SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP

The BIG social idea
A vision of the people and for the people, is social entrepreneurship for real?

POP quiz: If it takes one Mohan Bhargava to energise one village to electrify itself, how many Mohan Bhargavas does all of India need? The conventional (and depressing) answer that comes to mind after watching Ashutosh Gowariker's Swades: several hundred thousand. Because that's how many amazingly backward hamlets this amazingly-forward-in-some-areas country actually has.The unconventional (and inspiring) answer that came to Bill Drayton's mind: Identify the Mohan Bhargavas of the world - individuals with the creativity and focus to really drive a Big Social Idea. Then, give them the financial and professional support needed to 'scale up'. After all, if pioneers in business could grow their companies by employing venture capital, why not pioneers in the social sector?It was an idea elegant in its simplicity, yet revolutionary in its thought. Harvard graduate and former McKinsey consultant Bill Drayton was convinced it would work.
Thus was born 'Ashoka: Innovators for the Public', an organisation whose mission is to develop 'social entrepreneurship' on a global scale.The term 'entrepreneur' generally brings to mind the likes of Bill Gates or Dhirubhai Ambani: individuals with drive, ambition and vision - and enormous bank balances. Entrepreneurship is so firmly associated with the creation of wealth that using it to describe non profit-driven leadership and innovation is initially a little hard to digest.But as management guru Peter Drucker so rightly puts it, not every new business is entrepreneurial and not every entrepreneurial venture must be in business. He defines an entrepreneur as one who "always searches for change, responds to it and exploits it as an opportunity". The individuals, whom Ashoka seeks to support, aim to do exactly this.While the term is relatively new, social entrepreneurs have always been around. Florence Nightingale, Mahatma Gandhi, Vinoba Bhave are vivid examples. The problem, says David Bornstein, author of How To Change The World, is that historically we have looked at such individuals as humanitarians or saints.
"Great social entrepreneurs are not the geniuses of society," argues Bornstein. "They are not the best educated or the richest or the most talented. Rather, they tend to be the people who are the most strongly motivated in a particular area..." People who have done remarkable things, he says, didn't begin with the knowledge and capacity to run a large organisation. They acquired it along the way, step by step.Ashoka seeks such people and 'invests' in them. Since the inception of the organisation in 1980, Ashoka has elected 1,500 'fellows' around the world, including 225 from India. Bornstein's book chronicles the rocky but rewarding road some of these entrepreneurs have travelled - be it Veronica Khosa in South Africa, whose home-based care model for AIDS patients changed government health policy, or the Mohan Bhargava-like efforts of Fábio Rosa in bringing affordable electricity to rural Brazil.
But, while these successes are inspiring, how much they owe to Ashoka is unclear. A few Ashoka-supported entrepreneurs have scaled up - and probably would have done so regardless of the Ashoka connection. Take Pratham, set up by Madhav Chavan in 1994. A big idea in the field of universal primary education, initially parented by Unicef and subsequently ICICI Bank, Pratham is achieving a fair degree of impact nationally.Elected an Ashoka fellow in 2002, Chavan observes: "Ashoka was not instrumental in shaping or scaling up my work in anyway. That happened independently." The same appears to be true of Shaheen Mistri's Akanksha which provides slum children innovative supplemental education. Mistri was elected a fellow in 1998 and says: "Ashoka has a lot to offer... but I haven't really used it myself."
The monetary support Ashoka offers is valuable, but modest. Ashoka's India budget, for example, is just Rs 2 crore. Fellows receive a small stipend (approximately Rs 12,000-15,000 per month) over three years. It basically allows the entrepreneur to concentrate on mission-critical tasks without worrying where the next meal is coming from. However, the credibility that Ashoka lends - thanks to its rigorous selection process - can provide the leverage to raise additional funding.
What most fellows really value is Ashoka as a professional network - a meeting place for exchange of ideas. Efforts such as Fellowship Support Services and Global Collaboration Grants aim to bring together people working in similar fields. Then, there's the Citizen Base Initiative which focuses on creative fund-raising and volunteer management.
Needle in a social haystack
One of the key issues Ashoka faced early on was identifying deserving social entrepreneurs. So it established the practice of inviting nominations from local journalists, academics, NGOs and, in time, previous Ashoka fellows. Drayton put on his management consulting hat to devise a rigorous assessment based on four parameters
Creativity: Is it a new and potentially pattern-setting idea?
Entrepreneurial ability: Ashoka looks out not for the altruist, happy to run a single village school, but the entrepreneur, who has a new vision for rural primary education.
The 'bigness' of the idea: Is there a potential application across communities? In other words, is the idea replicable and scalable?
Ethical fibre: Individuals with a high sense of integrity.
Ashoka estimates that 97 per cent of its fellows stick on to what they started. The profile of fellows is both professionals (MBAs, doctors and engineers - elites who wish to contribute to society) and grassroot level workers (those who have actually suffered and wish to effect a change). Many have been through a personal crisis related to the issue, or have seen someone close to them do so. Says Ashoka India's Sohini Bhattacharya, only half in jest: "I'm sometimes scared at the passion our Fellows have!"
The ultimate goal is to implement 'blueprints' across communities, even countries. Of course, it doesn't always happen. Sohini Bhattacharya, director (venture program) at Ashoka India, remains optimistic: "We believe four out of 10 of our projects can be replicated elsewhere, and that 50 per cent of these projects will go to scale."
