One of my favorite questions to ask students is: Do you believe society can really change?
When I first started teaching social entrepreneurship, the answer was almost always yes. My students believed they could make a difference. They debated ideas, challenged assumptions and left class convinced they could help solve some of society’s toughest problems. Now though, something has changed. Today, I hear “no” more often than I ever expected.
It is not because today’s students care less. In many ways, they care more – they are deeply concerned about mental health, affordable housing, gun violence, climate resilience, economic mobility and countless other challenges shaping their generation. They understand the issues, know the data, and can often identify root causes and explain why society remains stuck. What they question is something much more fundamental. They question whether meaningful change is even possible.
I understand that notion. When I was in my 20s, I often felt the same way. Every problem seemed enormous, and every solution seemed too small to make a difference.
It was easy to believe the systems surrounding us were simply too big to change. Then I went to work in public health. While helping the American Heart Association develop one of the nation’s early childhood obesity strategies, I learned something that transformed how I think about creating social change.
At first, our conversations looked much like the public debate at the time. How do we encourage children to eat healthier? How do we convince families to exercise more? How do we help people make better choices? Those are important questions. They just were not enough.
We were asking families to eat healthier while many neighborhoods lacked affordable grocery stores. We encouraged children to be more active while parks were unsafe or nonexistent. We promoted healthier lifestyles while schools, workplaces and communities often made those choices difficult to sustain. Little by little, I realized something that has shaped every strategic plan, keynote and classroom discussion I’ve led since. We keep asking individuals to solve systems problems.
That realization led me to one of the most influential frameworks in public health: the social-ecological model. Although the name sounds academic, the idea is surprisingly practical. People do not make decisions in isolation. Every choice we make is influenced by the people around us, the organizations we belong to, the communities where we live and the broader systems that shape what is possible. In other words, our environment matters. In fact, it often matters more than we realize.
Information changes minds.
Environments change behavior.
That simple idea explains why some social movements transform society while others struggle to gain traction. It also explains why good intentions, by themselves, rarely change the world.
The Framework Behind Long-Term Social Change
Throughout my career, I kept encountering the same framework. Whether researchers were studying smoking, violence prevention, obesity, domestic violence, substance use or chronic disease, the social-ecological model kept appearing.
Originally developed through the work of developmental psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner and later expanded by public health researchers, the model recognizes a simple but powerful truth: people never exist apart from the environments around them.
Today, organizations including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention use the social-ecological model to better understand why behavior changes or why it does not.
The model identifies four interconnected levels of influence:
- Individual – a person’s knowledge, attitudes, skills and experiences
- Relationship – family members, friends, peers, mentors and caregivers who influence daily decisions
- Community – schools, workplaces, neighborhoods, nonprofit organizations, faith communities and other institutions where people live, learn, work and gather
- Societal – the broader systems shaping opportunity, including public policy, economic conditions, cultural norms and media
I often describe this as the Social Ripple Effect – in honor of Mother Teresa – and the image helps me – and my students – visualize how change spreads.
Imagine dropping a stone into a pond. The center ripple is the individual. The next ripple includes the people closest to us — our families, friends, neighbors and colleagues.
Beyond that are the organizations and institutions that shape our daily lives.
Finally, the largest ripple represents the systems surrounding us: laws, culture, markets, media and public policy. Each ripple influences the others. That is what makes this framework so powerful.
Too often, we approach social problems as though people make decisions independently. We assume that if we simply provide enough information, people will make better choices. Sometimes they do, but often they cannot. For example, a parent may understand the importance of nutritious food but live in a neighborhood without a grocery store. A veteran may recognize the need for mental health support but face months-long waiting lists. A young person may understand the dangers of distracted driving yet feel pressure from friends to answer a text while behind the wheel.
Knowledge matters.
Choice matters.
But context matters, too.
Lasting social change happens when individuals, relationships, communities and society begin reinforcing one another. That is the social ripple effect. It is also why lasting social change is almost always about system change.
When Ripples Become Waves
The social-ecological model is powerful in theory. It becomes unforgettable when you see it in action. One of the clearest examples comes from a movement that transformed American culture in just a few decades. In 1980, Candace Lightner’s 13-year-old daughter, Cari, was killed by a repeat drunk driver. Like every grieving parent, Lightner wanted justice, but she also wanted to prevent another family from experiencing the same loss. That determination led her to found Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD).
It’s tempting to think MADD succeeded because it educated the public. But it did much more than that. It started with individuals. MADD helped people understand the risks of impaired driving and the devastating consequences for victims, families and communities. Then the movement expanded into relationships. Campaigns such as “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk” encouraged people to intervene, take away keys and help loved ones make safer choices. Responsibility became shared rather than individual. Soon, communities became part of the solution. Schools introduced alcohol-free events. Restaurants and bars trained employees. Law enforcement increased holiday checkpoints. Civic organizations, nonprofits and employers reinforced the same message.
Finally, society itself began to change. Media coverage elevated victims’ stories. Policymakers strengthened laws making .08 the standard across the United States. Public expectations shifted and behaviors that had once been tolerated became more socially unacceptable. Today, impaired driving remains a serious challenge, but the cultural transformation is undeniable. That shift did not happen because millions of people independently changed their minds on the same day. It happened because families, schools, nonprofits, businesses, government and the media began reinforcing the same message and, over time, the ripples became waves.
What This Means for Nonprofit Leaders
This brings me to the question I now ask nonprofit leaders: Are you trying to change people, or are you helping change the environment surrounding them?
One of the biggest mistakes I see organizations make is assuming that education alone changes behavior. We publish reports, host webinars, launch awareness campaigns and tell compelling stories. Those efforts matter, but they are rarely enough on their own.
Awareness starts the conversation. Systems sustain the change. If your mission is to reduce hunger, improve literacy, strengthen mental health or tackle other human-centered challenges, education alone is rarely enough. Ask four questions:
- How are we supporting individuals?
- How are we engaging the relationships that influence them?
- Which community institutions should be part of the solution?
- What policies, systems or cultural norms are helping — or hindering — our progress?
The goal is not for every nonprofit to work at every level. The goal is to understand where your organization can create the greatest ripple while collaborating with others working across the broader system.
Why I Remain Optimistic
When my students tell me they are not sure society can change, I understand why. The headlines make optimism difficult, but history tells a different story. During my lifetime alone, I’ve seen smoking rates decline, seat belts become the norm, drunk driving become socially unacceptable, HIV become a manageable chronic disease for many people and mental health conversations move from the margins into the mainstream. None of these changes happened overnight, and none happened because of a single organization.
Every generation inherits problems it did not create. Every generation also has the opportunity to solve problems previous generations believed were impossible.
The social-ecological model reminds us that lasting change begins with individuals, accelerates through relationships, spreads through communities and endures when society begins reinforcing what once seemed impossible.
One person can cast the first stone. Our greatest impact comes when millions of ripples begin moving together.
We’d love to hear how your organization is making ripples.
