Chapter 22: Conclusion
When you’re done with this section, you’ll be able to...
Recall the key takeaways from this course, including the Social Impact Cycle and key social impact skills.
Acknowledge hope in the face of large-scale social issues.
Understand the next steps that you can take to
Do Good. Better.
INTRODUCTION
This concluding chapter revisits the central ideas explored throughout the course and provides guidance on how you can continue making a meaningful difference in the world. In addition to reviewing key concepts, the chapter offers practical direction for identifying and clarifying the next steps in your personal social impact journey. As the course comes to a close, it’s important to pause, reflect on what you’ve learned, and consider how you might apply these principles in your daily life.
WHAT SHOULD YOU REMEMBER FROM THIS COURSE?
This course has explained the significance and application of a variety of social issues, evidence-based interventions, rigorous evaluation techniques, and much more. All of these materials were shared to help you intentionally and strategically engage in social impact work, regardless of your personal or professional role. The most important, however, is your understanding and use of the Social Impact Cycle.
The Social Impact Cycle
The Social Impact Cycle is a framework created to empower you, as a changemaker, to understand a social issue, design an intervention for it, effectively implement that intervention, and properly evaluate and improve it over time.1 The cycle itself is built around one core principle: love the one. Loving the one prioritizes cultivating compassion, pursuing connection, and building solutions around the needs and insights of real people. By centering the individual within the larger social issue, you can create solutions that truly meet their needs, honor their dignity, and can be scaled to benefit larger populations. The four phases of the cycle can, and should, be revisited and repeated regularly to strengthen the research and quality of an intervention.
Love the Problem: Before a social problem can be solved, it must first be understood. The overarching intent of this beginning phase is to establish a foundation upon which a legitimate solution can be built. This includes conducting primary research via interviews, surveys, and engaging directly with affected communities, as well as secondary research to understand what information is already available regarding a social issue. Loving the problem encourages individuals and organizations to take the time to listen and learn from those experiencing the problem and combine those insights with thorough secondary research before attempting to design a solution.
Design the Change: Rather than rushing from problem identification to implementation, organizations must take time to ensure their proposed solution is realistic, evidence-informed, and responsive to the needs of the people it intends to serve. The process of designing the change includes defining clear outcome goals, applying human-centered design principles, and creating prototypes that allow ideas to be tested before large-scale implementation. Community involvement is essential throughout this stage. By collaborating with customer-partners, changemakers can draw on lived experience to strengthen decision-making, refine priorities, and identify practical considerations that may otherwise be overlooked. During this phase, potential solutions are tested through small-scale, iterative cycles, allowing organizations to evaluate effectiveness early, learn from feedback, and make improvements before committing significant resources to broader implementation.
Implement the Intervention: The implementation phase of the Social Impact Cycle is where small-scale interventions are applied within their intended real-world context. This includes building necessary organizational capacity through staffing and training, developing infrastructure to support program delivery, securing sustainable funding that aligns with your mission and values, and choosing a legal structure that enables you to operate effectively. Once an intervention has been evaluated and proven successful, you can begin considering opportunities to scale your impact through depth, reach, or replication.
Evaluate the Outcomes: Evaluation requires organizations to move beyond anecdotal evidence and embrace data-driven insights to assess whether a social innovation is achieving its intended outcomes effectively. Evaluating outcomes isn’t just about proving success; it’s about learning what works, what doesn’t, and why. This process includes selecting an evaluation design, collecting relevant data, and conducting a thorough analysis of the outputs, outcomes, and impact documented. Although evaluation is represented as the “final phase” of the Social Impact Cycle, measurements, analysis, and adjustments should occur throughout all stages of the cycle whenever appropriate.
Key Concepts for Social Impact
In addition to understanding the framework of the Social Impact Cycle, effectively solving social problems relies on a set of core concepts that can guide your work, regardless of the social impact role you inhabit.
Calling: The social issues you’re best equipped to solve are those which you feel personally called to address, where your unique combination of passion, skills, and experiences positions you to make a difference. By drawing upon your personal proximity and affinity, you can identify those issues to which you’re most deeply connected and feel drawn to solve. Your calling isn’t just about what you’re good at. It’s about what issue compels you to act.
