Ashoka
Global Partnership
Ashoka is an ideal partner to achieve widespread social impact. We pool the strengths of different stakeholders—civil society, social entrepreneurs, and private companies—through our innovative collaboration models. We create win-win partnerships that respond effectively to social and environmental challenges.
Ashoka has developed a range of relationships since 1980, from local-level pro bono and voluntary engagements to strategic and visionary engagements with companies. Ashoka's global network enables us to collaborate quickly with key partners around the globe. We respond effectively to large-scale problems in society, breaking down barriers between business, society, and the public. And we introduce new modes of collaboration beyond the typical funder-fundee relationship.
Ashoka relies on individuals, foundations, and corporate contributions to develop our work in supporting social entrepreneurs around the world, and to further our vision of an Everyone A Changemaker World.
The Ashoka Support Network offers innovative leaders from a variety of fields the opportunity to go beyond traditional philanthropy and co-create the world’s best social entrepreneurs in partnership with Ashoka Fellows. ASN members engage with Ashoka Fellows in a variety of ways, based on their interests and capacity. ASN offers opportunities to advise Fellows about scaling-up strategies through the Ashoka Globalizer program, hear exclusive investment pitches from Fellows through Ashoka’s social finance accelerator, and brainstorm solutions to Fellows’ organizational challenges during local retreats and global summits.
Through the Executive in Residence program, corporate executives work on-site with leading social entrepreneurs around the world for a period of two weeks up to six months. During this time, the executive tackles a challenge that is critical to the social entrepreneur’s ability to scale his or her impact.
Simultaneously, by working with the world’s leading social innovators, executives bring back lessons learned about new innovations, emerging markets, and leadership techniques. At the end of the on-site placement, the executive and social entrepreneur continue to collaborate virtually together and have the opportunity to create shared value partnerships for their organizations.
Executive in Residence was a great opportunity to expand my marketing skills and to apply them in a different setting. I have always been in health care manufacturing, and know how to market to providers and health plans, but haven’t really had much opportunity to think about how to market to the patients. This was all about thinking about the family members and people affected by a specific disease.
– Gati Dharani, Senior Associate Director, Boehringer-Ingelheim, worked with Ashoka Fellow Aled Edwards in 2015