Infrastructure holds communities together: roads, bridges, an electricity grid. But what about the connections that we can’t see? Relationships, collaboration, goal setting and data sharing are part of a community’s infrastructure, too. These pieces are called civic infrastructure.
Civic infrastructure is sometimes called human infrastructure, social infrastructure or people infrastructure. It joins leaders from across a community — from education, business, health care, housing, philanthropy and more — to work collaboratively, using data, to improve outcomes for children and families. With a strong civic infrastructure in place, communities can change systems by shifting practices, policies, resources and power structures.
Infrastructure holds communities together: roads, bridges, an electricity grid. But what about the connections that we can’t see? Relationships, collaboration, goal setting and data sharing are part of a community’s infrastructure, too. These pieces are called civic infrastructure.
Civic infrastructure is sometimes called human infrastructure, social infrastructure or people infrastructure. It joins leaders from across a community — from education, business, health care, housing, philanthropy and more — to work collaboratively, using data, to improve outcomes for children and families. With a strong civic infrastructure in place, communities can change systems by shifting practices, policies, resources and power structures.
This blog originally appeared on Independent Sector’s website. A community is more than the sum of its roads, bridges and electricity grid — what we traditionally think of as infrastructure. It is also the connection among its residents, connections that remain even as the skyline changes. It is the involvement with local elections, the inspiring…
Guest post by Justin Piff, a senior director at Equal Measure in Philadelphia, Penn. Despite national and international attention on collective impact since 2011, few individuals and institutions have articulated what it looks like or ought to look like in practice. In 2015, Equal Measure and StriveTogether set out to understand how civic infrastructure —…