Accenture - Ashoka : 10 years of partnership

ASHOKA BELGIUM & ACCENTURE BELUX
An ever evolving cross-sector partnership
for impact
2012-2022
OF PARTNERSHIP
YEARS

CONTENTS
1 ASHOKA BELGIUM & ACCENTURE BELUX
2
3
5
7
9
11
Foreword
The Journey of Ashoka Belgium & Accenture BeLux
Highlights
Timeline
Voices of the Impact Programme
Success Stories
A Partnership across Europe
Looking Ahead
About us
13
17
21

FOREWORD
2
10 YEARS OF PARTNERSHIP
Stijn Goossens
Managing Director
Strategy Accenture
Belux
Perrine de le Court
Director Ashoka
Belgium
This partnership between a non-profit and private organization might
seem unusual at first, yet we experience it is a very enriching adventure,
for our people, our business and for co-creating long-lasting value for all.
We engage all our people in this partnership. Directors are involved as
sponsors, managers are involved as project leads, and together with
different consultants they deliver solutions to help social enterprises scale
and professionalize their operations. Our people have the opportunity to
develop new skills while working in totally different environments than
they are used to, opening them up to diverse perspectives driven by
having a social impact.
This 10-year partnership has given Accenture the opportunity to scale
existing solutions regarding employment and integration, contributing
to our international “Skills to Succeed” program and to mitigating climate
change. Learning from social entrepreneurs while bringing strategic
advice and digital solutions, creates a compelling symbiosis with
powerful results.
Accenture BeLux
The partnership between Accenture and Ashoka in Belgium has been a
long-standing success story of how the private and civic sector can join
forces to bring more societal and environmental impact. Together we
have developed an accelerator programme focusing on scaling
established social enterprises that work at a system level in the areas of
Employment inclusion, Climate change and Circularity.
This collaboration has also provided us with many opportunities to learn
about social innovation trends, develop changemaking skills among
Accenture employees, support social entrepreneurs with professional
services, and participate in multiple movements to address complex
issues.
These last 10 years have been a rich human adventure allowing all the
actors of the program, coaches, social entrepreneurs as well as
Accenture and Ashoka employees to strengthen and unlock their power
as changemakers, to create new models of collaboration and to
contribute to positive social change.
Ashoka Belgium

THE JOURNEY OF
ASHOKA BELGIUM
& ACCENTURE BELUX

4
This brochure provides highlights of the Ashoka
Belgium and Accenture BeLux partnership. In the next
pages, we will deep dive into the evolution of the
partnership and how different stakeholders see the
added value of such cross-sector activities.
We then look beyond Belgium and explore how
Accenture and Ashoka have been collaborating in other
European countries.
The brochure ends with a look at the future. For this,
Ashoka Belgium and Accenture BeLux co-wrote a
vision on how such partnerships should look.
Enjoy the read!

HIGHLIGHTS
Ashoka is a leading organization in
social innovation and since 2008, it has
been supporting social entrepreneurs
in Belgium to grow their innovative
solutions by scaling their systemic
impact.
From the outset, and based on our
original partnership in France,
Accenture has provided professional
services in strategy, consulting and
technology to Ashoka and social
entrepreneurs or Fellows who would
benefit the most from it.
To identify the most promising social
entrepreneurs in Belgium, the
partnership first focused on
developing an accelerator program to
scale these nascent organizations.
The resulting Impact Programme has
become an important cornerstone of
Ashoka’s activities, offering four
months of intensive professional
coaching to social entrepreneurs,
including five days of seminars.
The first edition of the Impact
Programme welcomed social
entrepreneurs in all domains. This was
followed by two editions dedicated to
Integration and Employment, one of
them in partnership with the US
embassy and Ashoka’s Hello Europe
initiative, a global program focused on
supporting migrant entrepreneurs.
The last two editions were focused on
the Circular Economy and Climate
Change in partnership with ABN
AMRO Private Banking Belgium.
These experiences resulted in the “7
Key Questions for Social
Entrepreneurs”, a guide for social
entrepreneurs to explore impact in
management, to find new ways of
financing their organizations, and
many other crucial topics related to
growing a successful social enterprise.
The guide is available in Dutch and
French.
In parallel, Accenture has provided
dedicated professional services to
these ready to scale organizations, to
the same standard and quality as
provided to its private sector clients. It
was mainly Ashoka Fellows who
benefited from strategy and
technology consulting services,
enabling them to increase their impact
through digitization or new business
models.

