WHO’S WHO IN MICROFINANCE: Mr. William “Bill” Drayton of Virginia-based Ashoka: Innovators for the Public

William “Bill” Drayton is the CEO of Ashoka and in 1980 founded the nonprofit—or “citizen organization” as the institution prefers to refer to itself—with the aspiration of supporting “social entrepreneurs” in the world; a term used by Ashoka to describe the growing number of engaged citizens who are tackling global problems with innovative, system-wide solutions, profitable and not. Ashoka’s main avenue for affecting change in the world is through its Ashoka Fellows program which identifies social entrepreneurs worldwide and provides a powerful network of assistance, mentorship, and finances to enable the fellows to truly be “changemakers.”

“Social entrepreneurship” is a vague term for which there is no consensus on its exact definition. Thus, many organizations involved in promoting social entrepreneurship, Ashoka included, tailor the phrase’s explanation to fit their respective missions. Furthermore, the CEO (Sally Osberg) and a sitting board member (Roger L. Martin) of the Skoll Foundation co-published a ten page paper in the Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR) in Spring 2007 debating a possible definition and questioning the current circumstances by stating that “the indiscriminate use of the term may undermine its significance and potential importance to those seeking to understand how societies change and progress (page 39).” The paper is entitled “Social Entrepreneurship: The Case for Definition” and is available through the Skoll Foundation’s web site, an organization which aids social entrepreneurs by providing financial support, networking capabilities, and promotion of their work. Based in Palo Alto, California, the Skoll Foundation is a nonprofit which reported 2007 total assets of nearly USD 514 million (page 4).

When asked about social entrepreneurship, Mr. Drayton has said that “Social entrepreneurs are not content just to give a fish or teach how to fish. They will not rest until they have revolutionized the fishing industry.”

Ashoka is based in Arlington, Virginia, where Mr. Drayton resides, but maintains 25 regional offices around the world. Since the first Ashoka Fellows were elected in India in 1981, there have been more than 2,000 and they come from more than 60 countries to create a potent force rallying for positive transformation in the areas of human rights, unemployment, environmental sustainability, youth civil participation, and the elimination of poverty, to name a few. One of Ashoka’s six “Fields of Work” is economic development and a search through the Fellows’ database for those addressing the “microenterprise” and “financial services/markets” sectors retrieves 53 and 48 individuals, respectively. In 2006, Ashoka reported total assets of nearly USD 67.3 million (page 16). MicroCapital recently published a Who’s Who about Ashoka, which can be found here.

Mr. Drayton was born in New York City on June 15, 1943 to an Australian musician and an American explorer. Both of his parents’ families are deeply rooted in public service and social change and Drayton’s ancestors include the Grimké sisters (anti-slavery and women’s rights) and Wendell Phillips (abolitionist). An entrepreneur from the beginning, Drayton started and managed a newspaper while in fourth grade which had circulation, not only in his own school, but in other area schools as well. In high school he was a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and was deeply engaged in the civil rights movement.

The beginnings of Ashoka began to take root while Drayton was an undergraduate at Harvard University (class of ’65) where he established the Ashoka Table—an interdisciplinary weekly forum on the social sciences—and traveled to India during the summer of 1963 to follow Vinoba Bhave, a supporter of Gandhi who secured the peaceful redistribution of 7 million acres of land from rich owners to landless people across the country. Drayton later attended Yale Law School (YLS), graduating in 1970, and Balliol College at the University of Oxford where he obtained an MA with First Class Honors while studying on a Rhodes Scholarship.

For the first ten years of his professional career, Mr. Drayton worked as a consultant for McKinsey & Company (McKinsey), a global management consulting firm which does not issue a public annual report, where he advised both public and private clients. While providing consulting to the City of New York, he created America’s first nicotine tar tax. Following McKinsey, he made a jump to the public sector by joining the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as the Assistant Administrator for four years where he pioneered several innovations, including emissions trading. Subsequently, he worked at the White House during the Carter Administration and has taught at both Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government (Harvard Kennedy School) and Stanford Law School (SLS).

In addition to his work with Ashoka, Mr. Drayton is Chairman of the Board for Youth Venture (YV), a nonprofit organization which he founded in 1996 to initiate “a society-wide redefinition of the youth years” by enabling groups of young people, between the ages of 12 and 20, to be social entrepreneurs in their communities through seed funding of up to USD 1,000, tools, technical assistance, and other forms of support. The organization maintains 5 US offices as well as 11 global offices. Financial information was unavailable.

Mr. Drayton also serves as the Chairman for Get America Working! (GAW!), a nonprofit organization promoting the creation of jobs by means of a reduction in, or elimination of, payroll taxes and an increase in taxes on energy resources and pollution produced by factories. Financial information was unavailable for the Arlington, Virginia-based institution.

He is well known for his promotion of the “citizen sector,” the rapidly growing field of both nonprofit and for-profit ventures—microfinance institutions (MFIs) included—that seek to promote positive social change in the world. Because social entrepreneurs lead the citizen sector, Mr. Drayton views the development of entrepreneurial skills within young people (through YV), and the support of their mature ideas as adults (through Ashoka), as paramount.

Mr. Drayton’s awards are many. They include the MacArthur Fellowship (November 1984) from The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (MacArthur Foundation), the Award for Entrepreneurial Excellence from the Yale School of Management (SOM), the National Public Service Award (NPSA) (1995) which is jointly awarded by the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) and the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA), the Public Service Achievement Award (PSAA) from Common Cause, the Preiskel-Silverman Fellowship and the Award of Merit from YLS, the Leadership in Social Entrepreneurship Award (LSEA) (April 24, 2007) from Duke University’s Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE), the 2007 Honorary Fellow Award from the University of Pennsylvania Law School (Penn Law), the Goi Peace Award (November 18, 2007) from the Goi Peace Foundation (GPF), and the Dr. Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award (2008) from Tufts University’s Institute for Global Leadership (IGL). Mr. Drayton was also included on US News & World Report’s 2005 list of America’s Best Leaders and ranked 33rd on 02138 Magazine’s 2006 Harvard 100 List.