Non-Profit

Ashoka: Innovators for the Public

Founded

1980

Website

www.ashoka.org

Name

Chaula Kothari

Age

26

Hometown

Mumbai, India

Current residence

Washington DC

Education

Syracuse University, MA in International Relations
India: BS in Engineering and Telecommunications

Work Experience

Ashoka, 2004 - present
Center for Nonproliferation Studies, 2003
U.N. Institute for Disarmament Research, 2003

Ethnicity

Indian

About the non-profit

Ashoka Innovators for the Public is the leading global association for social entrepreneurs - men and women with system-changing solutions for the world's most urgent social problems. In the words of Ashoka's founder Bill Drayton, a true social entrepreneur is a practical visionary who "is not content just to give a fish or teach how to fish. They will not rest until they have revolutionized the fishing industry."

Rather than leaving societal needs to the government or business sectors to address, Ashoka Fellows are innovating solutions, delivering extraordinary results, and setting new milestones in their fields. They are not just starting schools or hospitals, but changing education and healthcare delivery systems at their core with ideas that are surprisingly intuitive yet immensely powerful. For instance, Ashoka Fellow David Green helped restore sight and hearing to millions of poor people in India by designing an inexpensive manufacturing process and now he is applying those same insights to produce hearing aids.

Ashoka is building the infrastructure needed to grow the citizen sector and facilitate the spread of social innovation globally. Our ultimate vision is a world where all individuals will be able to spot challenges, address them, and improve their lives.

Most notable milestones

• Named, created and pioneered the global field of social entrepreneurship and the social venture capital approach in the citizen sector.
• In the last 25 years, Ashoka has invested in more than 1,800 social entrepreneurs in 60 countries to help them launch and spread their ideas, and continues to support them throughout their careers.
• Ashoka's search and selection process for identifying the world's leading social entrepreneurs is recognized as the most rigorous in the field.
• Ashoka's impact study, which assesses systemic, rather than surface indicators, is one of the first methodological measures of long-term social impact.

What's the niche?

Ashoka believes in people: individuals and their ideas, not their organizations. Ashoka is not a foundation that gives money to organizations, but rather a venture capital approach that invests in the individual. Nothing can be more effective in ensuring social chnage than support of a social entrepreneur's project at a critical moment. We believe that investing in the changemakers themselves is the most highly leveraged approach to social change one can make.

Ashoka does not try to categorize innovation into stove-piped fields like health or human rights or environment. We believe that innovative ideas are often cross-cutting across these fields - Ashoka Fellow Jose Pablo's new idea to help immigrant parents engage more with their kids' schoolwork ended up helping thousands of immigrants become more qualified and find better jobs.

Another unique quality of Ashoka is that our work spans the sectors - understanding the need to move beyond the social sector and work closely with others, especially the business sectors. Our network encompasses not only the world's leading social entrepreneurs, but business entrepreneurs, policymakers, investors, journalists and academic thought leaders. We facilitate collaborative relationships among these cross-sector experts, whether to develop housing solutions for the 1 billion urban residents without adequate shelter or provide business and growth opportunities for young people worldwide, resulting in maximum social impact.

What's the biggest challenge?

One of our biggest challenges is to build bridges between the business and citizen sector that go beyond CSR or corporate philanthropy. It is not enough for a private sector company to donate to charity at the end of every tax year. The question we want to answer is how can a company's core business become socially relevant? We truly believe that partnering with social entrepreneurs can create opportunities for businesses interested in entering low-income markets.

Another urgent challenge we face as we grow is finding the right kind of entrepreneurial, innovative thinkers to join our global teams and launch all these new ideas - we are an organization best defined as being in "perpetual motion," so finding people who fit into our culture is a top priority.

What's in store for the future?

Ashoka envisions that rather than a tiny elite controlling change, we will see a world where "everyone is a changemaker." As Bill Drayton says, "Think of what it would be like if 50 percent of the population were changemakers. You start imagining what human society would be like at that stage. It would be incredibly different. It would operate much more like the human brain, with synapses firing in all directions."

Ashoka is bringing to the citizen sector the same institutions and systems that help entrepreneurs thrive in the business sector: new forms of capital and financial systems, bridges to the business and academic sectors, social investment models, enabling youth to practice social entrepreneurship, and other infrastructure that supports the growth and expansion of the citizen sector. We envision a world we will not have NGOs. Rather, we see a citizen sector where merging happens and social needs become an automatic concern of each and every sector.

Who would you like to be contacted by?

I would love to hear from young entrepreneurs who are interested in social innovation. Ashoka's Youth Venture program specifically focuses on enabling young changemakers to impact their communities. If you are interested in supporting social entrepreneurs in your countries or an entrepreneur yourself, connect with me through the connection point (see below) now!

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