Continuous Improvement Collaboratives

The Strive Partnership and United Way of Greater Cincinnati are working together to promote collaborative continuous improvement.  United Way has a history of promoting and funding innovative collaboratives and Strive has been advancing partners’ ability to create shared goals and measures to practice continuous quality improvement.  In an effort to bring these common efforts together, Strive and United Way are adopting a common definition, standards, and criteria of collaborative continuous improvement.

Definition

A collaborative is a body that demonstrates:

• shared decision-making,
• shared resources,
• shared accountability, and
• shared outcomes among participating organizations.

The ongoing, collaborative effort is consistently improved based on the progress made toward achieving the stated outcomes, and all participants understand and revise their contributions, roles, and responsibilities based on what is learned from data over time.

Criteria

• Community Impact: a clear focus on one or more of the indicators and/or performance measures in the Striving Together Report Card and Agenda for Community Impact
• Relationship of Partners: multiple partners are sharing responsibility and accountability for the overall success
• Results Focused: demonstration and delivery of the results that show the collaborative is creating the targeted community change(s).
• Continuous Learning and Improvement:  Documented changes and improvements to the collaborative as a result of evaluating its ongoing efforts.
• Cross-opportunities in Community: Efforts of the collaborative connect or have the opportunity to connect to other efforts or areas in the community.
• Sustainability and Scalability: has an identified plan for sustainability and can demonstrate that other funds or resources contribute to the effort; has a plan to show how the efforts can be scaled up
• Focus on the Customer: must respond to the concrete needs of the target population and/or the systems that support them

Standards

• Develop Partnership Agreement
  • Lists the contact information for each lead agency and each partner
  • Clearly defines each collaborative partner's role outlining the resources each partner is responsible for bringing to the collaborative
  • Describes the financial accountability of the lead agency and each partner (where funding is available)
  • Describes the outcomes that each collaborating partner is responsible for within the collaborative efforts
• Practice Continuous Improvement
  • Definition of common goals, objectives, and scope of the work
  • Identification of specific measures to understand and assess progress
  • Inclusion of analysis to date to highlight what works and what must be addressed/improved
  • Incorporation of a plan for ongoing improvement
  • Commitment to using data on an ongoing basis
  • Identification of impact on direct service and systemic change
• Strong lead organization
  • Collaborative will ensure the fiscal viability of lead agency and ability to convene and sustain the effort over time