A Qualitative Study of Collective Impact: Understanding the Need for Community Engagement

Using a qualitative study comprised of five in-depth interviews, this thesis considers the method of collaborative community change known as collective impact, specifically in regards to community engagement. The study targeted five key leaders involved in a collective impact initiative in a midsize Southern community and used the interviews to discover key information about the process of collective impact and particularly the process of community engagement within collective impact, a topic which has largely been neglected within the current body of research. This paper will first place collective impact within the context of the current literature on the subject, and then provide the study's methodology, state the results of the study which manifested in 10 emerging themes from the conducted interviews, and finally discuss these results and the implications which they hold for professional practice.