What is Giving Compass?
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Giving Compass' Take:
• These five practices were the common denominator in 15 successful philanthropy moonshots for lasting social change.
• How can these practices be applied to your ongoing efforts? What shifts in strategy could improve your chances of achieving a lasting impact?
• Learn more about promoting social change effectively.
1: Built a shared understanding of the problem:
This means, essentially, knowing the root causes and factors contributing to a big social problem — who it affects, who benefits, and how it is embedded into different aspects of our society.
2: Set “winnable milestones” and hone a compelling message:
Because creating lasting social change can take decades, we’ve got to set smaller goals along the way so we can stay motivated and move forward. Then for each achievable goal, you’ve got to rally people around its inspiring story and message that everyone at all levels — from government leaders to a random person on the street — can understand.
3: Designed approaches that will work at massive scale:
If you have an amazing nonprofit or social change project, but it can’t be scaled or expanded effectively and efficiently enough to tackle the social problem beyond your city, it won’t create the kind of long-term social change we’re talking about here. To make sure a project or campaign can scale, it has to be affordable to duplicate, simple enough for anyone to implement, and an idea that people can be easily trained to lead on their own — without dependence on one person or a small group of people’s highly specialized skills.
4: Drove (rather than assumed) demand:
Long-lasting social change efforts respond to real problems and provide solutions people in the community or world actually want — they don’t start with a “cool idea for an innovative product or campaign” — they start with the need. Then, successful social change efforts invest heavily in marketing and outreach to test ideas and raise awareness about solutions.
5: Embraced course corrections:
All social change efforts hit roadblocks and encounter failure at some point. But in successful efforts, leaders and supporters of these movements view failure as learning and a chance to improve — not a reason to give up.
Read the full article about the five key practices at WeGoBusiness.