Caring for Others: To properly love the problem and the one, you must move away from feelings of pity or sympathy and toward feelings of empathy and compassion. Developing empathy allows you to feel the emotional burdens of those affected by a problem, and compassion fills you with a desire to alleviate that suffering. These emotions should drive your social impact work.
Causal Thinking: As a changemaker, you must be able to identify and understand the cause-and-effect relationships within complex social systems. This critical skill enables you to discern the underlying factors that drive changes in communities, predict the potential effects of different interventions before implementing them, acknowledge contributing factors rather than oversimplifying to a single cause, and describe negative consequences that result from social issues.
Co-Creation: The most impactful and sustainable interventions are developed by collaborating with customer-partners and your organization’s broader ecosystem rather than designing solutions in isolation. Co-creation emphasizes human-centered design principles and the adoption of a customer-partner mindset that views those you serve as experts in their own experiences rather than passive recipients of your services. True co-creation means sharing power in the design process, not just soliciting feedback on your predetermined ideas.
Scale: As a changemaker, you need to know how to strategically expand an intervention’s reach and deepen its impact to create lasting social change. You can choose between three primary scaling strategies—depth, reach, or replication—based on your organization’s goals and capacity, the nature of the problem you’re addressing, and the needs of the population you’re serving. Effective scaling requires careful planning, cultural sensitivity, and a commitment to maintaining quality as you grow.
IS THERE HOPE?
Even with these skills and frameworks, many individuals working to improve social problems find themselves feeling discouraged and overwhelmed. This reaction is understandable and, in some ways, reflects a genuine awareness of the complexity and scale of these challenges. The social impact world is indeed filled with frustrating mistakes, persistent inefficiencies, and well-intentioned efforts that fall short of their goals. Seemingly intractable issues across humanity, like inequality, poverty, climate change, conflict, and injustice, have persisted for generations. This poses an important question: when faced with such overwhelming challenges, is there really hope? Can individual efforts truly make a difference when the problems are so vast?
Yes, there is hope!
Your efforts make much more of a difference than you might think.
It’s essential to reflect not only on the challenges we’ve examined throughout this course but also on the remarkable progress humanity has made, often through the cumulative efforts of countless individuals who refused to accept the status quo. There is tremendous good in the world, and many aspects of life have dramatically improved over time through sustained social impact work.
Think about these examples: global poverty rates have declined significantly over the past few decades, with billions of people lifted out of extreme poverty. Access to education has expanded dramatically, with more children attending school than ever before in human history. Medical advancements have eradicated diseases and extended life expectancy. In ways that once seemed impossible, just a few generations ago, human rights have increased across many parts of the world. Environmental conservation efforts have restored species from extinction and purified waterways that were once considered dead.
These victories didn’t happen by accident. They happened because people like you decided to act, to persist despite setbacks, to love the one, and to keep working toward a better future, even when progress seemed impossibly slow.
As individuals strive, one by one, to contribute to social impact work within their local communities, their efforts can have a meaningful impact. While the problems we face are undeniably great, so is our collective potential for creating positive change. When we work together with purpose and persistence, we can feel confident in our hope for a better future, knowing that each of us has a role to play in creating it.
WHAT WILL YOUR NEXT STEP BE?
Throughout this course, various social impact roles have been discussed, including nonprofit leadership, community organizing, social entrepreneurship, policy advocacy, corporate social responsibility, impact investing, and research. These diverse roles show that there are many pathways to contribute to positive social change, and each offers unique opportunities to make a difference.
Now is the time to consider: What role do you want to play in solving the social problems that matter most to you? Whether you’re passionate about environmental justice, education reform, healthcare access, or another cause that calls to you, there are countless ways to engage and create lasting impact.
Your next step doesn’t need to be world-changing. In fact, starting small and focused is generally more effective than attempting to solve everything at once. What matters is that you take action, move from learning to doing, and remain committed to the journey even when it gets difficult.
