partnership they have with an external organization – a fact that partners may not be aware of. In addition, partners mentioned that they receive irrelevant and untimely communication, which limits their ability to participate in encouraged activities. They have been able to make an impact on every level, from finding families to say yes to foster care and finding volunteers to wrap themselves around families who say yes to provide respite, tangible gifts, tangible goods, support and peer mentoring .
Cooperation can increase as individual relationships are nurtured, leading to a better understanding of the influences on a partner's decision-making. The contingent establishes ongoing communication channels with partner organizations that highlight program goals, key conversations taking place with ODHS, stories from the field, and progress toward achieving key metrics. These messages should highlight the interdependent interests of all organizations and subsequent institutions involved in the initiative and encourage participants to maintain a partnership logic.
In addition, consideration should be given to creating an annual convocation where partners can network, learn from other organizations, share innovative ideas and gain a greater understanding of how their individual contributions impact the whole.
Partners need to not only understand the data, but also understand the why behind the data's existence (Kania et al. suggest several activities that can help map the data, including listening to people's stories from affected communities or conducting focus groups or surveys. These may be activities that The Contingent requires as part of its onboarding of new partners or that it undertakes as part of an annual partner meeting or that it incorporates into meetings for families interested in nurturing families. Grounding data in historical context can help partners achieve greater empathy for the families they serve, understand their roles and privileges in the current system, and challenge them to move from maintaining that system to disrupting it to get away from it.
Institutional work is a valuable viewpoint for examining how tensions are deeply rooted in competing institutional logics and how they can be addressed over time (Dahlmann & . Grosvold, 2017). Focusing on how action and actors affect institutions, institutional work is recognized as "the purposeful action of individuals and organizations aimed at creating, maintaining, and disrupting institutions" (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006, p. 215). Individual actors are central to institutional work as they use their embedded agency to affect an organization's change or maintain the existing logic against change (Hwang &. Colyvas, 2011; Dahlmann & Grosvold, 2017).
This capstone aimed to examine how competing logics inhibit collaboration in collective impact and limit or generate value. The literature highlighted how collective impact initiatives seek to create societal change, but have traditionally neglected to analyze the power structure and build with an equity lens. The results from this capstone revealed a need for more clarity about the intended outcomes and impacts of the Every Child Oregon initiative.
After analyzing the data, this capstone provided recommendations based on gaps in the collective impact model and the latest collective impact research, where centering equity is a prerequisite for successful collective impact initiatives. There's no doubt that Every Child is a leading Oregon nonprofit organization committed to serving children at some of the most challenging times in their lives. The Every Child collective impact initiative has continued since its inception to ensure ODHS is supported in its work as a dedicated staff and community partner.
As the contingent plans to expand the Every Child initiative to other countries, we are confident that they will continue to work with various community organizations that will use this information to forge new partnerships that reflect the communities they serve. The collective influence model and its potential for health promotion: a review and case study of a healthy retail initiative in San Francisco. Collide or cooperate: the interplay of competing logics and institutional work in cross-sectoral social partnerships.
