Examples of Collective Impact at UC Berkeley

The Coordinated Community Review Team on Sexual and Gender-Based Violence and Misconduct (CCRT) is responsible for a campus collaborative approach to preventing and addressing sexual misconduct.

Mutually-reinforcing activities: The CCRT breaks down silos by bringing together more than sixty campus offices, local organizations, and student groups to share information and build collaborative relationships.

Each CCRT meeting features at least one cross-training from campus or community partners. These cross-trainings enable all CCRT participants to learn what other units or groups on campus are doing and how they can collaborate or coordinate. 

The CCRT also has smaller working groups that convene people with diverse perspectives and expertise in the campus community to accomplish specific projects. 

A common agenda: The CCRT quarterly meetings and regular working group meetings are spaces in which members can learn from one another and stay up-to-date on evidence-based strategies in the field of sexual violence and sexual harassment prevention and response. Through the working groups, members of the CCRT are able to collectively establish SMART goals and collaborate to meet them. 

Shared measurement systems: The CCRT quarterly meetings and regular working group meetings are spaces in which members can learn from one another and stay up-to-date on evidence-based strategies in the field of sexual violence and sexual harassment prevention and response. Through the working groups, members of the CCRT are able to collectively establish SMART goals and collaborate to meet them. 

Continuous communications: On a large, often siloed campus, the CCRT provides regular opportunities for faculty, students, staff, and local practitioners to connect and work together. The CCRT Membership Manual outlines expectations for members, including the following foundational guidance for collaborative work: 

• We are all a part of co-creating a space to learn together. We each have an opportunity to learn as well as to share what we know and need here within our spheres of influence to prevent violence and to promote positive campus norms change.

• We will listen and communicate with respect and an open mind.

• Allow space for dissenting perspective. Dialogue enables us to explore the best strategies to address violence.

• Many people in our community, and in CCRT, have experienced violence. We acknowledge that these conversations have a personal impact.

Backbone support: The offices of the CCRT Chairs and the OVW Grant Coordinator serve as a dedicated team that oversees meeting logistics, manages the member roster, helps create agendas with member input, and supports the working groups. The backbone support ensures the sustainability of CCRT. 

A common agenda: Through conversations and relationship building with campus stakeholders and members of the PATH to Care Center (PTC), an opportunity was collectively identified for a need to have student fellows that are co-supervised by partnering on-campus offices to liaise between office, support students who hold intersecting identities and interests, and to increase awareness and access to PTC services for sexual violence and sexual harassment (SVSH). In partnership with the Student Environmental Resource Center (SERC), Undocumented Students Program (USP) and Graduate Division, 4 student positions were created for recruitment. The positions included: Graduate Data Fellow, Undergraduate Data Fellow, Graduate Healing Fellow, and Grants & Fundraising Fellow. 

Shared measurement systems: In discussion with partnering offices, measurements were created to indicate that a student has been successful in their fellowship role. First, each student had a line item in their job description to produce one communication (newsletter, art, brown bag luncheon, etc.) that linked their two supervising offices. While students were encouraged to explore their interests to come up with their own projects or research, the communication piece was a thread through all of the position descriptions. Second, co-supervisors created a structure to meet 1:1 with the student at least bi-weekly for a standing supervision meeting. In addition to those meetings, co-supervisors regularly met to share progress and feedback for the process. Finally, co-supervisors and students met with the project director every month to assess progress, work through supervision issues, and keep students accountable for their work through the fellowship. 

Mutually-reinforcing activities: In collaboration with SERC, USP, PTC, and the Graduate Division, students were recruited, interviewed, hired and onboarded during summer 2023. Students were encouraged to create their own projects or research that linked their two supervising offices. For example, a student may be interested in researching the rates of domestic violence when a natural disaster occurs and what intervention methods could prevent individual, family, and community harm in the future. By encouraging the student to thread the two offices, deep intersectional issues arose to highlight areas of need on campus for SVSH programming and education. One student highlighted the importance of incorporating tailored SVSH training and education into orientation for undocumented students and created a mentorship program that encouraged peer to peer coaching around responding with care and concern to disclosures of violence. 

Continuous communications:  In addition to regular standing meetings between the project director, supervisors and students, communication was also shared via email, Slack and online platforms such as Padlet to share progress, feedback, challenges, and successes. During this fellowship process, supervisors developed a deeper understanding of the work happening in their partnering office and found ways to collaborate outside of the program. 

For example, the co-supervisors who supervised the Grants & Fundraising Fellow found connections in how grant opportunities are shared to the campus community and worked together to strengthen outreach when grant opportunities arise, particularly to minoritized communities on campus. Additionally, they worked together to share upcoming events, signed up for each other's newsletters, and stayed in contact beyond the fellowship. 

Backbone support: During this project, PTC served as the Backbone structure. The project director at PTC identified partnering offices who offered one co-supervisor to supervise the student’s activities in their respective offices. In total, there were 6 co-supervisors and a Backbone “lead” that directed the project, provided guidance to supervisors and students, and was responsible for documentation and reporting to OVW on project activities. 

It is important to note that the Backbone in this model hired the students internally at PTC and owned the responsibility to timecards and stipend payments to students to allow partnering offices to focus on project management with students. 

The Backbone project supervisor offered two models of supervision. The first was to have the co-supervisors rotate weekly with standing meetings and projects so that the student was integrated into both offices simultaneously. The second model was to have the student integrate into one office with one supervisor and halfway through the fellowship, transition to the other partnering office to work with them 100% of their time. Both models were utilized and the flexibility was helpful for both supervisors and students. 

The backbone project supervisor was also responsible ensuring that communication was being looped back to specific teams and that students felt supported in their work. 

