Do Good Well: Your Guide to Leadership, Action, and Social Innovation by Nina Vasan & Jennifer Przybylo (review)

Inspired by their own experiences as youth leaders, the authors of Do Good Well have developed a toolkit useful to students interested in non-profit work, socially responsible business, social entrepreneurship, activist movements, and community change. This practical guidebook is intended as a primer for students and young professionals and is designed to “help anyone with a desire to do good in the world not only do good, but do good well” (p. vii). The authors offer a three-step process for social innovation that is grounded in personal experiences, as well as in research on innovation in business, nonprofits, community, and leadership. The steps are: (a) Do what works; (b) Work together; and (c) Make it last. The book aspires to present this model in a fun and interactive way, “like getting advice from a peer or mentor in real time” and aims to give “practical step-by-step instructions for turning idealistic aspirations into tangible real-world solutions” (p.viii).

Do Good Well is a student-friendly, accessible resource that fills an important niche. It updates the content of existing community-based learning handbooks, such as Cress, Collier, and Rittenauer’s Learning Trough Serving (2005, Stylus), the Midwest Academy manual Organizing for Social Change (2001, Seven Locks Press) and Kretzmann and McKnight’s Building Communities From the Inside Out (1993, Northwestern University) to include emerging content on social innovation and social enterprise. While the individual components of this book can be found elsewhere, having them integrated into a logical process-oriented workbook makes this an attractive resource for college students and other youth audiences interested in leadership, activism, and social change. This handbook would be a worthy accompaniment to curricular or co-curricular experiences that focus on students working on community-based change projects, such as leadership, service-learning, or action research projects and programs.

The book is organized in three sections. Part 1 invites students to develop “The Vision,” and includes chapters on knowing yourself, knowing your world, identifying a problem, understanding the problem, and brainstorming solutions. The authors wisely don’t make the assumption that students know what they want to change. Instead, they invite students to explore their passions and provide tools to help users focus their commitments. Brief summaries of numerous social issues are included, and the incorporation of meaningful stories and examples makes change seem achievable. Other similar resources often overlook the fact that student change agents might not have clarity about what they want to change, or may feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of public problems in need of solutions. Vasan and Przybylo gently lead readers to focus their values, interests, and commitments before committing deeply to any one cause. They also wisely caution users to appreciate multiple partial solutions and to be careful to distinguish between symptoms and root causes of issues. In the same vein, the authors encourage students to connect their ideas for change with existing groups and organizations, rather than always needing to start their own initiative. This sage advice is uncharacteristic of many approaches to social entrepreneurship, and reflects the authors’ valuing of community development over the ego of the change agents.

Part 2 focuses on “The Method” for change, and describes the authors’ 3-step change model in detail. This simple and flexible framework is intended to help users develop and execute an action plan that “can be applied to any idea and any community” (p. 81). Readers are exhorted to “Do What Works” and related chapters focus on designing systemic solutions, building on working models, measuring and evaluating impact, and challenging and innovating working systems. Chapters on “Working Together” provide guidance on balancing issues related to starting and strengthening a movement, cultivating community ownership, fostering team unity, and forging partnerships. The final section in Part 2 focuses on “Making it Last.” Participants are invited to start small, then scale what works, to engineer self...