Giving Compass' Take:

• Stanford Social Innovation Review looks at Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms book called New Power, which describes the peer-driven model of social change and influence that is becoming more prominent in our world.

• The influence of online communities and the concept of 'viral news' is changing the landscape of political and social change. How will this new power to drive initiatives forward be both beneficial and possibly harmful to our society? 

• Read more about how this new power is successful in action by understanding how social media helps create positive social change campaigns. 

As details emerged this spring about Cambridge Analytica’s mining of Facebook data to help manipulate elections around the world, it was easy to succumb to a feeling of powerlessness.

And yet, just as the public learned about Cambridge Analytica, a group of high school students from Parkland, Florida, captured the civic conversation on preventing gun violence. With few resources and without attachment to any organization, they have generated mass protests and brought millions of voices to bear on legislators and others whose decisions profoundly affect the availability of guns.

These two initiatives are more alike than they are different. Both are subverting traditional power structures to gain their own power and influence. One was extremely well funded, the other runs on the passion of grieving students. But both used the power of platforms to gain traction for their ideas.

New Power, written by Purpose CEO Jeremy Heimans and Giving Tuesday co-founder Henry Timms, helps us both to understand the moment unfolding around us and to navigate this new world. The term “new power” describes the participatory and peer-driven model of those who share control to drive influence.

New power is characterized by radical transparency, a willingness to allow communities to reinvent or re-create content, shared control, and actionable ideas that people make their own rather than simply consume. It is not defined by social platforms like Facebook and YouTube, though ideas well designed to flourish in a new power world certainly transmit far more quickly on these platforms than through traditional and highly controlled media.

According to Heimans and Timms, new power requires approaches that are actionable, connect to communities, and—perhaps most significantly—are extensible, meaning that they create an opportunity for communities to bring their own content and methods.

Read the full article about new power by Ann Christiano at Stanford Social Innovation Review