Communities

Build capacity in your community. Here's an example of collective impact in action.

All communities face challenges, but how they choose to deal with them differs. We don't believe communities should wait for answers to come from Austin or Washington. This is an example of how a Collective Impact effort grew to address some of the challenges in the Amarillo area.

This effort began with the question, “Who is planning for the future of Texas?” and was followed with, “Whose job is it?” A group of local leaders brought in the state demographer, Dr. Steve Murdock, for a community meeting, and looked at trends and projections. The indications were that the area would become less educated and poorer. This group, Panhandle Twenty/20, then began to develop a plan to address those challenges.

Collective Impact is a term to describe the process of pulling multiple stakeholders together around a common agenda, but Collective Impact didn’t exist as a way of doing business in 2003, so it was a new concept to the community. Determined leadership, a sense of urgency, and a data-centric approach helped keep the effort going, and the work continues today with a wide range of partners and committed organizations and agencies. In 2005, Panhandle Twenty/20 became an initiative of the Amarillo Area Foundation.

The first focus area of Panhandle Twenty/20 was the issue of educational attainment. Texas is low, and their area’s numbers were lower. Pulling together hundreds of people from across the city and region, the group held regular study sessions focused on the various aspects of educational attainment and barriers to success. Released in 2007, the report, The Panhandle Imperative, provided a number of recommendations, and the group worked on implementing those. Out of that came the Texas Panhandle P-16 Council, improved connectivity and partnership among the K-12 and higher ed institutions and workforce and business that continue to this day.

The next area of focus, having been shown to be a significant barrier to educational attainment, was poverty. While most communities in Texas deal with the challenge of poverty, not all are willing to address it head-on. Bringing in poverty expert Dr. Donna Beegle, Panhandle Twenty/20 began the community conversation about poverty, holding three Opportunity Conferences to connect low-income families to community resources and trained navigators, and also held extensive poverty trainings for churches, schools, elected officials, and nonprofits. Part of this work evolved into the Neighborhood Navigators Program of Cal Farley’s, which has embraced and expanded on this work.

With the help of a Bill and Melinda Gates Partners for Postsecondary Success grant in 2010, the work of improving educational attainment in Amarillo has grown into the No Limits No Excuses Initiative run by the Amarillo Area Foundation. Dozens of partners continue to work together to provide more opportunities for individuals to fulfill their educational dreams and find a pathway out of poverty. All of the initial partners, and many of the same individuals, are still committed to this work that began in 2003, and will continue long past the year 2020.

Anette Carlisle is the principal founder of Panhandle Twenty/20, and served as its director and driving force through 2015.