Designation Journey

The Ashoka U Designation Journey

Stage 1: Catalyze Institutional Changemaker Capacity

Core Experience:

Time: 

3.5 months

Institutional Milestone: 

Changemaker Ecosystem Leadership Badge

Cost: 

$10'000

Stage 2: Visionary Leadership & Excellence in Changemaking

Core Experience:

  • Visionary Leadership Webinar
  • Institutional Leadership Mapping
  • Ecosystem Leadership Mapping
  • Innovation and Excellence in Changemaking Webinar
  • Change Team Mapping
  • Change Team Integration
  • Team of Teams Activity

Time: 

3 months

Institutional Milestone:

Institutional Visionary Leadership Badge

Cost: 

$15'000

Stage 3: Co-Create System-Level Transformation

Stage 3: Co-Create System-Level Transformation

Core Experience:

  • 360 Scan
  • Change Team Formalization
  • Institutional Culture and Operations Session
  • Field Building and Impact Influence Strategy Coaching
  • Strategic Mapping of collaborative opportunities with:
    • Ashoka U's peer network
    • Leading Social Entrepreneurs
    • Ashoka's wider network
  • Network of Networks Webinar
  • Selection Panel Review
  • Selection Panel

Time:

4 months

Institutional Milestone:


Ashoka U Changemaker Campus Designation

To become a Changemaker Campus, an institution needs to meet criteria for creating a strong campus-wide social innovation and changemaking ecosystem in these four areas:

I. Visionary Leadership

II. Innovation and Excellence in Changemaking

III. Institutional Culture and Operations

IV. Institutional Field Building and Impact Influence

Cost: 

$25'000

 

Onboarding & Network Engagement

Onboarding:

After successfully passing the Selection Panel, Ashoka U works with the new Changemaker Campus to determine next steps, areas of growth, and potential partnerships. This includes a press release and formal announcement, as well as an orientation and 6-month check-in with the panellists. 

Time: 6 months post-panel

 

Network Engagement:

Once a campus has been welcomed to the Changemaker Campus Network, a world of opportunities is opened up!  

  • Leadership roles on global boards and committees.
  • In-person and virtual networking events.
  • Facilitated research partnerships and publishing opportunities.
  • Discounts on Ashoka products and services.
  • Quarterly Global Change Leader Calls.
  • Monthly newsletter.
  • Member of the Exchange Collective

Benefits from the Designation Journey Process

SYSTEMS LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

The Changemaker Campus designation process challenges and empowers your team to identify and clearly articulate your institution’s purpose and unfolding story. It provides leadership tools and training, unlocking the skills and language that your team needs to lead your campus forward!

INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE & STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT

Through this process, you will assesses your current campus ecosystem, develop a collaborative strategy for advancing social innovation across and beyond your institution, and receive strategic and tactical guidance to refine and implement an action plan over the next four-to-five years.

POWERFUL VISIONING & NARRATIVE EXERCISE

This process is an opportunity to identify, articulate, and share a coherent and specific changemaking narrative, as well as goals and commitments for social entrepreneurship, social innovation, community engagement, quality improvement, and action

CHANGEMAKER SKILLS LEARNING JOURNEY

Through this process, you will have the opportunity to embark on a Changemaker skills journey through the Ashoka Changemaker Index™ (CMI) with some or all members of your campus and ecosystem. The CMI will provide knowledge and resources to strengthen the changemaker core skills and competencies.

Strategic Benefits of completing the Designation Journey

ATTRACT & RECRUIT CHANGEMAKER STUDENTS

Becoming a Changemaker Campus signals your institution’s commitment to equipping students for meaningful, purpose-driven careers after graduation.

BUILD PEER-TO-PEER CONNECTIONS

During and beyond the designation process, candidate Changemaker Campuses learn from and build relationships with each other, and have access to the expertise of Ashoka Fellows, leaders, and staff from around the world.

BENEFIT FROM OUR NETWORK'S EXPERTISE

Changemaker Campuses can collaborate with Ashoka’s global community to bring together leading social entrepreneurs to address complex global issues around: technology and humanity, planet and climate, demographic shifts, migration, and gender. Ashoka offers resources for campuses to support families, school districts, and business partners in becoming changemakers.

EMPOWER & ACTIVATE YOUR STAKEHOLDERS

Becoming a Changemaker Campus is an opportunity to re-imagine faculty and staff professional development, community partnership, business development, and alumni relations. It’s a shift toward impact-oriented engagements that serve both the campus and its social innovation ecosystem.

BECOMING A CHANGEMAKER CAMPUS

Changemaker Campus is an Ashoka designation that recognizes colleges and universities with a proven track record of campus-wide excellence for social innovation and changemaking. These institutions collaborate with each other and Ashoka to advance social innovation and changemaking across higher education to graduate millions of changemakers. Selection criteria includes a commitment to embedding changemaking across the academics and the institution itself. While they differ in terms of size, institutional type, geographic location, religious affiliation, and age, they are global leaders in social innovation and changemaking in higher education and share similar visions of what education and universities can be.