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The Toolbox: Strategies for Crafting Social Impact
In The Strategies for Crafting Social Impact , celebrated nonprofit executive Jacob Harold delivers an expert guide to doing good in the twenty-first century. In the book, you'll explore nine tools that have driven world-shaking social movements and billion-dollar businesses—tools that can work just as well for a farmers market or fire department or small business.
The author describes each of the tools—including storytelling, mathematical modeling, and design thinking—in a stand-alone chapter, intertwining each with a consistent narrative. Listeners will also a consistent focus and emphasis on the work of social good and how it can be applied in any business, government agency, or nonprofit organization; poems and stories to illustrate and enrich the core ideas of the book; a fulsome, three-chapter introduction offering an a crash course in the basics of social impact strategy in the twenty-first century; and a comprehensive strategic playbook for contributing to the shared work of building a better world.
An essential blueprint for anyone interested in improving the world around them, The Strategies for Crafting Social Impact is an incisive strategic guide that will prove to be indispensable for everyone who seeks to collaboratively build something better.
The author describes each of the tools—including storytelling, mathematical modeling, and design thinking—in a stand-alone chapter, intertwining each with a consistent narrative. Listeners will also a consistent focus and emphasis on the work of social good and how it can be applied in any business, government agency, or nonprofit organization; poems and stories to illustrate and enrich the core ideas of the book; a fulsome, three-chapter introduction offering an a crash course in the basics of social impact strategy in the twenty-first century; and a comprehensive strategic playbook for contributing to the shared work of building a better world.
An essential blueprint for anyone interested in improving the world around them, The Strategies for Crafting Social Impact is an incisive strategic guide that will prove to be indispensable for everyone who seeks to collaboratively build something better.
- GenresNonfiction
256 pages, Hardcover
Published December 1, 2022
24 people are currently reading
1660 people want to read
About the author
Jacob Harold
2 books6 followersJacob Harold is a social change strategist, author, and executive. He served as President & CEO of GuideStar and was the co-founder of Candid. Fast Company called Candid “the definitive nonprofit transparency organization.” Each year, more than 20 million people use its data on nonprofits, grants, and social sector practice.
During his tenure leading GuideStar, Harold oversaw a financial turn-around, a tripling of GuideStar’s reach, and major partnerships with organizations ranging from Google to the Gates Foundation.
Before that, he worked as a grantmaker at the $10 billion Hewlett Foundation, a consultant to nonprofits at the Bridgespan Group, and as a climate change campaigner and strategist with the Packard Foundation, Rainforest Action Network and Greenpeace USA. He began his career as a grassroots organizer with Green Corps.
Harold was named to the Nonprofit Times Power and Influence Top 50 in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020. He earned an AB summa cum laude from Duke University and an MBA from Stanford. Harold is from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where his parents ran small community-based nonprofit organizations.
During his tenure leading GuideStar, Harold oversaw a financial turn-around, a tripling of GuideStar’s reach, and major partnerships with organizations ranging from Google to the Gates Foundation.
Before that, he worked as a grantmaker at the $10 billion Hewlett Foundation, a consultant to nonprofits at the Bridgespan Group, and as a climate change campaigner and strategist with the Packard Foundation, Rainforest Action Network and Greenpeace USA. He began his career as a grassroots organizer with Green Corps.
Harold was named to the Nonprofit Times Power and Influence Top 50 in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020. He earned an AB summa cum laude from Duke University and an MBA from Stanford. Harold is from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where his parents ran small community-based nonprofit organizations.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 10, 2025
This book was given to me as gift from a friend.
A very well laid out book on how we can individually and collectively effect social change/social justice. It's a handbook for someone who wants to be an activist but isn't sure how. The book was analytical, logical, encouraging, informative, hopeful, and even inspiring.
I'm not sure I want to take up all this advice in one sitting, but it gives you options to pick and choose different ways that might work best for you. I'll need to think about how I can lend my activism over the internet once I move out of the country later this year. I'll also need to evaluate how well these suggestions will work overseas.
Great book for anyone looking for an instruction manual on how to get started, what to look for, and what to avoid.
A very well laid out book on how we can individually and collectively effect social change/social justice. It's a handbook for someone who wants to be an activist but isn't sure how. The book was analytical, logical, encouraging, informative, hopeful, and even inspiring.
I'm not sure I want to take up all this advice in one sitting, but it gives you options to pick and choose different ways that might work best for you. I'll need to think about how I can lend my activism over the internet once I move out of the country later this year. I'll also need to evaluate how well these suggestions will work overseas.
Great book for anyone looking for an instruction manual on how to get started, what to look for, and what to avoid.
April 16, 2023
“I’d rather have a good strategy and great execution than vice versa.”
I assume that one of the reasons why the literature on strategy is so vast and covering such a wide range of topics is, probably, that the scope is so diffuse: define the goals, the tools, the implementation options please?
