Who we are
Launched in 2016, Impact Transfer was inspired by Ashoka Fellows scaling their impact globally. Our goal was to professionalize support for social innovators and disseminate scaling know-how within and beyond the Ashoka community.
After refining our methodologies, we built thematic partnerships with foundations and integrated our expertise into Ashoka Europe’s learning journeys. Today, we provide an international offer to companies, iNGOs, foundations, and city administrations interested in supporting and funding the replication of social innovations.
In 2025, we renewed Impact Transfer as a platform connecting the Ashoka community with a network of experts. Our team of 10+ specialists - from within and outside Ashoka - has advised over 200 social entrepreneurs and large organizations on the replication and adoption of social innovations.
Our vision
Our vision is a world where proven social innovations are replicated globally and unfold their full potential for generating impact and contributing to systems change
In this world, a variety of stakeholders take responsibility in enabling and supporting the replication of social innovations: Social entrepreneurs, intermediaries, partners and adopters, foundations, iNGOs, corporations, investors, networks, public intermediaries and administrations, and many more. All these stakeholders will have access to in-depth know-how on replication. They will be aware of the diversity of replication models and how to “bring them to life” in their specific context. As a result, we will be better able and faster to address the many societal and environmental challenges we are currently facing.
Our mission
Our mission is to enable the social impact ecosystem to better support the replication of social innovations.
- We disseminate replication know-how to social innovators and design customized training offers
- We help organizations – companies, iNGOs, foundations, city administration, and impact investors – to support and enable replication processes
- We connect relevant intermediaries and stakeholders to develop an ecosystem for replication and scaling
- We advise public bodies on improving framework conditions for replication and scaling
Our offer
Our offers address organizations interested in replicating social innovations and scaling their impact. Click on the links below to explore our three main offers.
Replication know-how for everyone
Self-assess the replication readiness of an organization with our replication readiness check, learn how to develop a replication strategy and model in our free, self-paced replication online course, or let us design a customized training for your organization.
Supporting partner organizations
We support organizations in sourcing social innovations, assessing their replication readiness, matchmaking replication partners, and designing replication programs.
Ecosystem development and policy advisory
To enhance collaboration, we offer to host events and meetings between funders, intermediaries and other stakeholders interested in the replication of social innovations. We also advise public bodies on how to mainstream social innovations and improve framework conditions for replication and scaling.
Our track-record and flagship programs
THSN SCALE-UP IMPACT PROGRAM
We have been supporting the Generali Foundation’s ("The Human Safety Net" ) Scale-Up Impact program since its launch in 2020. The program finances the scaling of social enterprises or projects that support vulnerable families with young children (0-6 years) or refugees. Existing grantees of the Foundation can use the program to fund their national and international scaling.
Our team coordinated the intensive due diligence and selection process and provides its expertise and experience to support the funded projects during the scaling process through mentoring, trainings, and review meetings. Always involved are the THSN management, as well as the local THSN teams, who assist projects in communication or fundraising, and coordinate the involvement of Generali employees as volunteers
Bioregional Weaving Labs
The Bioregional Weaving Lab (BWL) is a partnership between Ashoka and Commonland that aims to contribute to biodiversity and the conservation, regeneration and expansion of valuable land in Europe. The partnership's shared vision is to reach one million people and regenerate 1 million hectares of land and sea by 2030. To achieve this goal, 10 European “bioregions” will be selected to initiate a regional transformation process. After a rigorous selection process, the regions will receive start-up funding that will allow the local actors involved to assess the conditions for a transformation process together with regional stakeholders. After the successful completion of this one-year phase, the regions enter a three-year implementation process.
We support several regions in scaling systemic innovations on topics such as new farming models, regenerative agriculture or protected areas.
Boehringer-Ingelheim
Since 2011, Ashoka has been working with Boehringer Ingelheim (BI) on a global, multi-year, multi-million partnership to promote healthy communities, called Making More Health. This partnership enabled BI to better understand the shifting landscape of health care and the new paradigm to unlock social impact in the sector: Moving care outside of clinics and hospitals and placing health in the hands of communities and individuals.
Making More Health supports thousands of BI employees to develop their intrapreneurial, Changemaking Skills through global opportunities. MMH also encouraged BI employees to lead and innovate by building new business opportunities and bridging the social and business sectors.
