A social entrepreneur is an individual with innovative solutions to society's most pressing social, cultural, and environmental challenges. Unlike traditional entrepreneurs who seek to maximize profit, social entrepreneurs seek to create impact on a wide societal scale. They are visionaries and ultimate realists: driven by a commitment to the good of all, and relentlessly focused on the practical implementation of change, therefore modeling changemaking behavior. Ashoka’s founder, Bill Drayton, coined the term in the 1980s to describe Ashoka Fellows.
The job of a social entrepreneur is to recognize when a part of society is stuck and to provide new ways to get it unstuck. He or she finds what is not working and solves the problem by changing the system, spreading the solution and persuading entire societies to take new leaps.
Bill Drayton
Founder and CEO, Ashoka
Why it matters?
Our shared futures depend on people having the skills and stepping into their power to change what is broken in our world. Deepening inequality, climate disruption, failing education systems, health disparities, and other social problems are not solved by charity, incremental improvement, or good intentions alone. They require the kind of entrepreneurial drive, systems-level thinking, and pattern-changing innovation that social entrepreneurs bring.
The impact is real:
Replication / Scale
0%
of Ashoka social entrepreneurs have had their innovations replicated in other geographies.
Policy Impact
0%
of Ashoka Fellows have changed or influenced government policy. These are not incremental improvements - they are durable shifts in the systems that shape how millions of people live.
Lead Young
0%
of Fellows are putting young people in charge of leading change within their organizations.
Mindset Shift
0%
of Ashoka social entrepreneurs encourage people to think differently.
Ashoka did not just name social entrepreneurship - it built the field.
Ashoka has identified, elected, and supported more than 4,000 leading social entrepreneurs — Ashoka Fellows — in 99 countries. This is the world's most seasoned network of social entrepreneurs, built through a rigorous selection process.
Ashoka's perspective on social entrepreneurship is not theoretical but sourced from 40+ years of direct experience identifying, studying, and partnering with deeply effective social entrepreneurs. From that vantage point, Ashoka has learned that:
The most effective social entrepreneurs are those that address the root problems, not just the symptoms.
Leading social entrepreneurs are exceptional at activating agency in others, creating the conditions so that people can step into their power to give.
Conscious empathy — the ability to understand and act on the needs of others — is the foundational skill of every great social entrepreneur.
Related Concepts
Social entrepreneurship is part of a larger framework of ideas that Ashoka has developed and championed.
Everyone a Changemaker (EACH)
Ashoka envisions a world in which Everyone is a Changemaker: a world where all citizens are powerful and have the skills, confidence, and support to drive change for good.
Empathy
The foundational skill of every social entrepreneur. Ashoka identifies conscious empathy as the critical capacity that enables social entrepreneurs to understand and act on the needs of others at scale.
Systems Change
The mechanism through which social entrepreneurs create lasting impact — changing the patterns and structures underlying problems, not just addressing symptoms.
Changemaking
The practice of taking creative, empathetic action to solve a social problem. Social entrepreneurs are changemakers operating at a systemic level.
The world's largest community of leading social entrepreneurs — elected through a rigorous selection process and supported for life. The following Ashoka Fellows demonstrate what social entrepreneurship looks like in practice across different regions, sectors, and types of systemic change.
A: Social entrepreneurship is the practice of identifying and solving social, cultural, or environmental problems through innovative, entrepreneurial approaches — with the goal of creating lasting systemic change at scale. Social entrepreneurs are distinct from traditional entrepreneurs in that they prioritize change and impact rather than maximizing profit.
Q: Who coined the term "social entrepreneurship"?
A: The concept of social entrepreneurship was pioneered by Bill Drayton, who founded Ashoka in 1980. Ashoka was the first organization to identify, support, and invest in social entrepreneurs and has built the world's largest network of leading social entrepreneurs (Ashoka Fellows) over more than four decades and spanning close to 100 countries.
Q: What is an Ashoka Fellow?
A: An Ashoka Fellow is a leading social entrepreneur elected to Ashoka's global network after a rigorous selection process. Fellows are identified for the originality of their idea, the scale of their impact, and their potential to change systems at a national or global level. There are currently more than 4,000 Ashoka Fellows in 99 countries.
Q: How does Ashoka select social entrepreneurs?
A: Ashoka's Fellow selection process is among the most rigorous in the social sector. Candidates are evaluated on five criteria: the social impact of their idea, creativity of approach, entrepreneurial quality, ethical fiber, and potential for broad societal impact. The process involves multiple rounds of interviews and takes approximately nine months.
Q: Can anyone become a social entrepreneur?
A: Ashoka believes that the skills underlying social entrepreneurship — empathy, creative problem-solving, teamwork, and leadership — can be developed by anyone. This is the foundation of Ashoka's Everyone a Changemaker vision: a world where every person has the confidence and capability to drive change for the good of all, not just a select few.
Ashoka's History
Bill Drayton founded Ashoka in 1980 based on the idea that the most powerful force for good in the world is a social entrepreneur: a person driven by an innovative idea that can help correct an entrenched global problem. The world’s leading social entrepreneurs pursue system-changing solutions that permanently alter existing patterns of activity.
Ashoka
