Creating Social Change: A Few Useful Principles
Want to change the world? Raise some money for a community project? Save the rainforests? Previously, you may have read about some steps to take when trying to change the world or some part of it. If you haven’t read about those steps, here is the link.
This post is about some principals to follow. You might get some benefit from working with a framework for thinking about your organization, the problem you want to solve, and the context where that idea gets used.
Five Social Change Principles
What follows is a summary of each principle and how to use it. Don’t expect to be an expert social innovator after reading this section though. You can reach expert status though, but only if you are willing to put in the study and practice. Take the following sections as a starting point and study the resources. Future articles in this series will cover the tools and techniques in detail that can only be mentioned in passing here.
1-Think Like a Designer
This isn’t an order to be creative, though some creative thinking is going to be necessary. No matter what the challenge your solution is supposed to address., try to create something that fits the situation. A recycling program designed for rural Coffee County, Tennessee has to look different from a program designed for Oakland, CA or Mercer Island, Washington. Right
Whatever you want to create, design, or improve, think about all the things that would make your design a hit. Create a design brief, however simple, that defines what a good idea must do or must look like. Learn the basics of design thinking and then use them. If design thinking is new to you and sounds useful, start here to learn more.
Obviously, not everything in social activism or social service can be a design challenge. Sometimes you have an idea and you have to sell it. Or, maybe you aren’t sure what the problem is. Maybe you have a working problem definition but you don’t know how to tackle the program. A scientific mindset can help.
2-Think Scientifically
Science explores the natural world systematically, looking for relationships between variables, measuring them, putting the results together and applying some logic to better understand some facet of the natural world. This is 100% true of social problems; the causes and cures for social problems become clear if you study them using that same process.
You can adopt the same attitude about development, program design, social innovation, social marketing, and more. Learn how to write and test a simple hypothesis. If your line of work is data-heavy, learn to read official statistics and simple statistical tests. If your line of work involves solving a social problem like homelessness, learn to read the relevant social science literature.
3-Look for Leverage
If you want to make a change, sell an idea, raise more money, or create a better recycling program it often helps to ask a question — How can we do as much as possible with the resources we have available? Looking for leverage is kind of like that, finding ways to make the greatest impact. If you want to increase recycling rates in your city, what is the single thing you could do that would boost recycling the most? If you want to tackle homelessness, what single program idea would do the most good?
Look for leverage by using relationships, money, credit, volunteer resources, free consulting services, whatever it takes. Spend some time looking at various ways to get the most change for your resources.
3-Think Marketing
If you want to raise money or promote recycling or change the nation’s gun control laws, you are working in marketing. You are selling an organization, law, program, lifestyle change, et cetera. Never kid yourselves about that. If you can’t coerce or pay someone, you have to convince them. Selling crafts on eBay or selling yourself as a real estate agent to prospective home sellers isn’t fundamentally any different from getting someone to support a carbon-neutral energy policy or go meatless for one day a week. Both efforts involve selling an idea.
Learn how to analyze an audience and craft a message. Brainstorm creative messages and creative marketing tactics.
5-Look for Leverage
When it comes to raising money or changing behaviors or solving social problems with the legislation, it makes sense to go for the maximum impact for the effort. If you can find a way to help 1,000 homeless people for the same money and labor as serving 800, or even 700, wouldn’t that be great? Of course! Those breakthrough ideas might not come every time – and they probably won’t – but it isn’t that tough to try.
All of these principles don’t necessarily apply to a specific situation. But, it seems like all of the principles are useful from time-to-time. Future articles are going to offer more details on how to use the steps and these five principles together. You’ll also learn more about tools and techniques that go with this social innovation framework.
