CHALLENGE

Notre Dame has long been committed to addressing social challenges close to home. But despite years of meaningful work in South Bend, community members felt unwelcome and the University felt distant. Notre Dame's Office of Public Affairs and Center for Social Concerns engaged Impact Collaborative to find out why those perceptions existed and what it would take to change them.

OUR WORK

As with all our client work, we started by listening. Working closely with Notre Dame's project leads, we designed a research plan and conducted a University-wide audit of community partnerships and initiatives, including more than 40 interviews and 15 focus groups with key stakeholder groups inside and outside the University.

What we found was striking. Notre Dame was driving powerful social change in South Bend, but almost none of it was connected. Efforts were siloed across schools, institutes, centers, and administrative functions, leaving communities without a true sense of partnership, students and educators without meaningful points of engagement, and alumni entirely on the sidelines. The University had significant resources committed to this work. What it lacked was a coordinated approach to making them count.

IMPACT

Our findings directly shaped the formation of Notre Dame's Community Engagement Coordinating Council (CECC), a horizontal infrastructure designed to enhance community-based partnerships through coordinated research, learning, service, and communications. Working alongside the University, we helped build out the CECC's roadmap and tools, engaged corporate, civic, nonprofit, and alumni advisors, and developed impact measurement benchmarks, laying the groundwork for a more connected, reciprocal relationship between Notre Dame and South Bend.

SELECT ACTIVITIES

Alumni, faculty,and student engagement · Coalition building · Community engagement · Impact measurement · Stakeholder research & analysis · Strategic planning