Keystone community partnerships: Advancing the land grant mission through collective impact

Keystone Community Partnerships (KCP) is a community capacity building program inspired by the Collective Impact model (CI) – a project and partnership approach to achieve systems-level change by advancing equity, collaborative learning, goal alignment, and action integration. KCP leverages the collective resources, knowledge, and expertise of the university in collaboration with community stakeholders to address complex challenges and amplify existing community assets. This descriptive case study presents a literature review of CI generally, and an explanation of KCP specifically, along with community impacts and outcomes. Institutional challenges are outlined along with validation of the KCP program as an effective process to maximize broader impacts and collaborations to address these challenges. Recent community-based case studies are described to illustrate the program and its potential for engagement and impact. Finally, Youth Participatory Action Research is identified as an effective means for addressing the equity imperative within CI, as illustrated by the KCP case studies.