IMYM Faith & Practice, 2009, p 45

 A Quaker social concern seems characteristically to arise in a sensitive individual or very small group—often decades before it grips the society of Friends as a whole and as much as a century or more before it appeals to the secular world. . . .

 The concern arises as a revelation to an individual that there is a painful discrepancy between existing social conditions and what God wills for society and that this discrepancy is not being adequately dealt with. The next step is the determination of the individual to do something about it—not because he is particularly well fitted to tackle the problem, but simply because no one else seems to be doing it. 

Dorothy H. Hutchinson -The Spiritual Basis of Quaker Social Concerns, FGC, 1961 as quoted in New England Yearly Meeting Faith and Practice, 1985