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Winners Selected in the Social Impact Exchange Business Plan Competition Press Release
WINNERS SELECTED IN THE SOCIAL IMPACT EXCHANGE BUSINESS PLAN COMPETITION AT 2010 INAUGURAL CONFERENCE ON SCALING
New York, NY: June 24, 2010 – Two outstanding organizations – The Parent-Child Home Program and Rubicon National Social Innovations – were selected as winners of the Social Impact Exchange’s 2009-2010 Business Plan Competition, held at the Exchange’s Inaugural Conference on Scaling, June 17 & 18. The award recipients were selected from among eight finalists who presented their business plans and responded to questions about scaling their initiatives from a panel of expert judges and field leaders.
The winners will receive a total of more than $250,000 in financial and consulting services. Consulting will be provided by Public/Private Ventures, a national leader in creating, strengthening and reproducing model programs, and The Whelan Group, specialists in financial planning, fundraising and capacity building services to growth-oriented nonprofits.
Last fall, nearly 200 nonprofits entered the Business Plan Competition and proceeded through several rounds of evaluation by 120 judges from the nonprofit, public, and private sectors.
The first award recipient, The Parent-Child Home Program, builds early literacy and language skills in the home in order to develop the social-emotional and cognitive competencies children need to succeed in school. The program utilizes intensive home visiting to engage families isolated by poverty, limited literacy, lack of transportation, and language and cultural barriers in an evidence-based school readiness, early literacy, and parenting education program. “The Parent-Child Home Program staff and board worked very hard to develop a strong three-year scaling plan that will expand our evidenced-based school readiness home visiting services to families and children in need across the country and continue to build capacity at the National Center,” said Sarah E Walzer, executive director, The Parent-Child Home Program, Inc.
The second award recipient, Rubicon National Social Innovations, is a laboratory for scaling social enterprise in the U.S., finding, nurturing and scaling businesses that can have a positive and deep impact on big problems affecting low-income people. Rubicon’s award-winning initiative,Emerge Workplace Loan and Financial Stability Program, replaces predatory payday lending for people living paycheck to paycheck with an online lending and financial education platform. Emerge’s goal is to migrate low wage workers to mainstream banking relationships and serve as a scalable catalyst for change on a national level. “We [Rubicon] are jazzed and excited that we received such a prestigious recognition (and the cash could not have come at a better time for our start-up venture). We have spent nearly two years dealing with all the behind-the-scenes steps necessary to create a system-changing solution” commented Rick Aubry, CEO and founder, Rubicon National Social Innovations.
The awards were conferred at the Social Impact Exchange’s 2010 Inaugural Conference on Scaling, where more than 400 funders, investors, high net-worth individuals, philanthropy advisors, academics and nonprofit leaders convened for two days last week. In addition to witnessing the Business Plan Competition, conference attendees participated in a first-ever Scaling Social Impact Investment Fair as well as numerous sessions on planning, evaluating, and financing the scaling of high impact, top performing nonprofit organizations in education, poverty alleviation, and health. Highlights of the conference also included keynote addresses from Robert Steel, former president and CEO of Wachovia Corporation,Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Judith Rodin, president of The Rockefeller Foundation,Nancy Roob, president and CEO of The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, and David Gergen, senior political analyst at CNN and Professor of Public Service at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.
Investment Fair presenters, selected for their demonstrated impact and readiness to scale, included Communities in Schools, Experience Corps, Jumpstart, Root Capital, Uncommon Schools, Ways to Work, and YouthBuild USA.
The Conference on Scaling was presented by Growth Philanthropy Network, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Duke University’sCenter for Strategic Philanthropy and Civil Society (at the Sanford School of Public Policy) and Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) (at the Fuqua School of Business).
Conference sponsors included Bank of America, The Whelan Group, Public/Private Ventures, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, American Express, HSBC Private Bank, Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO), Beyond the Bottom Line, and Louder than Words.
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The Social Impact Exchange http://www.socialimpactexchange.org is a national membership association for increasing investment and sharing knowledge on scaling high-performing nonprofit programs and initiatives.
About The Social Impact Exchange
The Social Impact Exchange is a community of funders, practitioners, advisors, wealth managers, intermediaries and researchers interested in developing practices for studying, implementing and funding large-scale expansions of top-performing nonprofit organizations. The Exchange serves as a focal point and gathering place for those interested in further building the field of scaling social impact, and a platform that facilitates the efficient flow of capital investments to scalable social solutions. The Social Impact Exchange was established by the Growth Philanthropy Network (GPN), in partnership with Duke University’s Center for Strategic Philanthropy and Civil Society and its Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurs. Initial funding for the Exchange has been provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
For more information, contact:
Growth Philanthropy Network
122 E. 42nd Street, 17th floor
New York, NY 10168
212-551-1148
www.growthphilanthropy.org
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