competitions
5 Minute Pitch by Project Inspire
Description: A joint initiative from the Singapore Committee for UN Women and MasterCard to help young change-makers create a better world for women and girls in Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa.
Prize: $35K
Eligibility: 18-35 year old women living in Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa
Do Something Awards
The Do Something Awards identify exceptional young social entrepreneurs, activists, and community leaders who have significant social impact. The Do Something Award nomineess and winners are the pivotal “do-ers” in their fields and causes.
Prize: Up to $100K
Eligibility: Applicants must be 25 years old or younger and live in the US or Canada (or are a citizen of either country, but living abroad)
Knight Prototype Fund by Knight Foundation
The Knight Prototype Fund helps media makers, technologists and tinkerers take ideas from concept to demo.
Prize: $35K for six months to research, test core assumptions and iterate before building out an entire project
Eligibility: Orgs based in the U.S. People and organizations committed to excellence in our communities, journalism, arts, and media innovation
Philanthropitch
USA: Austin, TX, Atlanta, GA
Philanthropitch is a fast pitch forum for high-potential nonprofit organizations looking for access to human and financial capital. This high energy event is a platform for organizations to present innovative ideas for dramatically impacting the community. Selected nonprofits have 3 minutes to pitch for cash prizes.
TED Prize
The TED Prize is awarded annually to an individual with a creative, bold vision to spark global change. By leveraging the TED community’s resources and investing cash in a powerful idea, the TED Prize supports one wish to inspire the world each year.
Prize: $1M
Eligibility: Extraordinary individuals who can envision and execute a high-impact project that can spur global change. Ideal nominees are visionaries who think big with the skills to make things happen.
Cartier Women’s Initiative Award
The Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards are an international business plan competition created in 2006 by Cartier, the Women’s Forum, McKinsey & Company and INSEAD business school to identify, support and encourage projects by women entrepreneurs.
Prize: Semi-Finalists – Four months of coaching, networking opportunities and media exposure, finale week in France. Winners: additional year of coaching and funding of US$20K
Prize: US$20K
Eligibility: Female entrepreneurs or teams with a female lead that have innovative and original for-profit businesses in the early stages 1-3 years *Note: They do NOT accept non-profit proposals.
Fuller Challenge
Description: Buckminster Fuller issued an urgent call for a creative solution to make the world work for 100% of humanity. Answering this call is what the Fuller Challenge is all about. Watch our webinar “A Call to Women Who Make the World Work” with Buckminster Fuller Institute staff Executive Director Elizabeth Thompson, Managing Director Sharifah Taqi and Program Manager Megan Ahearn, who offer insider and best tips to encourage female social innovators to apply.
Prize: $100K
Eligibility: Anyone from anywhere in the world with a systems-changing idea
Internet.org Innovative Challenge
Innovation Challenge supports Internet.org’s vision of a connected world by recognizing those who are working to make the internet more relevant to women, students, farmers and migrant workers in India and Africa. The goal with this challenge is to encourage the development of apps, websites and online services that provide real value for the members of these important communities. Priority areas are: Learning/Education (apps, websites or online services that make use of technology to inspire and deliver learning) and Economic Empowerment (pps, websites or online services that help to advance the economic strength and ability of communities).
Prize: US$150K + more than $50K in tools and services from FbStart
Eligibility: Individuals, organizations, and groups around the world. (Note: Residents of countries where the United States has trade restrictions are not eligible to apply.)
Manhattan Institute Social Entrepreneurship Initiative Award
The Institute offers the Richard Cornuelle Awards for Social Entrepreneurship to nonprofit organizations that directly serve the public. The awards nurture private solutions to difficult public problems and include a cash award of $25K to the winning organizations. These awards recognize the creative energy of the nonprofit sector by highlighting new ideas and mature organizations led by social innovators.
Prize: $25K
Eligibility: Applicants must be non-profit, 501c(3) domestic organizations in the United States and provide specific services to an identifiable target group of those in need and be younger than 10 years old.
fellowships
Ashoka Fellowship
Description: Ashoka Fellows are leading social entrepreneurs with innovative solutions to social problems and the potential to change patterns across society. They demonstrate unrivaled commitment to bold new ideas and prove that compassion, creativity and collaboration are tremendous forces for change. Ashoka fellows work in over 70 countries around the globe in every area of human need.
Prize: Selected fellows receive a living stipend for an average of three years (based on need), allowing them to focus full-time on building their institutions and spreading their ideas. They also become part of a global support network of peers and strategic partnerships.
Eligibility: Anyone, everywhere with a new idea who understands the social impact of that idea and possesses creativity, entrepreneurial quality and ethical fiber.
Open Society Fellowship
The Open Society Fellowship was founded in 2008 to support individuals pursuing innovative and unconventional approaches to fundamental open society challenges. The fellowship funds work that will enrich public understanding of those challenges and stimulate far-reaching and probing conversations within the Open Society Foundations and in the world.
Prize: Varies
Eligibility: The Open Society Fellowship accepts proposals from anywhere in the world. Applicants should possess a deep understanding of their chosen subject and a track record of professional accomplishment. Past and current fellows have included journalists, activists, academics, and practitioners in a variety of fields. Project themes should cut across at least two areas of interest to the Open Society Foundations. Among these are human rights, government transparency, access to information and to justice, and the promotion of civil society and social inclusion.
