21st Century Skills (IMLS)
This Institute of Museum and Library Services report outlines a vision for the role of libraries and museums in the national dialogue around learning and 21st century skills and includes case studies of innovative audience engagement and 21st century skills practices from across the country.

Discussion Guide (IMLS)
This Institute of Museum and Library Services discussion guide is the result of a two-day meeting in which a diverse group of leaders with many perspectives on the future came together to share and debate. The guide is designed to spark continued dialogue on the issues presented in institutions, communities and professional groups invested in the future of museums and libraries.

Building Creative Capital (WolfBrown)
Drawing on new understandings of creativity, as well as a number of WolfBrown projects, Dr. Dennie Palmer Wolf and Dr. Steven Holochwost suggest that a focus on building creative capital is a powerful way to think about planning for, executing, and measuring the impact of the arts and culture. By way of example, they examine how this framework has informed and energized arts and cultural education.

Cleveland Community Partnership for Arts Culture
The Community Partnership for Arts and Culture (CPAC) is a nonprofit arts and culture service agency dedicated to Northeast Ohio’s success by preserving and advancing its arts and culture sector. CPAC works to prove and promote the area’s cultural assets’ extraordinary contributions to economy, education and quality of life. CPAC helps arts and culture prosper by fostering best practices in business development, sound cultural policy and in-depth research.

Collective Impact & FSG
Much has been written about the need for non-profit institutions to collaborate for greater impact and public value. In Collective Impact (Stanford Social Innovation Review), John Kania and Mark Kramer argue that large-scale social change requires broad cross-sector coordination, not the isolated intervention of individual organizations: “collective impact is not merely a matter of encouraging more collaboration… it requires a systemic approach to social impact that focuses on the relationships between organizations and the progress toward shared objectives.” In FSG article The Networked Non-Profit, Jane Wei-Skillern and Sonia Marciano suggest non-profits should focus on building their networks to mobilize resources outside their immediate control: “networked nonprofits achieve their missions far more efficiently, effectively, and sustainably than they could have by working alone.”

The Forbes Funds
It is clear that the nonprofits that survive in the long term are those that remain flexible and adaptive first to the mission they serve, second in the way they manage their balance sheet and third in their ability to do more with limited resources and through innovative operating models. Pursuing “innovative operating models” is rooted in the concept of collaboration.

Lifelong Learning (Learning Towns and Cities)
Website of Learning Towns and Cities site, a UK-based initiative of Learning Towns, Cities and Communities promoting learning widely through developing effective local partnerships between all sectors of the community and supporting and motivating individuals and employers to participate in learning

Living Cities: The Integration Initiative
The Integration Initiative supports cities that are harnessing existing momentum and leadership for change, overhauling long obsolete systems and fundamentally reshaping communities and policies to meet the needs of low-income residents. Also follow the Living Cities blog, The Catalyst.

Participation Learning Network, Massachusetts Cultural Council (MCC)
As nonprofit cultural organizations face the challenges of declining income and rising competition from new forms of entertainment, it is imperative they unite in support of the common mission to make arts and culture a more vital part of people’s lives. To that end, the MCC partnered with The Boston Foundation and the Wallace Foundation in a four-year effort to increase local participation in the arts and promote the effective exchange of knowledge about expanding audiences. The associated publication outlines the process of building and maintaining a learning network and acknowledges the intriguing cultural thinkers who shared their ideas.

Report (The Urban Libraries Council)
This Urban Libraries Council report illustrates a variety of ways local libraries contribute to community development, looking at multiple layers of involvement: individual, voluntary associations, institutions, economy, place, and, importantly, the stories they tell about themselves in their communities.

Sustainable Communities Boot Camp
An emerging group of multi-sectoral leaders in metropolitan areas met together on January 10-12, 2011 for a “boot camp” at Harvard. They were there to obtain the best advice, counsel and peer-to-peer support for using economic strategy to build sustainability and equity, harnessing capital to realize the regional vision, ensuring meaningful and inclusive long-term participation and grounding results in real time data to advance desired outcomes. Each invited team was comprised of unusual “bedfellows” – business people, planners and other advocates.

White House Council for Community Solutions
On December 14, 2010, President Obama signed an executive order establishing the White House Council for Community Solutions to engage a diverse group of prominent cross-sector leaders to:

• Identify examples of successful community change
• Honor and highlight individuals and institutions changing communities
• Provide resources to help engage citizens in their own communities
• Learn the key attributes of effective cross-sector solutions from institutions working together on community problems
• Attract attention and resources to support and promote successful approaches