Ashoka Snapshot

Introduction
Ashoka is a citizen sector organization founded in 1981 by Bill Drayton, whose
pioneering work crystallized much of today’s social entrepreneurship movement.
Ashoka’s 300 staff and affiliated network of over 2,200 leading social
entrepreneurs operate in 63 countries.
Ashoka is a decentralized organization, with insights and priorities flowing back
and forth between successful works led by the entrepreneurs in the field and
global programs which seek to identify cross-cutting patterns, emerging trends and
underlying principles. We seek to apply that knowledge, drawn from the actual
work of successful entrepreneurs rather than from theoretical analyses, in ways
which showcase practical new solutions and help inform other social
entrepreneurs, investors, mavens, and public and private entities trying to address
the world’s most pressing social issues.

Vision and Mission

Ashoka envisions a world where everyone is a “changemaker” – where all citizens
engage in the creation and spread of serious solutions to social challenges, and
they do so at a pace which outruns the emergence of new problems and dislodges
the persistent old ones. In this world, problems will be defeated quickly because
society responds creatively and nimbly, focused by forward-looking opportunities
rather than dogmatic views rooted in the past.
This is not our vision just for the sake of its inspiration, but because we believe
that it is in fact the most practical and feasible path forward for global society.
Though ambitious and difficult to achieve, it is necessary and tangible.
We are working towards this goal by applying the powerful tools of social For more information
entrepreneurship, at individual and collective scale, to develop an entrepreneurial please contact:
citizen sector around the globe: one that allows social innovators and
entrepreneurs to thrive as they tackle emerging and persistent problems, and in Valeria Merino
Vice President for
doing so inspires and enables all the world’s citizens to act as changemakers on the
Venture and Fellowship
most pressing issues of our day. 703 600 8217
vmerino@ashoka.org
Ashoka’s Strategy
Ashoka’s diverse programs and approaches, based on 29 years work so far, are focused on achieving
this mission. In all niches of society, we work to surface and catalyze social innovation, support
leading social entrepreneurs who spread new solutions, and develop infrastructure and resources
needed for moving the world to action. And, by virtue of doing so, to spread deeper and deeper
levels of dynamic citizen engagement towards an Everyone a ChangemakerTM world.
We apply this focus on innovation and real-time entrepreneurship to particular topics which are of
immediate historical importance and opportunity in society; to the citizen-sector as a whole; and to
the ongoing evolution of our own programs. We do so with our staff, our growing network of over
2,200 Ashoka Fellows, and our long term partners and affiliates.
Ashoka does this work at three levels:
1. With individual social entrepreneurs, as the foremost engines of social change who
move ideas to action, spread that action, and engage increasing numbers of other people in
the process. Ashoka identifies individual social entrepreneurs to capture the deep insights
underlying the innovative solutions and delivery systems they have developed, and to
support them in numerous ways as they refine, apply and spread their solutions.
2. Through group entrepreneurship, in a process that is gaining tremendous momentum,
to convene groups of entrepreneurs and innovative ideas along with investors, technical
experts and others around particular topics; to combine their insights to identify patterns
which can only be seen when looking at the collective rather than individual works; and then
to instigate further action based on this powerful knowledge. For example, Ashoka is
focusing collaborative efforts on finding and showcasing innovations in news and knowledge
management with the support of the Knight Foundation; on rural innovations in farming in
Africa and India with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; and on technology inventions
which instigate social change with the Lemelson Foundation. Ashoka has also convened 32
social entrepreneurs and over 50 private and public sector advisors on water and sanitation
in India, southern Africa, South America and Southeast Asia, to share collective lessons and
hatch and spread a range of next-generation actions. Similarly, every Changemakers.com
competition connects hundreds of new ideas and action-takers from 50+ countries.
3. By showcasing new approaches and building infrastructure for the citizen sector,
informed by our learning about the tools and support systems applied in sustainable social
solutions. Ashoka leads initiatives in partnership with investors, local entrepreneurs and others
to demonstrate innovations-in-practice, such as new models of social financing, innovative social
uses of commercial technologies, and new types of business partnerships that deliver both social
and financial value.