94% of them are still active today
were directly supported by the different programs
of them scaled inside of Belgium to new locations after
their participation in the Impact Programme: Konekt,
Rising You, Mobiel 21, RefuInterim, WePlog, Papillon
10%
60 ENTREPRENEURS
became Ashoka Fellows after their participation in the
Impact Programme: Activ’Action, Solentra, Touché, The
Good Lobby
04
worth of professional services were provided to Ashoka Belgium's
network of social entrepreneurs
920K EUROS
were involved from Accenture, to support the growth of social
entrepreneurs, equivalent to 75 man days per year.
Coaching was also provided by ABN AMRO, Vlerick Business School &
other organizations
80+ COACHES
were involved: Circular Flanders, Impact Capital, ATOLO, Sociale Innovatie
Fabriek, Impact Lawyers (Impact Advocaten), Vlerick Business School,
Solifin, Lita.co, Kunstmaan, Cresco Law, Monard Law, HEC Liège, …
20+ EXTERNAL EXPERTS
Key results
since 2013
06 IMPACT PROGRAMMES
were conducted with Ashoka fellow’s. Additionally, several
knowledge assets were produced
07 CONSULTING PROJECTS
6
of cash donations to support Ashoka
200K EUROS

TIMELINE
The journey started in 2012 to shape & launch the first Impact Programme together,
and continuously evolves to bring more partners together and scale impact.
First Changemaker Schools
in Belgium
2014
Impact Programme on
Employment
Consulting project for Touché
2016
Launch of the partnership
2012
Alumni edition of the Impact
Programme
Consulting project for DiversiCom
2017
Programme
Publication 7 Key Questions
Consulting project for Jump
Consulting project for Mobile School
2015
First Impact Programme
2013

8
Impact Programme on Climate
Change & Circular Economy in
partnership with ABN AMRO
Consulting project for BeeOdiversity
2020
Programme
Consulting project for PermaFungi
2021
Impact Programme on Climate
Change & Circular Economy in
partnership with ABN AMRO
2022
Alumni edition of the
Impact Programme
Consulting project for The
Good Lobby
2019
Impact Programme on
Integration and Employment in
partnership with US Embassy
and Ashoka HELLO Europe
2018

VOICESOFTHEIMPACTPROGRAMME
Through six editions of the Impact Programme, more than 60 social entrepreneurs
have been coached by 80+ Accenture coaches. Their testimonies showcase the
impact this had on their careers and organizations.
“Ashoka is THE social entrepreneurship network you want to tap
into because it gathers together all the social entrepreneurs,
supporters, knowledge, and innovative energy you need to
catalyze the social change you are aiming at. The Impact
Programme helped us to make some very clear, conscious choices
(e.g., to be wildly ambitious in our social mission, without growing
our organization as such) that we still benefit from, eight years
after our participation.”
Vzw Touché works with people who get into trouble because of
aggression. They find constructive and efficient solutions to deal
with aggression by using its power and energy and transforming
it into positive energy, successful reintegration and reduced
recidivism. Their solution is to recognize aggression, and then
control and channel it into positive purposes.
Marjan Gryson
Ashoka Fellow
TOUCHE vzw-
2013 participant
“Coaching Refu Interim during the Ashoka Impact Programme
allowed me to share relevant business experience with the
entrepreneurs. As coaches, we could take ownership and had the
freedom to decide where to invest our efforts. I was astonished by
their enthusiasm and ‘can-do’ attitude, directly putting into
practice what we had shaped together. I learned that with limited
time, you can still have a big impact and with a positive mindset
every small step makes a better world.”
Refu Interim aims to build a more inclusive and unified society
where all people feel respected and welcome, and where
newcomers are given opportunities to realize their ambitions
through learning experiences and by extending their networks.
Sofie De Bock
@Accenture
Coach for REFU
INTERIM in 2018

