Ashoka is a global organization, founded in 1980 by Bill Drayton with the purpose to create and be a pioneer on the global field of social entrepreneurship. The idea that surrounded Ashoka s foundation was that the most effective way to promote positive change is to invest in social entrepreneurs with innovative, sustainable and replicable solutions. One of Ashoka s fields of action is to advice and support Ashoka Fellows in the various challenges they face as social entrepreneurs.
Background
Ashoka is a global organization, founded in 1980 by Bill Drayton with the purpose to create and be a pioneer on the global field of social entrepreneurship. The idea that surrounded Ashoka’s foundation was that the most effective way to promote positive change is to invest in social entrepreneurs with innovative, sustainable and replicable solutions. One of Ashoka’s fields of action is to advice and support Ashoka Fellows in the various challenges they face as social entrepreneurs.
It is a key challenge for Social Entrepreneurs to build a leader inside their organization and to prepare a succession plan that ensures that the impact achieved by this organization will always be as strong as possible.
As an organization which aims to support social entrepreneurs, it is very important to Ashoka to be able to offer valuable information and structured knowledge regarding these themes. Ashoka considers that leadership and succession are key topics to social entrepreneurs once they have reached the maturity on their life cycle. Promoting a proactive debate in this area, Ashoka will help them to increase their impact without losing their focus, professionalize their organizations and strengthen the citizen sector one step further.
Objectives
1. Understand the critical success factors of a smooth succession process in citizen sector organizations. For each success factor, identify qualitative criteria and quantitative metrics.
2. Identify best practices that led to a smooth succession and practices that led to failed succession.
3. Structure and systematize this knowledge in an accessible form that could be useful for social entrepreneurs to reflect on leadership and succession on their organizations according to their life cycle. Specifically, the following questions should be addressed:
a. Should Ashoka have a coaching program?
b. Should Ashoka host seminars or distribute a publication?
c. What kind of tools and processes should Ashoka build to support the fellows and leadership within organizations?
Process
1. Review existing knowledge base
2. Define criteria/dimensions to identify representative Ashoka Fellow interview candidates
3. Develop questionnaire
4. Interview Ashoka Fellows
5. Examine/analyze findings, and identify key success and failure factors
6. Conduct follow-up interviews as necessary
7. Report on findings, develop recommendations
8. Distill into end-user ready product
Deliverables
1. A structured plan on how to present the results to the Ashoka fellowship. This may take the form of a presentation, document, pamphlet or guidebook, perhaps including case studies.
2. A mechanism in which to disseminate the knowledge and findings of this project and to start a dialogue with and amongst the fellows about leadership and succession issues.
3. An on-site presentation and discussion with Ashoka Brazil on how to deal with the aforementioned issues.