How Change Happens

Conclusion: Where We Go from Here: From Forces for Good to How Change Happens

HOW CHANGE HAPPENS picks up where Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits leaves off. The driving question behind Forces for Good was: “What makes great nonprofits great?” The answer: High-impact nonprofits build movements, not just organizations. The best nonprofits work outside their four walls to advance causes that go beyond their singular missions or programs. The research findings in Forces for Good led to another question: What makes great movements great? The answer to that question is revealed in the chapters of this book.

Not surprisingly, many of the findings in How Change Happens echo or amplify ideas introduced in Forces for Good. However, there is a key difference: In this book, the unit of analysis was not just individual organizations, but entire movements—the constellations of nonprofits, government agencies, policy shops, businesses, faith-based organizations, associations, media, and millions of individual grassroots community members that make up any major change effort. The landscapes of movements are so broad, their histories so deep, and their intra-workings so complex that it has been supremely challenging to distill salient lessons readers can use. We realize we may not have captured all of the factors that explain why some movements succeed and others don’t in How Change Happens, but we believe we found the important ones.

It’s also worth noting that, ...