Ultimately all of this is intended to compress the speed and flexibility of innovative solutions on their
path towards larger scale and replication, stimulate completely new solutions, and foster a citizen sector
that is trend-setting and a society that is entrepreneurial by nature.
Ashoka’s Programs
Diverse programs engage innovative ideas, entrepreneurs and resources at the three levels discussed
above, operating independently but drawing on shared Ashoka knowledge frameworks and colleagues:
• Venture – Identifies, screens and elects emerging and senior social entrepreneurs around the
world as new Ashoka Fellows. For 28 years we have focused on surfacing individuals with deep
insights and new ideas which truly distinguish their work, on engaging them substantively from
the outset in a way which they say adds value long before they actually become a new Fellow,
and on helping ensure that they can fully focus and accelerate their initiatives.
• Global Fellowship – Provides advisory, legal, award nomination, and other services to all
Ashoka Fellows, helping propel individuals and convening groups to build on insights and
successes. This includes partnerships with McKinsey & Co., Hill & Knowlton, and others.
• Changemakers.com – Embraces the global public in the search for innovative solutions,
entrepreneurial action-takers, investors and support structures, through powerful competitions
on topics like using sports to instigate social change (with Nike) or environmental preservation
of tourist destinations (with National Geographic). These characterize entrepreneurial insights
around a topic and then invite literally everyone in the world to submit their ideas – usually
surfacing hundreds of ideas and action-takers from 50-80 countries in the process.
• Full Economic Citizenship – Applies Ashoka’s learning to showcase business-social alliances
and joint ventures which open up large new self-sustaining markets for goods and services for
the poor. For example, in the $332 billion low income housing market, Ashoka is piloting an
integrated housing service center model in Brazil with private sector financiers and retailers.
• Social Financial Services – Applies Ashoka’s learning to foster new structures and institutions
that bring financing and capital into the citizen sector, addressing constraints on the volume and
diversity of financial mechanisms needed for social ventures to succeed. Ashoka has been
instrumental, for example, in helping promote strategies which allow non-profit and for-profit
enterprises to combine efforts in ways which were previously not allowed by US tax code.
• Youth Venture – Aims for increasing numbers of young people to have successful
entrepreneurial experiences today, in order to foment more adult changemakers for the future,
and to surface creative ideas and insights at the same time. Youth Venture provides opportunity
and rewards social entrepreneurship amongst youth worldwide in a number of ways.

These Ashoka programs stand on an increasingly powerful foundation of knowledge frameworks and
global infrastructure for surfacing and acting on the world’s most promising social innovations.
Some Examples of Ashoka’s Work
Surfacing and accelerating system-changing innovations

• Over 2,200 leading social entrepreneurs screened and elected as Ashoka Fellows.
• Group assessments identify patterns and seed action on solar energy, water, sanitation, ocean
fisheries, news and knowledge in society, transparency in governance, and technologies
catalyzing social change.
• Changemakers.com competitions have surfaced thousands of new ideas and action-takers globally.
• Ashoka nominations raise the profile of innovative solutions, leading to awards such as several
winners of the Goldman Environmental Prize (most recently to Yuyun Ismawati of Indonesia in
2009), Amnesty International’s Ginetta Sagan Award (to Betty Makoni of Zimbabwe), The Tech
Awards (to Hany El Miniawy of Egypt, and others), The Conde Nast Traveler Environmental
Prize (to Silverius Unggul of Indonesia), and many more.

Spreading successful solutions, setting trends, impacting policy

56% of Ashoka Fellows have achieved changes in national

policy within 5 years, 71% in 10 years.

72% have stated that Ashoka made a critical or significant

contribution to their progress.

Some well-known members of the Ashoka cohort:

• Mohammad Yunus, Founder, Grameen Bank
• Fazle Abed, Founder, BRAC
• Peter Eigen, Founder, Transparency International
• Ela Bhatt, Founder, Self-Employed Women’s Association
• Alice Tepper Marin, Founder, Council on Economic Priorities
• Oded Grajew, Founder, World Social Forum

Some publications writing about Ashoka’s work in 2008:

The Times of India The Washington Post La Primera (Peru) Philippine Daily Inquirer
The Bangkok Post The New York Times The Nation (Nigeria) The Jakarta Post
Sotokoto (Japan) The Financial Times (UK) Al Jazeera La Nacion (Argentina)
Newsweek (US) The Economist (UK) The Irish Times The Helsinki Times (Finland)