Sid ben Ami Fellowship

The Sid ben Ami Fellowship will provide a $2,500 grant to a social entrepreneur working to improve the quality of life and personal productivity of persons with disabilities. GCV is seeking applications for early stage, for-profit companies that are developing Innovation in design and technology applications that overcome disabilities, including mobility devices and tactile interfaces.

The Sid ben Ami Fellowship has been created by an anonymous donor in memoriam of an entrepreneur who built a career serving the needs of the disabled.

RHD Social Finance Prize

This announcement of a second prize follows the offering last week of a $10,000 prize to encourage innovation in social finance. The RHD Social Finance Prize will be awarded to an entrepreneur to support the development of new models to fund unmet social needs, including: (i) complementary or virtual currencies; (ii) barter or in-kind donation markets; and (iii) other social investment structures or strategies.

“We are grateful to RHD’s leadership in creating a template that others may follow to spur innovation in social sectors they are passionate about,” said Garrett Melby, co-founder and CEO of GoodCompany Ventures.  “These awards allow us to not only continue our policy of not charging fees or equity from our entrepreneurs, but also give s a way to support their short term financial needs while we prepare them to obtain investment support.”

Further information regarding the RHD Prize and GoodCompany Ventures leadership in social finance may be found here.

Application Deadline Extended

To be considered for either award, entrepreneurs must apply and satisfy the criteria for admission to the Incubator, relating to innovation, impact and implementation. Applicants requesting consideration for either award will be reviewed by a special committee of representatives of GCV and the respective award sponsors.

Applications for the incubator, including the awards, will be accepted through May 6th.   Entrepreneurs will be admitted to the incubator on a rolling basis, with final acceptances and the award winners announced on May 16th.

Applications may be submitted via the GCV website at http://www.goodcompanyventures.org.

Press Inquiries Contact:

Garrett Melby

CEO & Co-Founder

GoodCompany Ventures

Garrett@goodcompanyventures.org

Twitter:  @garrettmelby

About GoodCompany Ventures

A GoodCompany pursues both profit and purpose. GoodCompany Ventures is a non-profit defined by the needs of the emerging social enterprise sector. The GoodCompany Ventures Incubator identifies entrepreneurs with innovative ideas for social impact and helps them implement these ideas with the strategies and resources of the venture capital community.

The RHD Social Finance Prize

A prize of $10,000 is offered by Resources for Human Development, a founding sponsor of GoodCompany Ventures, to encourage entrepreneurial innovation in social finance in the 2011 GCV Social Impact Incubator.

The prize will be awarded to an entrepreneur to support the development of new models to fund unmet social needs, including: (i) complementary or virtual currencies; (ii) barter or in-kind donation markets; and (iii) other social investment structures or strategies.

To be considered for the prize, entrepreneurs must apply to and satisfy the criteria for admission to the Incubator, relating to innovation, impact and implementation. Applicants requesting consideration for the RHD Social Finance Prize will be reviewed by a special committee of representatives of RHD and GCV.

Applications for the prize will be accepted through May 6th and the winner will be announced on May 16th. The deadline for application to the Incubator in other sectors has also been extended to May 6th.

Applications may be submitted via the GCV website at http://www.goodcompanyventures.org.

Serving Social Entrepreneurs

GoodCompany Ventures is a non-profit supported by the venture capital community, whose leaders underwrite the costs of the program. The Social Impact Incubator is the only national incubator program that does not charge fees or take equity from its participants.

“GCV’s ‘no fee’ policy is central to our culture of service. It attracts the best entrepreneurs and advisors and has yielded excellent results in obtaining investment funding for our graduates. Now, by partnering with sponsors, like RHD, who have an interest in promoting innovation in particular sectors, we are adding the means to provide living and launch expenses for our entrepreneurs.” said Garrett Melby, GCV’s co-founder and CEO. “We are extremely grateful to RHD for their vision and support.”

Leadership in Social Finance

GCV supports social entrepreneurs in all sectors, including clean tech, education, public health and community development. We are particularly interested in social finance strategies that create new capacity for funding social change. The following are examples of recent graduates pursuing innovation in social finance:

Couchange: Develops innovative fundraising technologies to help nonprofits access over $8 billion dollars annually in abandoned assets such as leftover gift cards, frequent flier miles, and other reward point currencies. Winner, MIT $100K Twitch Competition.

Ads4Good: A platform that allows non-commercial websites to harness their advertising potential to create a new revenue source for charities. Winner, Skoll Foundation’s DIYA National Social Ideas Challenge.

