Investing In Social Change: Ashoka

Ashoka

Bill Drayton, 57, is widely credited with pioneering charitable support for "social entrepreneurs"--innovators whose ideas can leverage small cash investments into large and self-sustaining improvements in a society's health or education or housing. "We really don't want to be mistaken for a foundation," Drayton says somewhat disdainfully. "Philanthropy has been dominated by governments and foundation bureaucracies that have not evolved quickly enough and don't adapt well to changing demands from the field. We need to invent new institutions."

That's one reason Drayton in 1980 founded Ashoka: Innovators for the Public (named for a benevolent Indian Emperor from the 3rd century B.C.)....

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