Earlier this week I attended the Alliance for Education’s Community Conversation fundraiser. It was great to settle in and listen to a very talented panel of colleagues talking about collective impact. Collective Impact is a way of working around five principles a shared agenda, using data, reinforcing activities, communications, and a backbone organization to keep the work moving forward.  

The panelist shared their thoughts on working in collective impact efforts within the education space. I got excited hearing the panel talk about network building. In my past work I did a lot of network gathering and building — I miss that work.

Network Weaving

My kids often get annoyed when I invite them to join me at events or to run errands. They groan and say “But you’re going to run into someone you know,” which then leads to talking, and a quick errand isn’t a quick outing. It is true and that is part of the power of network weaving.

Over the years I’ve met a lot of people. Through meeting these people we’ve worked together to build a network of people who can support each other. We’ve worked towards common goals, shared information and resources, and created mutually reinforcing and trusted relationships. My goal was clear the network is there to support students of color, and I expected the network to share this common goal. How you did your work was up to you, but you better not work against the goal.

Occasionally, someone with extra letters after their name, PhD, CEO, etc. would ask me what my “theory of change” was. Depending on how code-switch-y I had to be I would sometimes make up a theory of change or a theory of action – “we work to blah, blah, blah.” But really my only theory was if we built a strong diverse netowrk, focused on racial equity, where members and partners knew each other and respected each other, we would be all right. The network would take care of problems, and we could make things better in big and smaller ways. I still believe this.

Power Sharing

My latest iteration in thinking about network building is we need to expand the scope beyond just building networks. The networks need to talk about and intentionally recognize different forms of power. Working to leverage those power bases is important for the common goal. How different would our networks be if we leveraged the power of everyone involved?

In thinking about power sharing how would our networks operate differently if we acknowledged all of the different forms of power in the room? Here are some examples:

• Funding – who has access to it and how can they share it or at the least acknowledge their funding wealth
• Political power – including political power within communities of color and informal political power (not electeds, respected community leaders)
• Community power
• Language – there is power in how we use different forms of language
• Mobilization power
• Historical knowledge power
• Youth power
• Technology access
• Resources – who has access to space/storage, materials, food/water, etc.

These different forms of power bases are worth talking about and acknowledging can be shared, hoarded, gatekept, or used in different ways. When we talk about it and work towards sharing power within the network, we can find different results quicker and more sustainably.

It is time to push our networks to think and behave differently. Networks are not clubs. By acknowledging and leveling power dynamics we can push them to work more equitably and model for the overall system new ways of working.

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