It remains a wide open field, and some of the leading, often historic but nonetheless still popular classics on strategy even refer to pre-modern times and a military context (Sun-Tzu, Clausewitz), without regard for a changing business world and multiple shifts of context. No, thinking and context for good strategy do not just stay "the same" over time - neither are its means lost in a fog of untouchable transcendence.
Jacob Harold touches on a very pragmatic vein when he creates "The Toolbox" for organizational strategy. His 9 tools (perspectives) tend to focus on some of the more behavioral aspects of strategy but manage to bridge a breadth of applications. Note that, unlike other books on the topic, it neither boils down to pure execution of strategic decisions nor the measurement of their outcomes. This book is more about the basic methods/aspects that need to be considered and applied to develop a strategy in the first place (be it good or bad).
Thinking that "a strategy creates a path for action and is inherently incomplete without it", "The Toolbox" contributes some valuable insights into why certain paths of action do need to be considered and how they help with identifying/framing the right choices and constraints.
The author has a strong background in NGO leadership and that shows throughout, by addressing an audience assumed within social/ethical and non-profit organizations, and furnishing the book with a sturdy cover for rough circumstances, multicoloured illustrations, diverse quotes and even poems.
But the point is: it is as valuable for any business enterprise strategist because the perspective is fundamentally the same. I would not see any ideological barrier here.
The description of each tool/perspective is notably succinct but comes with a multitude of cross-references and an extensive commented bibliography.
Hardly seen so much good value for price.
For me, one of the inspiring Business books of the year.
The 9 Tools (perspectives):
Storytelling. Mathematical modeling. Design thinking. Community organizing. Behavioral economics. Game theory. Complex systems. Markets. Institutions.
I assume that one of the reasons why the literature on strategy is so vast and covering such a wide range of topics is, probably, that the scope is so diffuse: define the goals, the tools, the implementation options please?
It remains a wide open field, and some of the leading, often historic but nonetheless still popular classics on strategy even refer to pre-modern times and a military context (Sun-Tzu, Clausewitz), without regard for a changing business world and multiple shifts of context. No, thinking and context for good strategy do not just stay "the same" over time - neither are its means lost in a fog of untouchable transcendence.
Jacob Harold touches on a very pragmatic vein when he creates "The Toolbox" for organizational strategy. His 9 tools (perspectives) tend to focus on some of the more behavioral aspects of strategy but manage to bridge a breadth of applications. Note that, unlike other books on the topic, it neither boils down to pure execution of strategic decisions nor the measurement of their outcomes. This book is more about the basic methods/aspects that need to be considered and applied to develop a strategy in the first place (be it good or bad).
Thinking that "a strategy creates a path for action and is inherently incomplete without it", "The Toolbox" contributes some valuable insights into why certain paths of action do need to be considered and how they help with identifying/framing the right choices and constraints.
The author has a strong background in NGO leadership and that shows throughout, by addressing an audience assumed within social/ethical and non-profit organizations, and furnishing the book with a sturdy cover for rough circumstances, multicoloured illustrations, diverse quotes and even poems.
But the point is: it is as valuable for any business enterprise strategist because the perspective is fundamentally the same. I would not see any ideological barrier here.
The description of each tool/perspective is notably succinct but comes with a multitude of cross-references and an extensive commented bibliography.
Hardly seen so much good value for price.
For me, one of the inspiring Business books of the year.
The 9 Tools (perspectives):
Storytelling. Mathematical modeling. Design thinking. Community organizing. Behavioral economics. Game theory. Complex systems. Markets. Institutions.
April 20, 2024
This book resonated with me most in the beginning. The quotes featured throughout the book kept me moving forward. The author earned an extra half-star for his variety of quote sources including Pope Francis and Amanda Gorman, Eleanor Roosevelt and Jimmy Boggs, Toni Morrison and Vizzini from The Princess Bride, and many other notables.
Note: are authors and/or publishers stepping away from using proofreaders and editors? I have read too many books lately that really needed this kind of review!
Note: are authors and/or publishers stepping away from using proofreaders and editors? I have read too many books lately that really needed this kind of review!
November 11, 2025
📕 Why (Not) to read this book (Target Audience)
The toolbox offers 9 tools for change.
👀 How this book changed my daily live (Takeaways)
As we try to change the world, our predicament is constant, accelerating innovation constrained by increasing interconnection and complexity.
⁉ Spoiler Alerts (Highlights)
If we deny the real progress the world has made, we insult those who fought for it; if we ignore the challenges of the world, we betray ourselves and future generations. History is contingent; it flows from our actions and from the forces that surround us.
The toolbox offers 9 tools for change.
👀 How this book changed my daily live (Takeaways)
As we try to change the world, our predicament is constant, accelerating innovation constrained by increasing interconnection and complexity.
⁉ Spoiler Alerts (Highlights)
If we deny the real progress the world has made, we insult those who fought for it; if we ignore the challenges of the world, we betray ourselves and future generations. History is contingent; it flows from our actions and from the forces that surround us.
Read
July 27, 2023Unable to review--giveaway book never received.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews