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

Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits

A guide to how great nonprofits achieve extraordinary social impact.

What makes great nonprofits great? Authors Crutchfield and McLeod Grant searched for the answer over several years, employing a rigorous research methodology which derived from books on for-profits like Built to Last. They studied 12 nonprofits that have achieved extraordinary levels of impact from Habitat for Humanity to the Heritage Foundation and distilled six counterintuitive practices that these organisations use to change the world.

This book has lessons for all readers interested in creating significant social change, including nonprofit managers, donors and volunteers.

About the authors

Leslie R. Crutchfield (Washington, D.C.) is a managing director of Ashoka and research grantee of the Aspen Institute.

Heather McLeod Grant (Palo Alto, CA) is a nonprofit consultant and advisor to Duke University’s Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship and the Stanford Center for Social Innovation.

Crutchfield and Grant were co-founding editors of Who Cares, a national magazine reaching 50,000 readers in circulation between 1993-2000.

Awards

Reviews and awards for Forces for Good (book)

The Economist chose Forces for Good for its Top Ten Business Books of 2007 and featured it as a Best Book of the Year.

Winner: Skystone Ryan Research Prize 2008, Association of Fundraising Professionals

Winner: Gold Prize – Axiom Business Book Awards, Nonprofit Division

Reviews

“Global problems like abject poverty require innovative, scaleable solutions. We have so much to learn from the six practices in Forces for Good because they are what lead to wide scale social change.”
Sheryl Sandberg, COO Facebook

“… Inspired and inspiring, this book can change the way the world works by changing how leaders think. … Leslie Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant have made a significant contribution with a Very Big Idea: the shift in focus from building an organization to building a movement.”
Jim Collins, author Good to Great and co-author Built to Last

WATCH: Forces for Good – Heather McLeod Grant at Talks at Google

Video: Google.com
Buy on Bookshop.org Buy on Amazon

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