Social innovation — IS, as a research topic, has been framed under the qualitative approach, which has enabled the exploration and understanding of IS as a dynamic and articulated process helping to improve the quality of life of vulnerable populations. The aim of this article is to understand, from the democratic paradigm of IS and from a quantitative logic, how civic participation has an impact on the innovative capacity of fourth generation foundations — FCG, Barranquilla. To this end, a linear model of simple regression was developed, making it possible to identify the relationship between the number of social innovation initiatives and citizen participation, understood as linking beneficiaries in the processes of identifying problems and building IS initiatives. The results show that the FCGs that favoured the participation of the community in the processes of joint problem identification and collective construction of initiatives developed a larger number of IS initiatives in 2016, reflecting the importance of citizen participation in the IS process as an element in building a more robust social innovation process in favour of vulnerable populations.