In 2018, UC Berkeley’s entire campus community was invited to share their experiences, beliefs, norms and knowledge regarding sexual violence and sexual harassment (SVSH) through the MyVoice Survey. The four main goals of the MyVoice Survey were to inform campus prevention and response efforts; tailor programs and services to campus needs; learn Berkeley’s protective and risk factors for SVSH; and acquire a prevalence rates baseline. 

A common agenda: A MyVoice Action Planning Team was convened to identify key results from the survey and to develop an action plan. They survey data enabled the MyVoice Action Planning Team to define several key problems and to create a share vision for change.

Shared measurement systems: The MyVoice Action Planning Team laid out clear, achievable objectives for the entire campus community. In subsequent years, the SVSH Annual Reports have tracked progress on each of the action items.

Mutually-reinforcing activities and continuous communications: The MyVoice Action Planning Team was composed of 15 representatives from different offices or groups on the UC Berkeley campus. The representatives came together to align on an action plan for the entire campus. 

Many of the action items were achieved, partially or fully, since 2018. The objectives were largely completed through the collective efforts of the Coordinated Community Review Team (CCRT) or through partnerships across a smaller set of campus offices or groups. Quarterly meetings of the CCRT and more frequent meetings of the CCRT working groups enabled continuous communication and coordination.

Backbone support: The PATH to Care Center and the Special Faculty Advisor to the Chancellor provided logstical support, convened the group, and subsequntly lead efforts to achieve the plan's objectives and track progress. 

A common agenda:

• The Comprehensive Prevention Plan (CPP) was initiated from the 2020 OVW continuation grant. The intention was to understand existing prevention activities that are happening on campus and to develop a plan to address gaps in programming to specific populations or communities. 

• The working group was formed out to CCRT and started with creating a common agenda among the participants by asking processing questions to the group, such as:

  • When you think of a Comprehensive Prevention Plan “end product”, what do you envision? 

  • When you think of a Comprehensive Prevention Plan, what do you envision success looks like? 

  • What barriers exist for you as you continue to participate in this working group? 

  • What other information (if any) do you need in order to move forward? 

• Additionally, the group created shared definitions of commonly used terms and violence prevention theory to level set with the group and develop definitions together to avoid conflict on language later in the project. 

• The group used online tools to identify dates, time, and cadence of the working group meeting and scheduled meetings out for the semester to hold on our calendars. 

Shared measurement systems 

• After creating the shared agenda with the group and envisioning the end product together, the co-chairs explored the following processing questions with the group to understand shared measurements:

  • What shared measurements would be helpful to understand how to learn, adapt, and innovate our Comprehensive Prevention Plan? 

  • What is the goal/objective of the CPP?

  • What elements do you want to have in a CPP?

  • How do you want to engage with a CPP?

  • How will you know you’re effective in meeting the goals/objectives of the CPP?

• The group was invited to process the questions in the large group and/or enter in information on a Padlet to collect responses and determine where our shared measurements and overlapping goals are. 

• Additionally, the group took part in timelining the project together to better understand the larger vision and the steps that are needed to accomplish the vision. This allowed space for the group to collaborate on the timeline and discuss any impacts they foresee in the development and implementation of the CPP. 

• To measure ongoing progress, the team is routinely brought back to the shared timeline to track success, continue to open discussion on the process of the CPP, and provide feedback to the larger CCRT to share out successes and next steps in the project. 

Mutually-reinforcing activities

• The Backbone of the project was intentional with offering many entry points for mutually reinforcing activities. For example, the group welcomed other prevention-based discussion around intersections of identity, new policies, and how to collaborate with other committees or groups on campus. 

• Recognizing that folks on the working group were coming from different spaces with differing priorities (i.e. compliance and advocacy), the Backbone was intentional to allow space for all aspects of Prevention education that allowed offices and units to buy-in to the project and have sections that reinforce their work along with supporting the work of others. 

• This cross-collaboration helped identify overlapping priorities in prevention, lifted up gaps in prevention on campus, and allowed for active disruption of group-think in the development process. 

Continuous communications

• The CPP working group meets monthly and communicates in the working group space and via various platforms like Padlet and Google Docs to provide feedback on the CPP and share ideas around the development process. 

• One significant way to build trust in the group were consistent, non-work related check-in questions at the beginning of each working group meeting.

• Recognizing that folks in the working group were coming from different offices, communities, and spaces on campus, the Backbone wanted to ensure that trust and relationships were built before and during the development process of the CPP. The check in questions were often silly or lighthearted to get the conversation going before diving into the difficult topic of coordinating prevention efforts. 

Backbone support

• The CPP working group developed out of the CCRT and therefore had a backbone of a larger committee. Additionally, the project integrated an internal working group backbone structure to support agenda creation and facilitation. 

• The structure of the Backbone in this project supported the collective by bringing strong organizational and project management expertise to the working group. While the group was facilitated by subject matter experts, the communication and collaboration was driven by the Backbone support who brought profound operational experience.

• The Backbone held internal working meetings with the co-chair of the group to outline roles and responsibilities, develop content, and set the agenda. Additionally, the operational experts set up systems of communication, onboarded new members, and held participants accountable with compassion to keep the project on track. 

• There were a lot of benefits to having an internal backbone that was supported by both subject matter experts and operations professionals. First, the project management team had the most context to the project and were able to hold that context and use it to onboard new members and set the collective up for success. The Backbone was sure to give enough context so that new members felt engaged but not so much that they were overwhelmed. Also, the Backbone was able to hold the vision of the project and apply project management skills to break it down into steps to achieve that project. Having both dreamers and do-ers in the Backbone was helpful in supporting the needs of various stakeholders and departments involved in creating the CPP.