List of social entrepreneurs

A social entrepreneur is an entrepreneur who works to increase social capital by founding social ventures, including charities, for-profit businesses with social causes, and other non-government organizations. These types of activities are distinct from work of non-operating foundations and philanthropists who provide funding and other support for them.

Notable historical social entrepreneurs

• Vinoba Bhave (India) – Founder and leader of the Bhoodan movement, he caused the redistribution of more than 7,000,000 acres (28,000 km²) of land to aid India's untouchables and landless. Mahatma Gandhi described him as his mentor.
• David Brower (United States) — Environmentalist and conservationist, he served as the Sierra Club's first executive director and built it into a worldwide network for environmental issues. He also founded Friends of the Earth, the League of Conservation Voters and The Earth Island Institute.
• Akhtar Hameed Khan (Pakistan) — Founder of grassroots movement for rural communities Comilla Model, and low-cost sanitation programmes (Orangi Pilot Project) for squatter settlements.
• Maria Montessori (Italy) — Developed the Montessori approach to early childhood education.
• John Muir (United States) — Naturalist and conservationist, he established the National Park System and helped found The Sierra Club.
• Florence Nightingale (United Kingdom) — Founder of modern nursing, she established the first school for nurses and fought to improve hospital conditions.
• Frederick Law Olmsted (United States) — Creator of major urban parks, including Rock Creek Park in Washington DC, Central Park in NYC, and Mount Royal Park in Montreal, he is generally considered to have developed the profession of landscape architecture in America.
• Gifford Pinchot (United States) — Champion of the forest as a multiple use environment, Gifford Pinchot helped found the Yale School of Forestry and created the U.S. Forest Service, serving as its first chief.
• Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen (Germany) — Pioneer of the rural bond of association as a substitute for collateral in microfinance, and a principal founder of the credit union and cooperative bank sectors that now form a major segment of the European banking system.
• Dr Verghese Kurien (India) — father of the India’s milk revolution. It was Kurien’s foresight, planning and execution, India through the ‘white revolution’, went from a milk importing country to the world’s largest producer. In a career spanning close to 60 years, Kurien founded around 30 institutions of excellence like Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF), Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA) and The National Dairy Development Board’s (NDDB).
• Margaret Sanger (United States) — Founder of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, she led the movement for family planning efforts around the world.
• John Woolman (United States) — He Led U.S. Quakers to voluntarily emancipate all their slaves between 1758 and 1800, his work also influenced the British Society of Friends, a major force behind the British decision to ban slaveholding. Quakers, of course, became a major force in the U.S. abolitionist movement as well as a key part of the infrastructure of the Underground Railroad.
• Satyanarayan Gangaram Pitroda — better known as Sam Pitroda (India), Chairman, National Innovation Council,India.

Notable modern social entrepreneurs