Measurability of social entrepreneurship is a grey area. The 'impact' of an idea is not always quantifiable in terms of number of people benefitted. Ashoka believes every project that it supports will, in some way, influence people's thinking or lifestyle in terms of change. For instance, social activist Javed Abidi has been fighting for rights of the disabled in India. His efforts were instrumental in the Disability Bill being passed in Parliament.Meanwhile, Chavan's Pratham has reached over a million children, having reached across 12 states directly and indirectly. With its 'learn to read' programme in the first half of 2003, it covered 150,000 children at a cost of less than Rs 100 per child. When implemented by government school teachers, the cost per child worked out to Rs 10 or less, largely because the infrastructure is in place. The Akanksha initiative also has some promising results to show, having scaled up from 15 children in 1991 to more than 1,620 children at 36 centres in Mumbai and Pune, and 800 children children in a municipal school.Although the Ashoka initiative is highly respected, not everyone agrees with Drayton's definition of social entrepreneurship. Vijay Mahajan of Basix India, who has spent over two decades addressing the issues related to livelihoods in rural India, defines social entrepreneurs as people trying to address social problems through 'business-like methods'. He cites Sulabh Sauchalay which attempts to meet the needs of urban sanitation through innovative means, but ones that are ultimately self-sustainable.
Of course, he admits, not all social needs can be met with 'business-like methods'. Hence, charitable institutions will always have a role to play. In addition to this, Mahajan asserts, some of the biggest social success stories have been efforts like eradication of small pox and the India Mark II hand pump (which resulted in access to safe drinking water for millions). Both involved the government in a big way.
Ashoka fellow Jeroo Billimoria would agree. Childline, the 24-hour emergency helpline for street children she pioneered, was able to set up operations in over 50 cities by partnering not only with NGOs but the Department of Telecommunications, the Ministry of Justice and Social Empowerment, local police officials and hospitals. But the very fact that such partnerships are happening points to the growing influence of the 'citizen' sector.There has been a phenomenal rise in NGO activity - on a global scale. Bill Drayton estimates that non-profit is the fastest growing sector worldwide. The number of NGOs in the United States alone has doubled from 500,000 to 1 million in the last 10 years. It is essentially a response to the post-Thatcher world where governments in richer countries are consciously shrinking their welfare role. And in poor countries, shirking it.The traditional methods of dealing with unmet social needs, such as charity, have not proved to be enough - or effective. But the idea of social entrepreneurship is now capturing the imagination of a new generation of philanthropists such as Jeffrey Skoll who made his millions by co-founding eBay.
The NGO world's best-kept secret
Considering the very name of the organisation and the fact that India was the country where Ashoka elected its first two fellows, the brand fails to ring a bell with Indians outside non-profit circles. Of course that hardly bothers the diminutive Drayton, who has been variously described as a guy with 'the determination of Jobs and the brains of a Nobel laureate'.Bill Drayton has a strong India connection. As a young man, he actually travelled with Vinoba Bhave from village to village observing the Bhoodan movement.
And his choice of the name 'Ashoka' was no coincidence. Drayton did name his organisation after third century BC Emperor Ashoka, a man he considers to be one of history's most tolerant, global-minded and extraordinarily creative leaders.Before founding Ashoka in 1980, Drayton had founded the 'Asia Society' in high school in the 1960s, followed by the 'Ashoka Table' at both Harvard and Oxford. The name obviously stuck for the institution he created to develop and legitimise social entrepreneurship. It has identified and supported Fellows across 53 nations. Drayton emphasises on the role of Ashoka 'to make everyone a changemaker'. "To help create a world where everyone has the freedom, confidence, and skills to turn challenges into solutions. This allows each person the fullest, richest life..."As the field matures, Ashoka is no longer alone. It has a growing number of partners and potential partners," he asserts. For more on Ashoka, pick up David Bornstein's How To Change The World: Social Entrepreneurs and The Power Of New Ideas - now out in an Indian edition. Ashoka can be reached at ashokamail@vsnl.net, or just visit its website: www.ashoka.org.
Is social entrepreneurship a significant movement or a fad? Skoll believes there is a parallel to 100 years ago, when the field of business was taking root. "Back then, there was a groundswell... a lot of activity. But no one was formally examining the principles or underpinnings of what was going on. Around then, we began to see business schools and academic institutions taking an interest."This is what social entrepreneurship is seeing today - with several B-schools incorporating the subject in their curriculum (See 'Are B-schools Grooming Social Entrepreneurs?'). Skoll has established a Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford University's Said School of Business.
Further, the former president of eBay used $34 million from the proceeds of his company's IPO to set up the Skoll Foundation. Its mission is to advance global systemic change by "investing in, connecting and celebrating social entrepreneurs". Using a selection procedure very similar to that of Ashoka, the Skoll Foundation has given around $2.5 million to a dozen chosen organisations.Another notable effort is the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship in Geneva, founded by Klaus Schwab, president of the World Economic Forum. There are several other individuals and foundations now, working to identify and promote social entrepreneurship. In some way or the other, all these initiatives are influenced by the Ashoka philosophy. More than the success of individual fellows, Ashoka's contribution appears to lie in becoming a 'philanthropy blueprint' in itself!May a hundred Mohan Bhargavas bloom. And may dozens of Ashokas, like the winds of change, pollinate the seeds sown by social entrepreneurship. Near, far and wide.
- Rashmi Bansal, graduate of IIM Ahmedabad and founder-editor of the popular youth magazine JAM