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We spent three years studying 12 of the most successful nonprofits in recent U.S. history. They have come up with innovative solutions to pressing social problems, and they have spread these ideas nationally or internationally. In the business world, these organizations would be akin to companies like Google or eBay.

What we learned about these nonprofits astonished us, and intrigued others with long experience in the field. We believe that the framework we've discovered offers a new lens for understanding the social sector and what it takes to create extraordinary levels of social change. Any organization seeking to increase its social impact can emulate the six practices that we describe in detail below.

The secret to success lies in how great organizations mobilize every sector of society -- government, business, nonprofits, and the public -- to be a force for good. In other words, greatness has more to do with how nonprofits work outside the boundaries of their organizations than how they manage their own internal operations. Textbook strategies like relentless fundraising, well-connected boards, and effective management are necessary, of course, but they are hardly sufficient. The high-impact nonprofits we studied are satisfied with building a "good enough" organization and then spending their time and energy focused externally on catalyzing large-scale systemic change. Great organizations work with and through others to create more impact than they could ever achieve alone.

"Give me a lever long enough, and I alone can move the world," is the common paraphrase of Archimedes. These twelve groups use the power of leverage to create tremendous change. Like a man lifting a boulder three times his weight with a lever and fulcrum, they have far more impact than their mere size or structure would suggest.

The organizations in this book seed social movements and help build entire fields. They shape government policy, and change the way companies do business. They engage and mobilize millions of individuals and, in so doing, help change public attitudes and behaviors. They nurture larger networks of nonprofits and collaborate rather than compete with their peers. They spend as much time managing external relationships and influencing other groups as they do worrying about building their own organizations. These high-impact nonprofits are not focused only on themselves but also on the relentless pursuit of results.

After a long process of studying these organizations, we began to see patterns in the ways they work. In the end, six of these patterns crystallized into the form presented here -- the six practices that high-impact nonprofits use to achieve extraordinary impact.

The first four practices are more external; they represent how these groups dramatically expand their impact outside the borders of their own organizations. In observing this external focus, we also realized that working outside the organization entails special practices inside that help these nonprofits relate more effectively to their environment. This led us to discern two additional internal practices that enable high-impact nonprofits to operate successfully in the outside world and bridge boundaries.

More specifically, we learned that great social sector organizations do these six things: