HLS Alum: Social Sector Growing

The social sector—which includes non-profit and non-governmental organizations—has gone through a dramatic revolution over the last 25 years, growing two to three times as quickly in the United States as other industries, William Drayton ’65 told a packed audience at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum last Friday.

Drayton, a Rhodes Scholar, former Kennedy School professor, and Harvard Law School alum, spoke about Ashoka, an organization he founded in 1980. Ashoka—a social entrepreneurship group—is Drayton’s answer to close “the social and economic gaps between the northern and southern hemispheres, while accelerating the democratic revolution through the citizen sector in developing countries,” according to Ashoka’s website.

Drayton was introduced at the Forum by Gowher Rizvi, the director of the Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation and a lecturer at the Kennedy School.

“When you think about anyone who brought about a great change in the 20th century, one of them has to be Billy Drayton,” Rizvi said. “Drayton invented the term social entrepreneurship.”

Social entrepreneurs—or fellows, as Ahsoka calls them—are defined as people who have “a big new idea, creativity, entrepreneurial quality, social impact of the idea, and ethical fiber,” according to Ashoka’s website.

“[They’re] not there to...teach them how to fish but to build a new fishing industry,” Drayton said.

Ashoka started in India with a budget of less than $50,000. Today, it spends over $17 million a year financing over 1,700 fellows in 60 countries, according to the organization’s website.

Despite the progress, over the last 25 years in the social sector, Drayton said that this market is still largely underdeveloped.

“If you were to look at a supply and demand diagram, there is very high demand with low supply,” Drayton said.

He says that the importance of this sector is largely the result of enormous global inequality.

“Since the agricultural revolution, only three percent of the world’s people have been in charge,” Drayton said. “The richest 20 percent of the world’s population control over 80 percent of the world income.”

Drayton said that the reason social entrepreneurs are so important is because there is a need for new solutions to deal with the inequality problem.

“Nothing is more powerful than a new idea in the hands of a social entrepreneur,” he said.

In his talk, Drayton stressed that society needs to empower the world’s youth.

“We adults say we are in charge of everything, so where are young people supposed to get practice of leading and being powerful?” he said.

He said that adults have basically been conveying to youths that “we don’t think you are competent” and said that “this is what we used to tell women and African-Americans.”

Drayton indicated that social entrepreneurship is needed everywhere, not just in the developing world,

“Please recognize that everyone here can make a huge difference, he said. “You just have to have the will to do it.”