“Networks are the organizing system of the future, and this book is your guide."
“Required reading for all new paradigm leaders and 
change agents.”

Get your copy of Impact Networks

A practical guide for facilitating collaboration amid the immense complexity of our world
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Praise for Impact Networks
“This book is just what the field needs: a clear, thorough guide to starting up and energizing a network.”
-June Holley, Founder, Network Weaver Institute and author of Network Weaver Handbook
“Addressing today’s wicked challenges requires aligning your organization’s purpose, actions and capacity with others in the living nested systems you are part of. This book is an inspiring and helpful resource for those who want to contribute to and be part of tomorrow’s connected ecosystems.”
- Michiel Bakker, Vice President, Global Workplace Services Programs at Google
“Networks are the organizing system of the future, and this book is your guide. If you’re a foundation leader or philanthropist, it will transform the way you approach your work."
- Philip Li, President & CEO, Robert Sterling Clark Foundation
“This is the book systems change practitioners have been waiting for: comprehensive, clear, concise, compelling, and eminently actionable. Ehrlichman brings together an impressively diverse range of sources, weaving their insights into an inspiring set of tools for transformation. His gift for language makes complex topics seem intuitive; it's a beautiful and generous distillation of existing best practice, extended through Ehrlichman's own deep practice and commitment. It's a gift.”
- Brian Stout, Curator and Network Weaver, 
Building Belonging
“This book beautifully illustrates how networks can catalyze and support transformational change. I found it to be a clarion call to appreciate the power of networks and to be more intentional with the networks I am involved in.”
- Courtney Pineau, Senior Director of Climate and Agriculture Networks, Green America's Center for Sustainability Solutions
“These actionable insights on fostering collaboration couldn’t be more timely, as we see more than ever the need for greater understanding of networks as a force for social change in a hyperconnected, yet siloed world. This book offers a rich source of ideas and inspiration to strengthen network relationships at the heart of our work and to help deepen our collective impact.
- Elizabeth G. Christopherson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Rita Allen Foundation
"Impact Networks brings clarity to the rapidly emerging landscape of how civil society can find synergy and create impact today. Ehrlichman draws upon years of experience as a network leader along with his deep relationships in the field to give us a clear blueprint for how to understand, create and support the collaboration we crave."
- Marty Kooistra, Executive Director for the Housing Development Consortium of Seattle-King County
“Impact Networks brings to light the fundamental theory of fields behind networks with purpose and networks for development, which until now had been missing. It is a masterpiece as it pins down the definition, understanding and complex framing of impact networks in a practical and far-ranging way.
-Matias Urrutigoity and Hernan Manson, Alliances for Action, International Trade Centre (UN/WTO)
“David Ehrlichman has written a clear, passionate and most useful book about networks. I have devoted my professional life to the development of networks among leaders of social movements that define our day, and in this book we have a tool that brings it all together.”
- Gibrán Rivera, Master Facilitator
“This book is an engaging invitation to action that inspires us to roll up our sleeves and collaborate. Drawing on a profound range of personal experience, learning and deep thinking, David Ehrlichman makes a compelling case for impact networks as an effective, sustainable and scalable way to spark and steward social change.”
– Liz Wilson, senior executive, Small Foundation
“Perhaps the most shocking interruption of white modernity is the idea that we are not alone and have never been. Instead of being Newtonian atoms free-floating in empty space, we are sensuous networks and assemblages of agency and potential. Upon this scandalous idea rests a strange hope – one that is appropriate to our tense times: no longer that we change the world in some mechanistic fashion, but that we meet our odd cousins and be transformed in the gasp of encounter. This book is a map to the strangeness of networks. We should all read it.”
- Bayo Akomolafe, PhD, Author of These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home, and Chief Curator of The Emergence Network
“This century will be defined by whether we tap into our hive mind and build the networks we need to solve problems together. Impact Networks is an essential guide for how to do both.”
- Talia Milgrom-Elcott, Founder and Executive Director at 100Kin10 and Starfish Institute
“This book should be required reading for all new paradigm leaders and change agents. As our society becomes increasingly complex and chaotic, leaders who do not practice what this book teaches are dooming themselves to the dustbin of history. It is only through networks, and the forward-thinking leaders who form and steward them, that humanity will address the challenges that face us.
– Tim Kelley, global change agent and author of True Purpose
“Human survival and thriving, including health, justice and learning, depend in large part upon critical connections and flows. The call of our times is then about deftly (and humbly) working with our interconnected reality. David Ehrlichman’s gift helps readers to better sense and act in networked ways, through the offering of real and inspiring examples, useful concepts and frameworks, and the encouragement to engage with complexity and messiness for the sake of a more promising future.”
– Curtis Ogden, Senior Associate, Interaction Institute for Social Change
“Being able to acknowledge complexity and the value of networks is one thing, being able to understand them is another. Then being able to translate and teach it is another level. David does an incredible job doing all three WITH us through this book...it serves as your companion guide in an accessible, insightful, and tangible way.”
– Christine Lai, Network Connector, The Ready and former Chief of Staff, Delivering Happiness
For years the Converge network has quietly become leaders in the developing and debugging of complex networks. That knowledge is being generously offered to the world, at a time when diverse groups must come together through complexity and difference for the sake of humanity.”