10
“Ashoka’s Impact Programme acted as a major catalyst for my
‘big’ idea and helped me turned it into a fully-fledged
organization. By offering a mix of analytical and experiential
support, the program made my journey as a social entrepreneur
significantly smoother.”
The Good Lobby is a non-profit startup committed to equalizing
access to decision-making power to build a more plural, inclusive,
and democratic society. It inspires, trains, and helps citizens to
influence major policy decisions, hold their political representatives
accountable and share new solutions with these officials. To date, it
has assisted 110+ NGOs, generated 550k€ of pro bono hours,
upskilled 2,2k people and has 25k followers.
Alberto Alemanno
Ashoka Fellow
The Good Lobby-
2018 Winner
“The partnership with Ashoka and ABN AMRO offered me a great
opportunity to work in the domain of sustainability. In particular,
it enabled me to work with PermaFungi to define the strategy for
their next scale-up. I have cherished the experience ever since. It
was a challenge unlike any I had faced before, with more creative
freedom and a desire to make a societal difference. Perhaps more
importantly, it also resulted in a personal relationship with the
people from PermaFungi that continues to this day.”
PermaFungi produces one ton of fresh oyster mushrooms and ten
tons of natural fertilizer each month while recycling five tons of
coffee grounds in a process based on the circular economy. In
addition, they also offer guided tours of their production site,
training and growing kits that allow anyone to grow mushrooms
and recycle coffee grounds at home.
Alexander De
Vriese
@Accenture Coach
for PermaFungi
in 2021

SUCCESSSTORIES
Ashoka Fellows and winners of the Impact Programme can benefit from strategy,
consulting and technology consulting services from Accenture, working with a
dedicated project team during three to six months and being connected to the full
Accenture ecosystem.
Michaël Van Cutsem
CEO and co-founder
of BeeOdiversity
BeeOdiversity assists corporates and public entities, both at a
strategic and operational level, to integrate biodiversity
regeneration and pollution reduction in their activities while
creating value for all stakeholders. BeeOdiversity has been an
Ashoka Fellow since 2015.
"We were introduced by Ashoka to Accenture after becoming
an Ashoka Fellow. Their first consulting mission helped us to
clarify our strategy regarding digital solutions.
During this first mission, Accenture got to understand our
services in-depth and identify where we could further develop.
Based on this, we then worked with Accenture for six months
on a data monitoring platform to help companies and
municipalities to monitor pollution and biodiversity on their
sites based on concrete indicators while providing
recommendations for improvements. This led to additional pro
bono support from Microsoft to further develop an Artificial
Intelligence application. Today, Accenture presents our services
to its clients who are interested in protecting biodiversity.
We benefitted on many levels from Accenture’s support. Firstly,
it gave us a lot of credibility towards our clients. The support we
received from their consultants was incredible. A biproduct of
our collaboration is that our own standards of excellence have
increased due to the high-quality advice and tools we received.”

