Giving Compass' Take:

• Leslie Crutchfield shares her research about social movements and insights on why some fail and others succeed. 

• How can philanthropy use this information to more effectively support movements? 

• Read more about the success of the LGBTQ movement. 

Leslie Crutchfield, author of How Change Happens: Why Some Social Movements Succeed While Others Don’t, discusses six steps that are the key to successful social movements, the most important of which is grass-roots activism — protests, demonstrations, voter turnout.

Crutchfield is the executive director of the Global Social Enterprise Initiative at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business and a senior adviser at consulting firm FSG.

Of course, every movement has grassroots activism, protests, demonstrations, voter turnout. It was really surprising to me and my colleagues at Georgetown University who were working with me on the research that some movements just don’t master this. These might have grassroots, but they don’t invest in it, and that means real money, time, resources amplifying and nurturing the grassroots and realizing that change happens from the bottom up.

Read the full interview with Leslie Crutchfield about impactful social movements by Denver Frederick at The Business of Giving.