- Mikey Siegel, Founder, Consciousness Hacking
“This book is just what the field needs: a clear, thorough guide to starting up and energizing a network.”
-June Holley, Founder, Network Weaver Institute and author of Network Weaver Handbook
“Addressing today’s wicked challenges requires aligning your organization’s purpose, actions and capacity with others in the living nested systems you are part of. This book is an inspiring and helpful resource for those who want to contribute to and be part of tomorrow’s connected ecosystems.”
- Michiel Bakker, Vice President, Global Workplace Services Programs at Google
“Networks are the organizing system of the future, and this book is your guide. If you’re a foundation leader or philanthropist, it will transform the way you approach your work."
- Philip Li, President & CEO, Robert Sterling Clark Foundation
“This is the book systems change practitioners have been waiting for: comprehensive, clear, concise, compelling, and eminently actionable. Ehrlichman brings together an impressively diverse range of sources, weaving their insights into an inspiring set of tools for transformation. His gift for language makes complex topics seem intuitive; it's a beautiful and generous distillation of existing best practice, extended through Ehrlichman's own deep practice and commitment. It's a gift.”
- Brian Stout, Curator and Network Weaver, 
Building Belonging
“This book beautifully illustrates how networks can catalyze and support transformational change. I found it to be a clarion call to appreciate the power of networks and to be more intentional with the networks I am involved in.”
- Courtney Pineau, Senior Director of Climate and Agriculture Networks, Green America's Center for Sustainability Solutions
“These actionable insights on fostering collaboration couldn’t be more timely, as we see more than ever the need for greater understanding of networks as a force for social change in a hyperconnected, yet siloed world. This book offers a rich source of ideas and inspiration to strengthen network relationships at the heart of our work and to help deepen our collective impact.
- Elizabeth G. Christopherson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Rita Allen Foundation
"Impact Networks brings clarity to the rapidly emerging landscape of how civil society can find synergy and create impact today. Ehrlichman draws upon years of experience as a network leader along with his deep relationships in the field to give us a clear blueprint for how to understand, create and support the collaboration we crave."
- Marty Kooistra, Executive Director for the Housing Development Consortium of Seattle-King County
“Impact Networks brings to light the fundamental theory of fields behind networks with purpose and networks for development, which until now had been missing. It is a masterpiece as it pins down the definition, understanding and complex framing of impact networks in a practical and far-ranging way.
-Matias Urrutigoity and Hernan Manson, Alliances for Action, International Trade Centre (UN/WTO)
“David Ehrlichman has written a clear, passionate and most useful book about networks. I have devoted my professional life to the development of networks among leaders of social movements that define our day, and in this book we have a tool that brings it all together.”
- Gibrán Rivera, Master Facilitator
“This book is an engaging invitation to action that inspires us to roll up our sleeves and collaborate. Drawing on a profound range of personal experience, learning and deep thinking, David Ehrlichman makes a compelling case for impact networks as an effective, sustainable and scalable way to spark and steward social change.”
– Liz Wilson, senior executive, Small Foundation
“Perhaps the most shocking interruption of white modernity is the idea that we are not alone and have never been. Instead of being Newtonian atoms free-floating in empty space, we are sensuous networks and assemblages of agency and potential. Upon this scandalous idea rests a strange hope – one that is appropriate to our tense times: no longer that we change the world in some mechanistic fashion, but that we meet our odd cousins and be transformed in the gasp of encounter. This book is a map to the strangeness of networks. We should all read it.”
- Bayo Akomolafe, PhD, Author of These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home, and Chief Curator of The Emergence Network
“This century will be defined by whether we tap into our hive mind and build the networks we need to solve problems together. Impact Networks is an essential guide for how to do both.”
- Talia Milgrom-Elcott, Founder and Executive Director at 100Kin10 and Starfish Institute
“This book should be required reading for all new paradigm leaders and change agents. As our society becomes increasingly complex and chaotic, leaders who do not practice what this book teaches are dooming themselves to the dustbin of history. It is only through networks, and the forward-thinking leaders who form and steward them, that humanity will address the challenges that face us.
– Tim Kelley, global change agent and author of True Purpose
“Human survival and thriving, including health, justice and learning, depend in large part upon critical connections and flows. The call of our times is then about deftly (and humbly) working with our interconnected reality. David Ehrlichman’s gift helps readers to better sense and act in networked ways, through the offering of real and inspiring examples, useful concepts and frameworks, and the encouragement to engage with complexity and messiness for the sake of a more promising future.”
– Curtis Ogden, Senior Associate, Interaction Institute for Social Change
“Being able to acknowledge complexity and the value of networks is one thing, being able to understand them is another. Then being able to translate and teach it is another level. David does an incredible job doing all three WITH us through this book...it serves as your companion guide in an accessible, insightful, and tangible way.”
– Christine Lai, Network Connector, The Ready and former Chief of Staff, Delivering Happiness
For years the Converge network has quietly become leaders in the developing and debugging of complex networks. That knowledge is being generously offered to the world, at a time when diverse groups must come together through complexity and difference for the sake of humanity.”
- Mikey Siegel, Founder, Consciousness Hacking

