Ashoka Citizen Base Initiative (CBI)

Ashoka’s broad network and deep understanding of social entrepreneurship gives us a unique capacity to harness the learning from leading social entrepreneurs. The Citizen Base Initiative (CBI) seeks to use this distinctive vantage point to capture, share, and enable how leading social entrepreneurs and non-profit organizations mobilize key human, technological, information, and financial resources from their citizen base. By creating an open, curated, and self-propelling platform, we aim to highlight the power of a dedicated citizen base, and empower those seeking a social change with effective citizen-based resource mobilization solutions.

First launched in 1996, CBI conducted over 140 case studies and a series of competitions to identify and celebrate the creative ways organizations build a dedicated citizen base. Ashoka’s broad network and deep understanding of social entrepreneurship give us a unique capacity to harness the learning from leading social entrepreneurs. CBI aims to highlight the power of a dedicated citizen base, and empower those seeking a social change with effective citizen-based resource mobilization solutions.

Below we spotlight powerful examples of Ashoka Fellows mobilizing the citizen bases around them.