The Future is Collective Case Studies of Collective Social Innovation 2025

Collective action activities Capability Activities Building movementsCreating a shared narrative: Community Solutions is working to shift the narrative from “homelessness is intractable” to “homelessness is a solvable set of issues that can be fully resolved with collective effort”. Expanding the stakeholder base: Community Solutions ensures that communities bring together everyone who touches the problem – service providers, government agencies and others – to connect the dots across the resources and actors to prevent or quickly resolve homelessness. Organizing field-level convenings: Community Solutions hosts annual “learning sessions” that bring together network communities and national partners to share key learnings. Centring lived experience: Many communities have created dedicated roles for those with lived experience of homelessness to inform their services and contribute to more equitable outcomes. Celebrating key milestones: Community Solutions communities are celebrated when they reach key milestones such as achieving quality real-time data, significant system improvements and reaching functional zero for specific populations. Monitoring progress: Community Solutions plays an important role creating accountability to outcomes by monitoring community-level and network-wide progress towards population-level aims. Engaging media and journalists: Community Solutions is partnering with journalism network Solutions Journalism to create educational resources for journalists reporting on homelessness. Strengthening data systemsCreating shared definitions: Community Solutions has created a framework for measurement that includes key definitions for its network, including functional zero, the milestone that indicates homelessness is measurably rare and brief for a population, and by-name lists, which are the databases used by communities when solving homelessness. Developing shared metrics: Communities commit to producing real-time, by-name data that accounts for every person in a community experiencing homelessness, updated no less than monthly. Collecting, analysing and sharing data: Communities meet weekly to analyse the real-time, by- name data and create shared action items at the person and systems level based on the data. Influencing institutionsDeveloping policy recommendations: Community Solutions has grown its advocacy work by developing policy recommendations at the national, state and local levels based on learning and the emerging evidence base derived from its network. Improve public- and private-sector effectiveness: Community Solutions supports government and non-profit agencies, along with their private sector partners, to redesign governance structures for population-level impact. Developing government data systems: Community Solutions advocates for revising the US’ Homeless Management Information Systems (HMIS) to make by-name lists standard for the sector. Augmenting system-level staffing: Community Solutions provides coaching and training to the local government and “Continuum of Care” system-level coordinators that are responsible for coordinating local strategies. The Future is Collective: Case Studies of Collective Social Innovation 17