About Impact Networks

The social and environmental challenges we face today are not only complex, they are also systemic and structural and have no obvious solutions. They require diverse combinations of people, organizations, and sectors to coordinate actions and work together even when the way forward is unclear. Even so, collaborative efforts often fail because they attempt to navigate complexity with traditional strategic plans, created by hierarchies that ignore the way people naturally connect.

By embracing a living-systems approach to organizing, impact networks bring people together to build relationships across boundaries; leverage the existing work, skills, and motivations of the group; and make progress amid unpredictable and ever-changing conditions. As a powerful and flexible organizing system that can span regions, organizations, and silos of all kinds, impact networks underlie some of the most impressive and large-scale efforts to create change across the globe.

David Ehrlichman draws on his experience as a network builder and that of the Converge network; interviews with dozens of network leaders; and insights from the fields of network science, community building, and systems thinking to provide a clear process for creating and developing impact networks. Given the increasing complexity of our society and the issues we face, our ability to form, grow, and work through networks has never been more essential.

About the Author

David Ehrlichman is a catalyst and coordinator of Converge. With his colleagues, he has supported the development of dozens of impact networks in a variety of fields, and has worked as a network coordinator for the Santa Cruz Mountains Stewardship Network, Sterling Network NYC, and the Fresno New Leadership Network. He speaks and writes frequently on networks, finds serenity in music, and is completely mesmerized by his newborn daughter.

You can find him on Medium, Twitter, LinkedIn, or at ehrlichman@converge.net.

“In our era of complexity, we need ways of working together that span our traditional boundaries... Networks are the organizing systems that allow our society to function today and can enable us to flourish in the future.”

Get your copy of Impact Networks

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