Scope

The Thomson Reuters Foundation, the corporate charity of Thomson Reuters, the world’s largest news and information provider, conducted a survey in 45 of the world’s biggest economies as ranked by the World Bank to find out which countries are creating the best environment for social entrepreneurs and how these conditions have changed since the inaugural global poll in 2016. The World Bank’s list of the world’s biggest economies from 2014 was again used to have a direct comparison.

In 43 countries, we contacted at least 20 experts focused on social entrepreneurship: academics, social entrepreneurs, investors, policy-makers and support network staff. This sample size was deemed to be sufficient to provide statistically reliable data with a low margin of error. In two countries, Iran and Saudi Arabia, the Thomson Reuters Foundation was unable to guarantee the necessary sample of experts so both countries were dropped from the list.

The survey was carried out in collaboration with Thomson Reuters Labs, a Thomson Reuters company specialised in models and analytics, with sponsorship from Deutsche Bank.