Stacks are described as sheaves of groupoids $G$ satisfying an effective descent condition, or equivalently such that the classifying object $BG$ satisfies descent. The set of simplicial sheaf homotopy classes $[*,BG]$ is identified with equivalence classes of acyclic homotopy colimits fibred over $BG$, generalizing the classical relation between torsors and non-abelian cohomology. Group actions give rise to quotient stacks, which appear as parameter spaces for the separable transfer construction in special cases.