Wish Upon a Hero: A world’s largest peer-to-peer philanthropy site. Designed to allow anyone to be a hero by granting a wish, its a radically dis-intermediated model of philanthropy. Members consist of individuals and businesses who are passionate about helping. Since it’s launch, heroes have granted more than 75,000 wishes and the site has been the subject of features in CNN and USA Today and its founder was honored as ABC News’ Person of the Week.

33 Needs: A crowd funding platform that enables thousands of people around the world to invest in social enterprises through a process they call “people powered investing”. Their recent launch was featured in both mainstream (New York Times, HuffPo) and technology (TechCrunch, Venture Beat) media.

Press Inquiries Contact:
Garrett Melby

CEO & Co-Founder
GoodCompany Ventures

Garrett@goodcompanyventures.org
484.343.0784
Twitter: @garrettmelby

About GoodCompany Ventures
A GoodCompany pursues both profit and purpose. GoodCompany Ventures is a non-profit defined by the needs of the emerging social enterprise sector. The GoodCompany Ventures Incubator identifies entrepreneurs with innovative ideas for social impact and helps them implement these ideas with the strategies and resources of the venture capital community.

About Resources for Human Development

RHD is a national human services nonprofit founded in 1970. For the past 20 years RHD has pursued innovative methods of financing and crossover business models to foster economic development and social responsibility. Permanent housing for 46 homeless families; re-distribution of over $1M yearly in alternative currency and ground breaking ways of sharing corporate funds are just a few examples.

PRESS RELEASE: Philadelphia, PA – April 13, 2011 – GoodCompany Ventures is pleased to announce the RHD Social Finance Prize.

The RHD Social Finance Prize

A prize of $10,000 is offered by Resources for Human Development, a founding sponsor of GoodCompany Ventures, to encourage entrepreneurial innovation in social finance in the 2011 GCV Social Impact Incubator.

The prize will be awarded to an entrepreneur to support the development of new models to fund unmet social needs, including: (i) complementary or virtual currencies; (ii) barter or in-kind donation markets; and (iii) other social investment structures or strategies.
To be considered for the prize, entrepreneurs must apply to and satisfy the criteria for admission to the Incubator, relating to innovation, impact and implementation. Applicants requesting consideration for the RHD Social Finance Prize will be reviewed by a special committee of representatives of RHD and GCV.
Applications for the prize will be accepted through May 6th and the winner will be announced on May 16th. The deadline for application to the Incubator in other sectors has also been extended to May 6th.

Applications may be submitted via the GCV website at http://www.goodcompanyventures.org.

Serving Social Entrepreneurs

GoodCompany Ventures is a non-profit supported by the venture capital community, whose leaders underwrite the costs of the program. The Social Impact Incubator is the only national incubator program that does not charge fees or take equity from its participants.

“GCV’s ‘no fee’ policy is central to our culture of service. It attracts the best entrepreneurs and advisors and has yielded excellent results in obtaining investment funding for our graduates. Now, by partnering with sponsors, like RHD, who have an interest in promoting innovation in particular sectors, we are adding the means to provide living and launch expenses for our entrepreneurs.” said Garrett Melby, GCV’s co-founder and CEO. “We are extremely grateful to RHD for their vision and support.”

Leadership in Social Finance

GCV supports social entrepreneurs in all sectors, including clean tech, education, public health and community development. We are particularly interested in social finance strategies that create new capacity for funding social change. The following are examples of recent graduates pursuing innovation in social finance:

Couchange: Develops innovative fundraising technologies to help nonprofits access over $8 billion dollars annually in abandoned assets such as leftover gift cards, frequent flier miles, and other reward point currencies. Winner, MIT $100K Twitch Competition.

Ads4Good: A platform that allows non-commercial websites to harness their advertising potential to create a new revenue source for charities. Winner, Skoll Foundation’s DIYA National Social Ideas Challenge.

Wish Upon a Hero: A world’s largest peer-to-peer philanthropy site. Designed to allow anyone to be a hero by granting a wish, its a radically dis-intermediated model of philanthropy. Members consist of individuals and businesses who are passionate about helping. Since it’s launch, heroes have granted more than 75,000 wishes and the site has been the subject of features in CNN and USA Today and its founder was honored as ABC News’ Person of the Week.

33 Needs: A crowd funding platform that enables thousands of people around the world to invest in social enterprises through a process they call “people powered investing”. Their recent launch was featured in both mainstream (New York Times, HuffPo) and technology (TechCrunch, Venture Beat) media.

Press Inquiries Contact:
Garrett Melby

CEO & Co-Founder
GoodCompany Ventures

Garrett@goodcompanyventures.org
484.343.0784
Twitter: @garrettmelby

About GoodCompany Ventures
A GoodCompany pursues both profit and purpose. GoodCompany Ventures is a non-profit defined by the needs of the emerging social enterprise sector. The GoodCompany Ventures Incubator identifies entrepreneurs with innovative ideas for social impact and helps them implement these ideas with the strategies and resources of the venture capital community.

