The Guide to Major Trusts 2025-26. DSC (Directory of Social Change)

How Change Happens: Why Some Social Movements Succeed While Others Don’t

Why do some changes occur, and others don’t? What are the factors that drive successful social and environmental movements, while others falter? 

How Change Happens examines the leadership approaches, campaign strategies, and ground-level tactics employed in a range of modern social change campaigns.

The book explores successful movements that have achieved phenomenal impact since the 1980s—tobacco control, gun rights expansion, LGBT marriage equality, and acid rain elimination. It also examines recent campaigns that seem to have fizzled, like Occupy Wall Street, and those that continue to struggle, like gun violence prevention and carbon emissions reduction.

And it explores implications for movements that are newly emerging, like Black Lives Matter. By comparing successful social change campaigns to the rest, How Change Happens reveals powerful lessons for changemakers who seek to impact society and the planet for the better in the 21st century.

Author

Author Leslie Crutchfield is a writer, lecturer, social impact advisor, and leading authority on scaling social innovation. She is Executive Director of the Global Social Enterprise Initiative (GSEI) at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, and co-author of two previous books, Forces for Good and Do More than Give.

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