List of social entrepreneurs

Notable historical social entrepreneurs

• Qais Al Khonji — Founder of Genesis projects and investments
• Vinoba Bhave — Founder and leader of the Bhoodan movement, he caused the redistribution of more than 7,000,000 acres of land to aid India's untouchables and landless.
• David Brower — 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 — Founder of grassroots movement for rural communities Comilla Model, and low-cost sanitation programmes for squatter settlements.
• Maria Montessori — Developed the Montessori approach to early childhood education.
• John Muir — Naturalist and conservationist, he established the National Park System and helped found The Sierra Club.
• Florence Nightingale — Founder of modern nursing, she established the first school for nurses and fought to improve hospital conditions.
• Frederick Law Olmsted — 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 — 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 — 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.
• Verghese Kurien — Engineer and businessman, he planned and executed India's "white revolution", that transformed the milk-importing country into the world’s largest producer. In a career spanning close to 60 years, Kurien founded around 30 institutions like Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation, Institute of Rural Management, Anand and The National Dairy Development Board’s.
• Margaret Sanger — Founder of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, she led the movement for family planning efforts around the world.
• John Woolman — 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.
• Sam Pitroda – Chairman, National Innovation Council, India
• Adhik Kadam – Founder Chairman of Borderless World Foundation. He is on peace building mission, working in most conflicted areas in Asia i.e Jammu & Kashmir on India Pakistan Border. He is working for the children who lost parents in terrorism and conflict.
• Arunachalam Muruganantham – Inventor of a low-cost sanitary pad-making machine.

  Notable modern social entrepreneurs