For a number of years, Ashoka Social Financial Services has sought to address critical obstacles and foster in- novation by supporting social entrepreneurs and collaborating with social investors to create new investment vehicles and funds.
Over the last 30 years, the citizen sector has increasingly turned to the market to address social challenges. The breadth of the resulting innovations has been profound: market-based innovations enable social entrepreneurs to break away from traditional funding models. Philanthropic and government funding are now complemented, and often replaced, by revenue-driven models that range from international license agreements to forward commodity contracts.
Social entrepreneurs use a variety of market-based innovations to solve a broad range of social challenges. For example, a social entrepreneur in Zambia is helping protect wildlife by providing poachers with a financial interest in preserving biodiversity. Another social entrepreneur is empowering Americans to buy the property under their pre-fabricated homes. Home ownership has provided these individuals with increased economic security and the opportunity to improve and even transform their communities. Finally, a social entrepreneur in India changed the manufacturing cost of lenses in order to provide everyone, regardless of ability to pay, with high-quality, affordable cataract surgery.
Social finance has grown from a few pioneers to a nascent industry at the intersection of commercial finance and social action.
By reading our publication, you will discover insights on the topics of:
- Impact — a look at the variety of design principles social entrepreneurs use to animate market forces and impact social challenges at large scale.
- Income — get an idea of how social entrepreneurs fund their ongoing operations.
- Investment — understand the role of investment capital, as well as social finance innovations that increase social entrepreneurs’ access to growth capital.
- Future — see our reflections on the different strategies social entrepreneurs use to answer the three entrepreneurial questions: Impact, Income, and Investment.