12
Arnoud Raskin
Founder & Managing
Director, Mobile
School.org,
StreetWize and
StreetSmart
MobileSchool provides education for street children around the
world. It runs 40+ schools in more than 20 countries – and
connects with 60,000 street children every year. StreetwiZe
creates talent development and leadership training for
corporate clients. Its profits are invested in MobileSchool.
Arnoud Raskin has been an Ashoka Fellow since 2011.
“Ashoka has been key in finding the right support for our needs
and facilitating long-lasting partnerships, like the one we grew
with Accenture. In the last decade, Accenture supported
MobileSchool.org on a few occasions. After the Ashoka
Fellowship, we received the support of two consultants who
helped us to develop a new strategic plan.
A few years later, both Belgian and French Accenture teams
supported us with the minimum viable product (MVP) of our
StreetSmart Impact application. This has now been finalized
and we are offering it to youth work organizations and local
governments to measure the impact of their work in a very lean
way.
Lastly, we also became a business partner of Accenture. As a
client of Accenture Song, we are buying services to develop our
StreetSmart_play content platform. Accenture, on the other
hand, became a trusted client of StreetwiZe and we are
delivering (leadership) training to Accenture people in Belgium
and the Netherlands. The training is based on our experiences
with street children and their incredible leadership stories, and
we use the fees from Accenture and our other corporate clients
to finance our non-profit work with street children.
Our partnership with Accenture has evolved over time, and we
hope to continue building on this in the future to achieve 1+1=3:
combining our business and impact strengths to create real
value for society and all stakeholders.”

APARTNERSHIP
ACROSSEUROPE

14
The seeds of the Belgian Accenture & Ashoka
partnership were planted through a partnership in
France and have continued to blossom across Europe
and beyond.
Collaborations between Accenture and Ashoka have
been focused on key programs oriented towards
creating more impact: from providing professional
services to Ashoka Fellows, over co-running accelerator
programs for social entrepreneurs, to supporting
Ashoka’s youth work.
To date, we have collaborated in nine European
countries, with Accenture investing more than €8,4M in
consulting services and financial support for Ashoka’s
key programs (Impact Programmes, Changemakers
and Fellows) enabling 70k people to build their
entrepreneurial skills, grow their impact and start their
own projects.

APARTNERSHIPACROSSEUROPE
Here are some highlights of the collaboration between Ashoka and Accenture
across Europe.
THE NORDICS
€117k for Nordea
Changemaker
Accelerator
Programme
(employment and
circularity)
AUSTRIA
€100k stipend for
Ashoka Fellow
Gregor Demblin and
professional services
for Hello Austria
(migration,
employment)
FRANCE
€2M of professional
services for different
programs (Share-It,
employment,
poverty, migration)
SPAIN
€70k stipend for
Ashoka Fellow
Pablo Santaeufemia

BELGIUM
€1.2M of professional
services and cash donations
for Impact Programmes and
Ashoka Fellows
(employment, integration,
circularity)
GREECE
€170k of professional
services for Hello
Greece and Ashoka
Fellow Theodoros
Anagnostopoulos
(migration) * also in UK, Turkey, & Italy
*
*
*

16
Globally
Outside Europe
Accenture has additionally provided financial support of
€2.3M and professional services worth €1.3M.
Accenture France has supported numerous Ashoka Fellows
and shaped a local and global Accenture grant to contribute
to the Youth Venture program, supporting 32,300 people
over three years. To date, we continue supporting MozaïkRH
and Simplon. In parallel, we have conducted multiple studies
together, mainly focused on co-creation and helping
underprivileged people in Europe.
Accenture France
Accenture Austria has been working with Ashoka since 2014
on various programs such as Hello-Europe Crowdsourcing
integration initiatives, Changemaker programs, Ideegration
(e.g., Bilduenger for the educational sector) and consulting
projects for social entrepreneurs & Fellows such as Atempo
and Zeitpolst.
Accenture Austria

LOOKINGAHEAD

18
In line with the SDG Goals, it has become ever more
important to build partnerships across sectors. In the
years to come, Ashoka and Accenture will continue
collaborating closely.
Our trusting relationship can serve as a great example
to inspire other actors to join forces and co-create to
make a difference. Ashoka Belgium's Director, Perrine
de le Court, and Accenture's Responsible Business Lead,
Magali Frankl, have created a shared vision on the
future of the partnership.

