The Connective
Tissue.
Trenton Collective is a backbone organization for collective action in Trenton, New Jersey. We help the city’s organizations and leaders work together around shared goals using data, measurement, and strategic collaboration.
Not Another
Provider.
Trenton has committed organizations, capable leaders, and residents who show up. What it has lacked is shared infrastructure — the data everyone can trust, the outcomes everyone has agreed to, and the coordination that makes separate efforts add up.
Trenton Collective was built to fill that role rather than to add another service to the city’s roster. We collect data, build measurement systems, and convene the organizations that have to move together for an outcome to change. When we do touch direct engagement — as in our community health work — it is because that engagement is how residents get heard, and because what we learn goes back to the whole partner network.
Our value is measured by whether other organizations get better results, not by how much work runs through us.
Research on collective impact consistently identifies the absence of a dedicated backbone organization as a common reason multi-partner efforts fail. Coordination, shared measurement, and follow-through are real work. When no one is resourced to do them, they do not happen.
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Core functions: data collection, measurement & evaluation, strategic collaboration
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Areas where we apply the collective action model
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City. All of our work is Trenton-specific.
Early, and
Saying So.
Trenton Collective is a young organization building this infrastructure from the ground up. We would rather describe our stage accurately than borrow credibility we have not earned — particularly since our entire function depends on partners trusting what we publish.
What is underway
Community engagement through the Black Men’s Health Initiative; a first publicly sourced set of citywide indicators; landscape analysis in housing and workforce; and listening with youth-serving organizations.
What is being built
Survey instruments and a recurring listening cycle, shared indicator definitions partners can adopt, and the first dashboards for initiatives that reach alignment.
What we do not claim
We do not claim partner outcomes as our impact, do not publish figures we cannot source, and do not describe a partnership as committed before the partner has committed.
What we need
Partners willing to share data, funders willing to align around shared outcomes, and residents willing to tell us plainly when our read of the city is wrong.
Who Does
This Work.
Founder & Executive Director
Jaylen Hackett
LinkedInJaylen Hackett is the Founder and Executive Director of Trenton Collective. He brings nearly a decade of experience across the public and social sectors, focused on economic mobility, community development, and equitable policy.
He holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management and a Master of Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School, along with a B.A. in Economics and Political Science from the University of Southern Mississippi.
His work spans K–12 and higher education, local and federal government, and national nonprofits and foundations — including the Mobile County Public School System, the Jersey City Housing Authority, and the City of Trenton, as well as the Robin Hood Foundation. Nationally, he has contributed to the Wilson Institute by Harlem Children’s Zone on cradle-to-career models and worked with the Obama Foundation to assess and strengthen the My Brother’s Keeper initiative. He also brings the analytical discipline of his work at McKinsey & Company, advising governments, nonprofits, and institutions on strategy and systems change.
He founded Trenton Collective on the conviction that the resources, talent, and drive to transform Trenton already exist — and that the missing piece is the infrastructure to connect them.
Shawn Hackett
Program Director
Vincent Hall
Program Director
Heather McCants
Human Resources Lead
Board of Directors
Being formed — announcement to come
Who We Work
Alongside.
Organizations we have convened, collaborated with, or are actively in conversation with in Trenton. Each relationship is at a different stage, and we describe them that way rather than presenting a logo wall as evidence of a coalition.
One City.
One Set of Goals.
Trenton Collective only works if the organizations shaping this city are in it. If that includes you, start with a conversation about what you are trying to change.