New Profit is now accepting applications for the Economic Mobility Catalyze Cohort to support both organizations and ecosystem-building efforts aimed at advancing economic opportunity in America.
Donor Name: New Profit
State: All States
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 06/26/2023
Size of the Grant: $100,000
Grant Duration: 1 year
Details:
New Profit New Profit has a deep track record of investing in innovations in this space, especially those advancing equity in the education to employment pipeline. They believe organizations that practice proximity are best positioned to catalyze responsive, sustainable change.
About the Economic Mobility Catalyze Cohort
For this upcoming selection cycle, sixteen innovative nonprofit organizations will receive a $100,000 unrestricted investment, in-kind capacity-building support, and participation in a peer learning community over the course of one year.
At this time, they are particularly interested in making investments toward transformative strategies occurring along a spectrum of economic mobility interventions:
- Social Drivers of Employment Outcomes
- Examples include increasing access to high-quality, affordable childcare, transportation, and housing to support economic opportunity.
- Pathways to Income Generation
- Examples include equitable innovations in the labor market, such as developing solutions that promote skills-based hiring, living wage jobs, and worker power.
- Financial Health & Wealth Creation
- Examples include driving reparations and guaranteed income solutions, increasing access to capital for entrepreneurship, and exploring ideas of community ownership.
Catalyze Support Model
New Profit offers a collaborative support model to support visionary social entrepreneurs and their organizations, creating value across several dimensions. Their support model includes participation in a peer learning community, 1:1 adaptive leadership coaching, connection to consultations with external content experts, New Profit’s tested capacity-building framework and tools, and $100,000 in unrestricted support.
While each cohort of social entrepreneurs requires tailored supports to meet their unique needs, the base of their capacity-building program includes the following:
- Refining impact model to advance systems change outcomes and connecting it to a compelling story of impact
- Assessing organizational strengths, capabilities, and opportunities for growth
- Building an effective, high-performance boards of directors
- Developing equitable and results-driven practices for managing teams and stakeholders
- Identifying effective practices for operational excellence in order to execute against organizational strategy (fundraising, finance, HR, and communications)
- 1-2 additional topics identified by cohort members as areas of support
Eligibility Criteria
Organizations applying to the Economic Mobility Catalyze cohort must meet the criteria listed below to apply. If your organization does not meet the eligibility criteria at this time, they advise you to not proceed with submitting an application and invite you instead to complete New Profit’s Discovery Form, which will help them consider you for future relevant funding opportunities.
The eligibility criteria are as follows:
- US communities served: Organization operates in and primarily serves communities in the United States
- 501(c)(3) status: Organization or fiscal sponsor must be a nonprofit with 501(c)(3) status.
- Budget Size: Organization’s annual operating budget should be between $250K and $2 million.
- Led by a social entrepreneur: Organization must be led by a social entrepreneur or social entrepreneurs. They define a social entrepreneur (often the CEO/ED or equivalent) as both the leader and final decision-maker of an organization’s internal/external strategy, daily operations, and financial decisions. Social entrepreneurs must also work for the organization on a full-time basis (~30 hours/week), with plans to remain at the organization through to the completion of the one-year grant term. They welcome organizations with co-leadership models to apply. For this cycle, they will be prioritizing entrepreneurs who identify as Black, Indigenous, and/or Latinx.
- In operation for at least 2 years: Organization has been in operation for at least the past two years as of June 26, 2023.
- Early-stage but not “seed”-stage: Organization considers itself past seed-stage (i.e., already has a functional operating model and approach) but is still relatively early-stage in terms of organizational growth and capacity. This criterion is less about the actual age of your organization (in terms of # of years in operation), and more about the stage of growth that you feel you are in right now, especially related to specific economic mobility initiatives.
- Not a previous New Profit grantee: Organization has not previously received investment from New Profit investment initiatives.
- Willing to be an actively engaged cohort member over the course of one year: Through deep pattern recognition based on learnings from their portfolio, they have found that pairing flexible capital with targeted capacity-building support can strengthen an organization’s ability to refine and expand their impact model, strategic capabilities, and sustainable growth orientation. With this in mind, they ask that social entrepreneurs seeking investment are also committed to active and meaningful participation in the following programming over the course of one year:
- Monthly 1:1 adaptive leadership coaching
- Every other month: 1:1 strategic advising
- Three in-person convenings (typically spread out over 2-3 days)
- Three 2-3-hour virtual learning sessions
For more information, visit New Profit.
