Ashoka Global changed its vision

Date interview: August 26 2016
Name interviewer: Reka Matolay
Name interviewee: Ewa Konczal
Position interviewee: Former Country and Regional Director (2000-2014)

Adapting Compromise International networks Formalizing

This is a CTP of initiative: Ashoka Poland

The CTP is concerned with the effect of Ashoka Global drastically changing its vision in 2005 on Ashoka Poland. Ashoka formally shifted from its original focus on developing the profession of social entrepreneurship to that of the "Everyone a Changemaker" (EACH), which advocates that each individual should be equipped with the skills and qualities necessary for being a successful innovator and social entrepreneur.   The CTP brought a lot of new initiatives for AP, such as, focusing on the value chain and increasing their cooperation with businesses, and a “youth program was introduced as well.” Even though they still had “all the standard activities, like selection”, these became less important and not “that core to the organization”.   The CTP was not well received by the staff of AP and there was a high level of resistance initially.  Besides being afraid of losing the core activities, the interviewee had the feeling that many of the initiatives they would have needed to take on were not fitting the context or would have been competition to existing initiatives of the Fellows.

Co-production

The CTP happened due to the vision change of Ashoka Global.  

Related events

• 2005: launching Ashoka Western Europe, which brought structural and operational changes to AP and it influenced the organizational culture as well. Being involved in the European network changed the everyday life of the organization. “The expectations were higher, and I had to do more with the same capacity”. Besides making their work more operational, it also "changed everything from an informal, trust-based organisation to something more formal."
• Change in the international level in terms of governance: Ashoka Global developed the „diamond” approach, where each diamond is a region of the world 
• Until around 2008, the AP office received funding from the US and their operations went “quite smoothly”. “Then suddenly the money dried out” and the interviewee quickly had to learn how to fundraise, something she had never done before, and found it very stressful to had to incorporate all the new responsibilities in her already busy schedule

Contestation

There was a lot of resistance within the organization, especially among the old staff that had been with the organization for 7-10 years, regarding the CTP, as they “were afraid that it is going to kill what [they] had been doing] so far”. There was a high concern among staff that they would not be able to continue their work, especially regarding the selection of future Ashoka Fellows.   The staff of AG was able to overcome the initial resistance as with time they saw “that they can still do what they were doing anyway” “and that it was not really killing the fellowship and the core activities”. They had a certain amount of freedom, and if they were able to give reasons why certain global initiatives were not fitting the local context they could veto it. 

Anticipation

The CTP was an external event. Although due to the time between Ashoka Global announcing the new vision and the actual changes they were able to anticipate the event, the AP was not able to do or prepare much and was mostly afraid of the impact of the CTP. 

Learning

This event made the interviewee realize that “AP is part of Ashoka international, it is not [her] organization”. The CTP also highlighted the highly hierarchical nature of the organization. “It is natural that some events happen that are above you or beyond you and you need to comply with it”   In the process of adjusting to the changes required by the CTP, and following the international trends within Ashoka Global, AP became an organization more like an “international NGO”. While having “a more corporate angle to [their] activity” had advantages for the organization, such as, “access to funding, more professionalization”, especially in marketing, the CTP also increased the formalization of processes and decreased the flexibility and freedom of the organization.   An additional opportunity for learning in this period was that through the possibility of closer international cooperation, AP received financial support and knowledge from the German country office, especially with regards to fundraising.