A healthy society isn't built by a few. It's built when everyone has a path to contribute to the common good. Ashoka creates the conditions for people to step into their power to give. Be part of the Everyone a Changemaker World.
Bringing New Paradigms to the World
We focus on advancing fields that are ripe—and in need of something new. Our communities imagine new futures and create roadmaps to reach them. Our strategies drive collective action, not just to promote one idea, but to transform entire systems.
Changemaker Networks
By bringing together leading social entrepreneurs, strategic partners, and new intelligence tools, we build futures for the good of all. This is the moment to shape the systems that will define the next 50 years. We invite funders, changemakers, and bold thinkers into this work.
For over 45 years, Ashoka has pioneered the field of social entrepreneurship, building the largest global network of 4000+ social innovators across 99 countries. Ashoka doesn't just fund solution—it creates entire fields of change.
By uniting leading social entrepreneurs with business leaders, policymakers, and cultural influencers, Ashoka shapes systemic shifts in how societies solve their greatest challenges.
Towards an "Everyone a Changemaker" world where all people have the right and ability to co-lead solutions that transform their societies for the better.
Our changemaker community consists of 4,000+ Fellows, 100+ Young Changemakers, 250+ change institutions, and 300+ partners across more than 95 countries. Together, we form a strong, diverse and vibrant ecosystem of change agents collaborating and co-leading to positively transform societies and cultures around the world.
82% of Ashoka social entrepreneurs have had their innovations replicated in other geographies
With 88% of Ashoka social entrepreneurs encouraging people to think differently and 89% of Fellows putting young people in charge, Ashoka's Changemaker community is modeling what it takes to build a world of Changemakers and ensure everyone is included.
76% of educators believe developing changemaker mindsets among young people is an urgent need
Ashoka and First book are uncovering from educators what it takes to reach young people from low-income and historically excluded communities to solve the problems they most care about: a Changemaker mindset that integrates their perspectives and lived experiences.
An Everyone a Changemaker World is accelerating. Ashoka is documenting how
Ashoka's Changemaker Community co-creates a world where solutions and Changemakers may outrun problems. Ashoka's library of reports documents the trends, provides transparency of our actions and invites you to start your own Changemaking journey today.
How society helps children grow up needs fundamental innovation at least as urgently as in how it produces computers. That is why Ashoka is so important. It finds, helps launch, and then links and leverages the most powerful social innovations and innovators.
Carol Bellamy
Former Executive Director, UNICEF
Ashoka, which patiently, persistently pioneered social entrepreneurship for decades, remains at its cutting edge... By enabling leading social entrepreneurs from every continent to think and entrepreneur together, it has unleashed an unprecedented new force for good
Sir Fazle Abed
Founder and former Chair, BRAC
The Ashoka mission stands for engagement in every sense of that term – of having people feel as if they’re responsible for their neighbors, they’re responsible for their descendants, they’re responsible for themselves, for making the most of themselves that they can.
James Fallows
Writer, The Atlantic
Being involved with Ashoka has set a high bar for the rest of philanthropy [...] because I can see that these are the people who are driving true change. [...] Most important about what Ashoka is doing is that they make people believe that change is possible. That belief can go viral.
Anne Wojcicki
Co-Founder and CEO, 23andMe
We recognize a new era is about to start. In this new era, empathy and changemaking skills, which Ashoka exemplifies, would equip our young people to lead the country.
Kan Suzuki
Professor at Tokyo University and Keio University
No matter a person’s abilities, if he or she helps others – to that degree he or she will be powerful, happy, and long-lived. That’s why Ashoka’s leadership in building a world where everyone is a changemaker, i.e., a giver, makes it so special and powerful.
Timothy P. Shriver
Chairman, the Special Olympics
Forbes knows that the story is change. No one sees that more clearly than Ashoka. It has an extraordinary ability both to envision the big, new patterns and to engineer their emergence.
Forbes
Bill Drayton emphasized to us [that] empathy is increasingly becoming our primary resource for dealing with the exponential rate of change the world is going through.
Arianna Huffington
Founder, The Huffington Post
The results of Ashoka’s shared leadership with the focus on solving social challenges is clear: 74 percent of Fellows have managed to change the legislation or have influenced public policies.
Donating to Ashoka enables us to elect new social entrepreneurs into our fellowship, provide support services to existing Fellows, and launch collaborations between Fellows, corporations, and citizen sector organizations to promote continued innovation in areas of pressing global need.
Ashoka recognizes that it cannot possibly source the world’s leading changemakers on its own. Good nominators ensure that Ashoka receives a constant flow of promising candidates as well as an invaluable perspective on the current innovation in the sector.
Ashoka
Ashoka: Everyone a Changemaker
Ashoka Is...
The Story of Ashoka
Are You A Changemaker?
Entrepreneur for Society
The Future Calls for a New Paradigm for Growing Up, Education, Management and Leadership
Everyone a Changemaker - Bill Drayton
CouchSurfing
Fair Trade USA
The Harry Potter Alliance
The Future of Green Building. Ashoka Fellow Jason McLennan
The Story Doesn't End with the Acceptance Letter. Ashoka Fellow Alexandra Bernadotte
Rethinking "Reduce, Reuse, Recylcing. Ashoka Fellow Mitch Hedlund
Ashoka Fellow and Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales
Bill Drayton -Ashoka 30 year celebration message
Innovators in Action Bill Drayton on Effecting Social Change
Career Spotlight: Diana Wells '88: Social Entrepreneurship
Changemaker Education: 6 Insights from the Ashoka U Community