Since 2011, the partnership has:
- Supported the election of 100 Ashoka Fellows in 39 countries with an estimated 9.3 million beneficiaries
- Engaged 1700 participants in an online course for social intrapreneurship for innovation in health
- Engaged 5000+ BI employees, facilitated a laboratory of new innovative business models
- Raised $4.3million for 4 health ventures
- Supported 350 young people in achieving their health ventures
- Identified 750 social innovations in health care via a changemaker challenge in 37 countries
Impact Transfer East Africa
Between 2020 and 2023, CARE International and Ashoka piloted the “Impact Transfer Hub” in East Africa. The hub aimed to accelerate the replication of proven solutions of social entrepreneurs addressing local needs. The Impact Transfer Hub supported CARE to address key development challenges, by sourcing and selecting proven solutions that address pre-defined challenges, facilitating the co-creation of the partnership between the proven solution and the CARE local office, piloting the partnership, and drawing learnings, with the intention to go to scale. CARE benefited from access to proven innovations which can be adapted and adopted into CARE’s strategy and programs along with opportunities to foster a more entrepreneurial culture among their staff.
Zero Project Impact Transfer
From 2016 to 2022, The Essl Foundation, Fundación Descúbreme and Ashoka joined forces to initiate the first Accelerator to support the internationalization of innovative disability solutions for a barrier-free world. In 2022, GIZ and Atos joined as additional partners. Our team implemented 7 editions of the program.
The program built on the Zero Project's research of identifying innovative, impactful, and scalable solutions that remove barriers for people with disabilities. The goal was to support innovators in scaling their proven solutions to other parts of the world. From the hundreds of nominations for Zero Project Awards, ten initiatives were selected each year for the Zero Project Impact Transfer Program.
Over the course of the program the selected initiatives received training, mentoring, tailored support, networking, and visibility to further replicate their innovation and impact in other geographies, in collaboration with local replication partners.
Reports
Explore our reports on replicating social innovations in different contexts.
The New Allies report “How iNGOs and social entrepreneurs collaborate to transform global development” (2023) explores the opportunities and challenges of such collaborations with attention to INGO-social entrepreneurship partnership models, and what the larger ecosystem of actors can do to support them. This included activities where INGO and social enterprises collaborate to replicate social innovations.
The research activities comprised interviews with 20+ innovation leaders of the world´s largest INGOs (including Oxfam, Save the Children or IRC) and 20+ Ashoka Fellows (mostly based in Africa) and 10+ funders and policy shapers (ADA, GIZ, SIDA, OECD, UN Agencies, Foundations).
The report was a collaborative effort by Ashoka, CARE, Austrian Development Agency, PWC and Catalyst 2030.
The study “Promoting Cross-Border activities for Social Economy, including Social Enterprises” (EASME/COSME/2018/032) has aimed to identify and analyze cross-border activities of social economy organizations and social enterprises. Based on 52 case studies we identified 12 pathways for cross-border activities. The pathways describe how and why social economy entities engage in cross-border activities, which challenges they are facing and which mitigation strategies they found.
Upsocial and Ashoka coordinated a consortium of 16 partners and 8 international cities to explore the critical role that Social and Solidarity Economy Ecosystems (SSE ecosystems) play in scaling social innovations as a response to COVID.
The report (OECD, 2022) explores how city administrations, in collaboration with other social and solidarity economy (SSE) ecosystem actors, responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. The report compares examples of cross-sector collaboration in 9 major cities (Europe, Canada, US, and Latin America) and identifies related challenges and relevant strategies used to actively engage with the SSE and best co-implement, support and scale innovative solutions. The process helped to confirm growing demand for tools and methods for enhanced ecosystem working, particularly ways to foster horizontal relationships and to harness the power of innovation to address complex social challenges. The findings summarize key preconditions of SSE ecosystem collaboration in areas such as solidarity, cooperation, and trust, convening and connecting the SSE, improving the visibility of SSE, or fostering co-design processes.
Cases
Explore the replication strategies of leading social entrepreneurs we worked with over the years.
Flying Labs is a global network of independent local knowledge hubs convening local experts in professional drone, data and AI services for social good. The network is present in 40+ countries in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia-Pacific.
Savory’s core methodology, Holistic Management, is a time-tested framework for decision-making and grazing planning that is adaptable to anyone’s unique situation, while our Ecological Outcome Verification protocol provides the feedback to ensure your management is moving in the right direction.
Locally-owned and locally-led, every Savory Hub is unique. If a Hub application is accepted, the Hub team members will receive in-depth training, support, and mentorship from Savory staff and advisors to help them craft the perfect plans for achieving impact in their region.
"Madly Human" ("Irrsinnig Menschlich" in German) programmes have been awarded and externally evaluated many times. In 2023, in collaboration with 139 partners in Germany and the world, the social enterprise reached 62.345 (young) people in schools, vocational training, higher education, volunteer services and sports.
Ashoka supported Madly Human right from the beginning of their scaling journey when they started to build partnerships beyond the borders of Germany.