Ashoka is a living encyclopedia of social innovation across the globe.
We pioneered the field of social entrepreneurship and are now building toward an "Everyone A Changemaker" world: where all of us have the confidence, access and support to co-lead solutions for the common good.
Join us in shaping this more resilient, inclusive, equitable future.
Calling young innovators with powerful ideas for fueling positive change! Apply for the Taco Bell Foundation Ambition Accelerator for the chance to turn your boldest ambitions into action.
From offering opportunities for financial education to their classmates to creating inclusion in the arts, these 25 young people are bringing bold solutions to challenges in their communities.
Tap the world's best social entrepreneurs for what works, what's next, and why these innovators are hopeful. Join live conversations from across the Ashoka community of 3,500+ Fellows in 90+ countries.
Building a diverse, equitable and inclusive Ashoka
To support an Everyone a Changemaker vision in which everyone is powerful, Ashoka has launched a holistic Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiative. In the journey towards a fully diverse, inclusive, and equitable world, we acknowledge that change starts with us to embody our own values.
With Ashoka’s “Carry for Good” Pledge, you commit to making a small annual contribution and donating a self-chosen percent of your personal carried interest at the time of your exit to high impact social innovation for the common good.
Building a diverse, equitable and inclusive Ashoka
“Carry For Good” Pledge
What Ashoka does
Ashoka builds and cultivates a community of Fellows, Young Changemakers, Changemaker Institutions, and beyond who see that the world now requires everyone to be a changemaker – a person that sees themselves as capable of creating large-scale change.
Together, we mobilize (and accelerate) a movement to build an "Everyone a Changemaker" world and directly address the new inequality facing our societies worldwide.
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
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
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
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.
La Vanguardia
[Ashoka] functions as a collaborative network that supports and amplifies change by bringing together changemakers.
The newly released collection builds a narrative thread of how social entrepreneurs have managed to achieve systemic changes at local, national, and international levels since 2018.
When crises occurs and we see humankind responding to uncertainty, it's a test of our potential as society to unlock people's potential as changemakers building better futures for all
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.
As we continue to find, support, and co-create with social entrepreneurs addressing systemic racism and its effects, we also look to veteran Ashoka Fellows closest to the issues – for perspective, insight, and wisdom rooted in lived experience and decades of work.
Ashoka's Changemaker Community is transforming the Narrative on COVID-19
Ashoka's Changemaker community is reshaping the narrative on COVID-19 from one of simple direct service to one of creating greater capacity for people to create change in their lives and their communities.
This is the future: where transformative solutions to the pandemic can outrun the problems.
Ashoka is proud to have joined 60 members of the COVID Response Alliance for Social Entrepreneurs that support social entrepreneurs worldwide in their changemaking work during COVID-19, and support greater trust-building and collaboration between them.
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.
