Overview

In late 1999, a wide and diverse group of community leaders, practitioners, and thinkers came together to explore ways to address some of the challenges of collaboration and to foster more comprehensive efforts that holistically address a community’s aspirations for community renewal.

The North Carolina Community Solutions Network is the result of this effort. The purpose of the North Carolina Community Solutions Network is to build the capacity of communities – particularly those that are economically distressed - to inclusively and collaboratively address complex community problems and improve the quality of life for all its citizens. The Solutions Network believes that the best short and long-term solutions for economic and social well being result when communities listen to voices from all sectors; work intentionally to bridge historic divides across race, power, geography, and other historic divisions; and foster a civic culture of inclusion, engagement, and democracy in decision-making.

Within this broad purpose of advancing collaborative community problem-solving, the Network has four goals:

1. Connect communities to the information, coaching, and other resources already available in the state to support community-change efforts;
2. Strengthen the numbers and capacity of practitioners across North Carolina who are able to assist communities through educational programs and improved access to knowledge, resources and public and private financial support;
3. Shape public agency policies and practices to support collaborative community problem-solving and reduce fragmentation of efforts; and,
4. Build the practice of community problem solving by sharing what has been learned in communities and developing new tools and practices.

THE NETWORK ENABLES CONNECTION AND CO-CREATION
To achieve the ambitious purpose and goals of the Solutions Network, the launch team recognized that the form of this new entity must model collaboration and inclusive decision-making. It must also leverage and build existing knowledge and capacity by connecting – not duplicating - existing efforts. Finally, the Network must be flexible and adaptable to respond to the complexity and fluidness of the problems and issues in North Carolina’s rural and urban communities.

The launch team chose to forego traditional organizational forms, instead choosing to build an enabling network that harnesses the talent and resources of interested individuals, organizations, and institutions to focus on the purpose and principles defined by the team and further refined by a growing body of network participants.

In his acclaimed new book Linked: The New Science of Networks, Albert-Laszlo Barabasi documents the diversity and strength of networks from policy networks and ownership networks to collaboration networks and organizational networks. Cisco, Compaq, IBM, and Red Hat all use networks as a core business strategy.

VISA is designed as a network of banks and other financial institutions that share the credit card product. The Society for Organizational Learning initiated by Peter Senge of MIT is organized as an enabling network as is La Leche League International. These and other initiatives find that a network allows a wide variety of partners to work together to add value to their individual and shared goals.

YOU ARE INVITED TO PARTICIPATE
The North Carolina Community Solutions Network will only be as strong as the commitment of its partners to connect and create with each other.

Our design is to spark a conversation with potential partners about investing time, energy, talent, and financial resources in creating a shared vehicle that accelerates community problem-solving and advances community renewal across the state. We are seeking partners who are already engaged in some aspect of community problem-solving and want to link with others to leverage and grow their efforts.

Each partner is invited to sign on to the purpose and principles of the Solutions Network and define their own terms of participation in concert with the purpose and principles and in relationship with other partners in the Network.