Here are some next steps you might consider:
- Pursue further education: Consider taking an advanced class on social impact or a related topic like design thinking, program evaluation, systems thinking, or community organizing. Adding a social impact minor or concentration to your degree can deepen your knowledge and keep you connected to a community of like-minded peers. If your institution doesn’t offer these courses, consider exploring additional online educational resources through platforms like Coursera, edX, or Acumen Academy, all of which offer free or low-cost courses taught by leading experts in the field.
- Engage in research: If a specific social issue captured your interest during this course, explore it further through academic research, field studies, or community-based participatory research. Consider reaching out to faculty members who research topics related to your interests or seeking out research opportunities with organizations focusing on issues you care about.
- Gain hands-on experience: Apply for internships, fellowships, or volunteer positions with social problem-solving organizations working on issues that align with your calling. Whether you’re working directly in communities on the front lines of service delivery or behind the scenes in policy advocacy, fundraising, communications, or program evaluation, you’ll gain invaluable skills and insights that no classroom can fully provide. Don’t underestimate the value of volunteering. Many successful social impact careers begin with a few hours a week spent serving in a local organization.
- Start an initiative: If you’ve identified a gap in your community or developed an innovative idea for addressing a social problem, consider launching a small initiative. You don’t need to register a nonprofit or raise millions of dollars—you can start informally, test your ideas, learn from failures, and iterate based on feedback. Some of the most effective social innovations began as small experiments by passionate individuals who saw a need and acted.
- Connect with others in the field: Seek out and conduct informational interviews with professionals who are already doing the work you aspire to do. Learn from their experiences, ask about their career path and the challenges they’ve faced, build your professional network, and seek mentorship from those whose work inspires you. Most people in the social impact field are generous with their time and wisdom when approached with genuine curiosity and respect.
- Stay curious and involved: Continue learning about the issues that resonate with you by reading books and articles, listening to podcasts, attending lectures and conferences, and following organizations and thought leaders working on these problems. Always look for opportunities to act, whether on a local or global scale, and remain open to unexpected paths that may emerge. Social impact work is dynamic and ever-evolving, and your willingness to keep learning and adapting will serve you well.
- Advocate and use your voice: Share what you’ve learned with others, whether through conversations with friends and family, writing and social media, or formal advocacy efforts. Help others understand the social issues you care about, challenge misconceptions, and inspire action. Your voice matters and raising awareness is a form of impact.
DO GOOD. BETTER.
Now that you’ve laid the groundwork for understanding social impact, it’s time to pursue your next steps. Social impact work is never easy, and you’ll encounter setbacks and moments when you question whether your efforts matter. However, the possibilities of positive change are endless when we act with clear purpose, informed strategy, and unwavering persistence.
Remember this fundamental principle: each individual has the capacity to contribute to a brighter future, and that includes you. You are not expected to solve everything single-handedly. Instead, your efforts begin by producing small, purposeful changes in your corner of the world, loving the one person in front of you, and applying your unique gifts and perspective to the problems that move you most deeply.
Together with others who share your commitment to social impact work, you can continue striving to Do Good. Better. Utilize the knowledge and skills you’ve gained from this guidebook and continue on in your efforts, now with increased understanding, greater compassion, and a deeper commitment to making a difference.
Thank you for being part of this learning experience, for engaging with difficult topics, and for your willingness to envision and work toward a better world. Now, go out and create the change you wish to see. Start small, stay curious, love the one, and never underestimate the ripple effects your actions can create. The world needs people like you: people who care enough to learn, are brave enough to act, and are persistent enough to keep going even when change comes slowly.
REFLECTION AND COMMITMENT:
Take a moment to write down your next concrete step. This doesn’t include vague intentions like “make a difference” or “help people,” but rather a specific action you’ll take in the next 30 days. This might look like, “research three organizations working on education equity in my city,” “schedule two informational interviews with people working in public health,” “volunteer four hours this month at the local food bank,” or “enroll in an advanced course on program evaluation for spring semester.”
Write down your next move here:
Now, share this commitment with someone who will hold you accountable, such as a classmate, mentor, friend, or family member. Making your commitment public increases the likelihood you’ll follow through.
Who will you share this with? When will you complete this action by?
ENDNOTES:
1 - Ballard Center for Social Impact. (n.d.). The Social Impact Cycle. Brigham Young University.