LOOKINGAHEAD
The world of corporates and social entrepreneurs have been separated for a
long time, whereas today’s complex societal challenges require collaboration
between diverse stakeholders.
On the one hand, large corporations operating in today’s economy are mostly
driven by short-term financial KPIs. Meanwhile, the world is rapidly changing
and the profit/purpose equation is going into a fundamental rebalancing
exercise.
On the other, social entrepreneurs seek to have a societal impact first, while
remaining viable in the long-term and delivering services or products to the
highest quality. Their impact mission often leads them to work on changing
systems and mindsets. This requires new organizational models that foster
cooperation, the sharing of ideas and open-source solutions that can be easily
used by as many actors as possible. Social entrepreneurs prioritize impact over
financial returns. In general, they are smaller, more flexible organizations,
mainly organized in a non-hierarchical way and able to adapt quickly to
change.
There is a lot to learn from each other.
A key element necessary for meaningful exchange is a relationship of trust
between social entrepreneurs and companies. This paves the way for
collaboration and co-creation where collective impact can be imagined. We
have learned that it takes time to create impactful relationships. It also requires
openness, which sometimes collides with the different organizational cultures
and constraints. However, it is a journey worth taking. It engages thousands of
employees, company leadership and external stakeholders and contributes to
building collaborative mindsets and empathy, which lay the foundations for
new ways of collaborating.
As we have highlighted in this brochure, the evolution of the partnership
between Ashoka and Accenture also changed the relationship between social
entrepreneurs and Accenture.
First, we invested a lot of time in understanding each other’s realities and
identifying each other’s key strengths and weaknesses. This opened
opportunities to co-create. The stories of MobileSchool.org and BeeOdiversity
are great examples of this.

20
A key building block for the partnership was the investment in human capital.
For Accenture’s consultants, this partnership has translated into an enriching
experience of working with social entrepreneurs alongside their regular clients.
Over the years, we’ve seen more and more companies setting up accelerator
programs to break free from their usual R&D practices and to discover fresh
ideas, and even grow businesses together by co-creating new business models
and creating shared value.
At Ashoka, we see examples in health with Boehringer Ingelheim, in the fashion
industry with Chanel, and in manufacturing with Ikea. There are still many more
opportunities for the private sector to create value with social entrepreneurs.
We believe that in the coming years, we will see a marked increase in these
ways of co-creation between diverse stakeholders.
Today’s challenges need to be solved by cross-sector collaborations. That’s why
we invite everyone to dare to look beyond the usual ways of doing business and
to embrace innovative business models that will help us build a more inclusive,
fair, and sustainable future for all. Join the changemaker movement!
Ashoka Belgium
Perrine de le Court
Director Ashoka Belgium
Accenture BeLux
Magali Frankl
Responsible Business Lead

ABOUTUS
Ranked 5ᵗʰ most influentioal NGO in the
world in 2021 by NGO Advisor, Ashoka is
the largest network of social
entrepreneurs world. It extends to more
than 90 countries in which 3800 Fellows
are supported. With 42 M of annual
budget, Ashoka provides start-up
financing, professional support services
and connections to a global network
across the business, public and civil
scetors.
Accenture is a global professional
services company with leading
capabilities in digital, cloud and security.
Our 674,000 people deliver on the
promise of technology and human
ingenuity every day, serving clients in
more than 120 countries. Today, nothing
shows greater promise than
sustainability. In line with the United
Nations Global Compact Sustainable
Development Goals, we define
sustainability as inclusive of everything
from environment and equality to
technology and economics.
CONTACT US
E • ashokabelgium@ashoka.org
Find out more here:
www.ashoka.org/en-be
www.accenture.com/be-en

22
Copyright @Ashoka
Report produced by Anoushka
Vandepitte, Yannick Fischer,
Magali Frankl & Hélène Snyers

EVERYONE A
CHANGEMAKER
supporting innovative initiatives with social
impact

Accenture - Ashoka : 10 years of partnership

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