This is a CTP of initiative: Ashoka Poland
The CTP details the changes and developments that characterized the organization after the first country director of AP gave his position to his successor in 2000. The first director of the organization had a background in psychology and mathematics. The second director of AP had a completely different sector as she was an alumnus of a business school and “she was able to move Ashoka [Poland] beyond the point I [the former director] could move it”
Due to the CTP, the organization of AP became much more “outward looking”. While the first country representative was “focused inward” and placed a high emphasis on informal community building, and the notion of “fellows for fellows”, the new director brought a much more open approach with herself, and “brought the business angle to Ashoka”.
However, it was not just about reaching out to business, she realized that although they had “great people and initiatives, nobody knows about” them. With the idea of “let’s go out, let’s share what we have” she focused on the marketing or promotion of the activities of the organization, which was almost completely absent before.
Her business education background and previous work in AISEC student organization gave AP a much larger network than it had before. She was reaching out to alumni and previous contacts who “ended up in the business world” and told them about the programs they did with AP, such as the NGO Clinique. She found it quite easy and managed to secure new partnerships, such as the one with McKinsey&Company. From then on, they also started to invite businesses to the meetings of Fellows. “We were all learning that if you really want to make a change if you want to scale your idea, you have to go out” “other organizations are also competing not only for the funds but also for relationships, contacts and the networks and you have to promote yourself”.
Before the second director of AP joined, all the meetings of the Fellows were directed towards community building, while after the CTP, they also invited professionals from the business world, experts from the fields of PR, public speaking, etc., and organized workshops. However, they had realized soon that each Fellow has different needs, they are at a different stage of development, as well as, they have a different level of understanding and knowledge of a certain topic. “Gradually, from doing group activities we went for a more individualized approach”. First, they started the NGO Clinique in cooperation with consultants from McKinsey&Co., however, “it didn’t really work”. The success came after they mobilized law firms and different companies to work directly with individual organizations.
They also started to place more emphasis on promoting the work they were doing, organizing press conferences to announce new Fellows, doing marketing actives and creating the Noble Ashoka Award. Parallel to these activities, EK also started to reach out to the business community to raise funds, which turned out to be quite challenging. Although they were able to mobilize pro-bono support “the concept was very difficult to sell.
The development of the CTP was supported by the first country representative of the organization. In addition, it could have not happened without the extensive network of the new director and her former involvement with the organization of AIESEC.
There was no contestation involved in the CTP within the staff of AP. However, there was some “resistance coming from the Ashoka Fellows” due to their belief that “we are doing good and business is bad”. Nevertheless, over time the perception has changed within the community, and today “there is much more understanding that those two worlds have to live together, and kind of live off each other”.
The CTP was anticipated and desired by the members of AP. According to the interviewee, she joined the organization with the intention of bringing something new, and creating change. Before the CTP, AP encountered challenges while striving to empower the Fellows and helping them become more effective. The head of AP at the time did not possess the skills and background necessary for that, and there were no trainings available for the staff from Ashoka Global. Therefore, he intentionally searched for somebody with business knowledge to represent the organization.
The developments caused by the CTP initiated several types of learning experience for the organization. One of the important learning points of the CTP was that it is important when connecting Fellows with business people to match them well in terms of experience, personality, and sometimes even age, in order to create a conversation that is based on genuine partnership. While they had challenges due to not doing this in their initial workshops hosted by young consultants, their equity community had been very successful due to the fact that they are working with “partner level people” “who are mature” and have at least 10 years of experience. Another important learning point was that having “the network in itself is not enough” to grow and increase your impact. Focused efforts to make their work visible and known and consciously reaching out and building new partnerships are also crucial. While shifting their approach from group level workshops towards providing tailored developmental opportunities to each social enterprise turned out to be successful, they still saw the Fellows struggling when trying to grow and scale their organization due to financial problems. The difficulty was caused by the fact that the business community is more willing to support projects with a clear beginning and end, and the concept of supporting a mission, of giving, for example, a 3-year stipend for a Fellow was not attractive to them. Last but not least, the interviewee realized that they were “overburdening the fellows”. For many fellows the network and support were very important, however, when it came to technical training on PR, marketing, etc., it started to be too much, they could not do everything on their own. Therefore, they started to provide training for other team members of the social enterprises. “The tools we were operating with were not the right ones for the mission we wanted to achieve”. It was very natural and very well-received by fellows. However, not by Ashoka Global. It seemed that by wanting to engage other people besides the actual Fellows, they were “crossing some magical boundaries”. Nevertheless, the interviewee believed it to be absolutely crucial for the fellows to be able to grow and continued to work for creating such possibilities.
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