The Future is Collective Advancing Collective Social Innovation to Address Societys Biggest Challenges 2025

Solving global issues is growing more challenging as political transitions, environmental realities, economic inequalities and new technologies threaten to divide us into geographic and sectoral factions. These divisions are costly and inefficient since creativity, expertise and resources exist most frequently at the intersections of diverse stakeholders. Collective social innovation is designed to counter these divisions, creating “connective tissue” across vast constituencies that would otherwise remain disconnected. This report has outlined the values, impacts and organizing approaches of collective social innovators, and how these differ from the approaches favoured by single organizations and institutions. Based on these differences, collective social innovation can be advanced by creating new types of relationships and engagement with prospective partners, funders and governments. To grow their work further, collective social innovators can enable the following: Partners, including the private sector, can reduce fragmentation while tapping into a vast repository of ideas and participating in collective problem-solving The dominant development paradigm has created a competitive environment for social innovators, where organizations vie for grants and contracts at the expense of their peers. To promote collective social innovation, this competitive landscape needs to shift to a collaborative field where organizations and groups are incentivized and motivated to work together to solve problems, finding the right role for each stakeholder based on areas of expertise and context. The examples in this report showcase initiatives where organizations have set aside isolated agendas in order to share learnings, assemble data, develop mutual policy positions and work towards a common vision. This signals a “culture shift” in social innovation, which could be further supported by: –Mapping the landscape to understand the supportive practices and policies for collective action in regions and sectors –Developing shared training platforms and learning hubs where collective social innovators openly contribute resources, tools and case studies –Aligning frameworks and measurement methodologies to assemble the impacts of collective effortsFunders and investors can build critical ecosystems that allow many organizations to flourish Funders and investors seeking to address complex social challenges play a pivotal role in advancing collective social innovation. Yet, due to its distributed nature, it is more difficult to develop funding proposals and attribute impact to collective action. Fundamentally, collective social innovators and funders can work together to advance collective efforts by building ecosystems that move beyond transactional relationships and cultivate partnerships involving experimentation, feedback and adaptation. By committing to learning alongside innovators, funders have the opportunity to gain deeper insights into the on-the-ground realities that contribute to impact, ultimately enabling greater trust and ongoing commitment. Funders will also be able to witness the impact of their contributions in real time rather than through standard reporting timeframes. Funders will realize “amplified gains” by investing in the institutional capacity of collective social innovators. Collective social innovators create efficiencies by delivering learning, data and solidarity across vast networks. Yet, too often, this is achieved with very small staff sizes and lean budgets, rather than the long-term capacity it deserves. Collective social innovators can build sustainable ecosystems with: –Trust-based funding practices,11 including greater flexibility and longer time horizons, as well as a commitment to learning alongside innovators –Balancing short-term and long-term goals, embracing the prospect that project plans will change as realities unfold –Funding for the “supportive infrastructure” of collectives, creating exponential impact as collectives share learnings and build the capacity of groups within their networks Government and policy-makers can align interests, access critical data and achieve population-level scale Collective social innovators offer public sector institutions the opportunity to align interests among many stakeholders and harness the knowledge and expertise of constituencies and communities that would otherwise remain passive beneficiaries. In several examples, collective social innovators are already partnering with governments to provide critical linkages between policies and implementation. Collective social innovation can be advanced by creating new types of relationships and engagement with prospective partners, funders and governments. The Future is Collective: Advancing Collective Social Innovation to Address Society’s Biggest Challenges 29