ASHOKA : a philanthropic venture fund for social entrepreneurs

Ashoka is an association which was created in India in 1980 by Bill Drayton, a former McKinsey consultant and graduate of Harvard, Yale and Oxford. Its aim is to contribute to the strengthening of social enterprise. It does so particularly by supporting innovative social entrepreneurs so that they can accelerate the development of their activities and deploy their impact on society. Ashoka extols the virtues of efficiency and does not hesitate to tools from the business world to the service sector thus building bridges between these two worlds. Ashoka has grown rapidly, initially in Asia and subsequently in South America, Africa and Eastern Europe. Since 2000, offices have been established in developed countries (USA and Canada, followed by Western Europe). Ashoka currently has a network of more than two thousand innovative social entrepreneurs. It launched its activity in France in 2006 and aroused interest from entrepreneurs, while at the same time creating some confusion among organisations aimed at promoting solidarity. Ashoka, partly an Anglo-Saxon charity business and partly a French-style association, is at the cutting edge of France's changing social economy.