About Resources for Human Development

RHD is a national human services nonprofit founded in 1970. For the past 20 years RHD has pursued innovative methods of financing and crossover business models to foster economic development and social responsibility. Permanent housing for 46 homeless families; re-distribution of over $1M yearly in alternative currency and ground breaking ways of sharing corporate funds are just a few examples.

GCV was the first to adapt the venture industry’s incubator model to the needs of social entrepreneurs and its Social Impact Incubator has developed the most rigorous program and an unequalled record of success.

Applications will be evaluated on a rolling basis through our Early Decision Deadline of April 15th. For more information about the program and the application process, please visit http://www.goodcompanyventures.org.

Selection: GCV will select a class of 8-12 entrepreneurs developing innovative, market-based solutions to unmet social needs. We look for new ideas from around the world and past classes have included entrepreneurs from the UK, India and China. Each class will be selected to included innovations across a range of social concerns, including CleanTech, Education, Public Health, Social Finance and Community.

Training: Our entrepreneurs will work together for the summer in our space in central Philadelphia. The program is structured around a ten-week curriculum designed to optimize each project’s business model and prepare the entrepreneurs to meet the expectations of the investment community. This work is supported by expert speakers from the national venture community, MBA Fellows from leading business schools and experienced entrepreneurs who serve as Mentors.

Success: The program culminates with an Investor Showcase in mid-September. In 2010, over 100 angel and early stage investors attended our Investor Showcase and over 50% of our companies that sought funding closed rounds within six-months.

Our graduates set the standard for social enterprise. In 2010, our graduates won the Skoll/DIYA prize in India, the MIT Social Media prize and the Wharton Africa prize. Two were selected to launch at DEMO and one was named by Business Week as one the Top 3 Social Enterprises in the nation. Their social innovations have been featured in national outlets including ABC News, BBC, CNN, Discover Magazine, Huffington Post, the New York Times, TechCrunch, VentureBeat and USA Today among others.

Costs:

There is no cost to participate in the incubator. GoodCompany Ventures is a non-profit supported by the venture capital community whose members underwrite the costs of the program. The Social Impact Incubator is the only national incubator program that does not charge fees or take equity from its participants.

We believe it is a privilege to work with the most inspiring social entrepreneurs in the world. We seek to foster a culture of service and collaboration within the incubator and feel it would be inconsistent with that goal to enter into an investment relationship with our entrepreneurs before they have received the benefit of our training.

We’ll be announcing hours in additional cities as our travel schedule permits (New York, Austin and Mumbai are on the calendar), but home base for our Philadelphia Office hours will be at the site of the incubator on the University of the Arts campus. We’ll be camped out in Room 900 of Terra Hall at 211 S. Broad.

For the next couple months, we are scheduling the Office Hours from 5:00 to 7:30 on Thursday evenings, immediately prior to the workshops for creative entrepreneurs that GCV is producing with the Corzo Center. The first of these workshops is tomorrow, Thursday, February 3rd, featuring Alex Hillman of Indy Hall, speaking on “Simple Rules for a Simple Start-Up”. These workshops are open to the public and you can get more information and register to attend at the link at the bottom of this post.

Office Hours will be offered on the following dates:

Feb 3
Feb 17
Feb 24
March 10
March 24
March 31

If you’d like to come and meet with us, drop me a line at garrett@goodcompanyventures.org. We’ll book meetings in 20 minute increments, first come, first served and save the last half hour of each session for group discussion. If we are oversubscribed, I’ll be happy to stay and chat with folks after the workshop.

We’re looking forward to meeting you!

Register to attend the first Clinic for Creatives. Its free and our speaker is Dangerously Awesome.

The article referenced other players in this forward-thinking ecosystem, including Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia, B Labs, Murex Investments Inc., A pilot tax-credit program by Philadelphia for socially responsible businesses that will take effect next year

Congratulations!

Proof of this trend was found at a February event in New York City organized by GoodCompany Ventures about social entrepreneurship, where an audience member asked what city should serve as the center of this social entrepreneurship movement. A surprising number people immediately responded, “Philadelphia.”

Read the rest of the article here.

Although the “tech scene may still be more petri dish than full-fledged ecosystem” the article lists several major investment players in the area, describing how their smaller, more wide-spread investments are working well for “the bootstrap start-up” nature of the tech scene here.

The mission of the Corzo Center is to link art, innovation and business, and through their own incubator and outreach programs support the creation of entrepreneurial ventures based in the arts and media.

We think it’s a great match for our offerings and are thrilled to have access to such a great space.