Echoing Green Fellowship
Description: Echoing Green offers three fellowship. The first is the Global Fellowship, which supports emerging social entrepreneurs from any part of the world working to disrupt the status quo. The second is the Black Male Achievement Fellowship, the first in the world for social entrepreneurs dedicated to improving the life outcomes of black men and boys in the United States. And the last is the Climate Fellowship, specifically targeted for next-generation social entrepreneurs committed to working on innovations in mitigation and adaptation to climate change.
Prize: up to US$90K for two years
grants
Associated Country Women of the World
The Organization supports women in their efforts to reduce poverty, improve health, and advance education in over 70 countries. The Organization has three main funding areas: The Water for All Fund, which supports water, sanitation, and hygiene projects; Women Feed the World Fund, which supports projects that promote progressive farming techniques and upgrading of women’s skills in agriculture-based activities; and the Projects Fund, which supports projects that do not fit into the funding criteria of the other Funds, such as education, literacy, and income generation.
Prize: Up to £5,000 for non-member organizations and up to £10,000 for member organizations
Eligibility: Organizations must be run by women, directly benefit women and/or children, be sustainable, promote community participation and be registered in the country where the project is being carried out
Big Potential
Big Potential is a lottery grant fund for eligible voluntary, community and social enterprise organizations VCSE organizations with the aim of improving their sustainability, capacity and scale so that they may deliver greater social impact. The program aims to raise awareness of the social investment market and support VCSEs who want to prepare themselves for social investment or winning contracts.
Prize: £20,000 to £30,000
Eligibility: Any organization in the UK
Channel Foundation
The Foundation promotes leadership in women’s human rights around the globe by supporting organizations engaged in combating gender inequality. Currently, the Foundation focuses on seven areas of interest: ensuring women’s participation in conflict resolution and peace-building, advancing indigenous women’s rights and leadership, securing reproductive rights/justice, overcoming legal inequality (including inheritance and resource rights), ending violence against women and protecting women human rights defenders, promoting media reform and gender equality and women’s leadership and human rights institutes.
Grant: Varies
Eligibility: You must be invited to apply. They do not accept unsolicited proposals.
Global Fund for Women
GFW funds groups that work with the most marginalized women in the world and are striving to become more effective in their fight for gender equality. They give core funding that helps provide for the fundamental things: rent, salaries, computers, travel, training, security and electricity. Priority issues are freedom from violence, economic and political empowerment and sexual and reproductive health and rights. The Fund believes that women are powerful catalysts for change and that strong women’s organizations and movements make transformative shifts in power that are crucial to women realizing their rights and creating lasting solutions to the world’s problems.
Grant: Varies
Eligibility: Organizations outside of the U.S.
Mary’s Pence
Mary’s Pence wants women in the Americas who live in poverty to have a say and a hand in how poverty can be alleviated and social equity achieved. They fund projects that increase the economic security of women and increase women’s voices in their community. They look efforts for systemic change that improves the status of women. We fund women in North, Central and South America and the Caribbean.
Prize: $4K max
Eligibility: Organizations must have a budget of under $200,000 and be based in North, Central and South America and the Caribbean
RSF Seed Fund
The RSF Seed Fund provides small gifts (between $500 and $5,000) to seed new initiatives that fall within RSF’s mission statement. Successful grantees offer innovative solutions to furthering the field of social finance, or address issues in one of their three focus areas (Food & Agriculture, Education & the Arts, and Ecological Stewardship). Grantees’ initiatives demonstrate capacity for growth, and plans to reach financial independence.
Grant: $500 – $5,000
Eligibility: 501(c)(3) tax-exempt or fiscally sponsored organizations in the first two years of operation
Women’s PeacePower Foundation
Women’s PeacePower Foundation was established in 1988 and provides funds to innovative programs and projects that are working on finding solutions to the violence found in the home, in our schools, in our streets and in our environment. The Women of Peace Awards are designed to recognize individuals that are working on cutting edge programs, or have created new ways of thinking about ending domestic violence or waging peace. The awards are given to selfless, passionate women and girls who are working to promote peace.
Prize: Minimum of US$250
Eligibility: Can be individuals and even volunteers with small, underfunded grassroots projects
Awesome Foundation
Have a crazy brilliant idea that needs funding? Awesome award $1,000 grants every month though its chapters located all over the world. They don’t take a stake in your idea. They just want to help you make it happen!
Prize: $1K
Eligibility: Anyone is eligible for a grant — individuals, groups, and organizations alike. As they say, if you can fill out the application form, you can apply.
Canadian Women’s Foundation
When you look at economic and social problems from a woman’s point of view, you see things differently. You see how the issues are connected. You develop new priorities. You listen. You notice strength where others see only weakness. You think holistically. You share power. You build a community. The Canadian Women`s Foundation considers itself proudly unique as Canada’s only national foundation dedicated to giving women and girls in Canada a chance for a better life. For the last twenty years, they’ve been building a community of women and men who are working together to stop violence, end poverty and empower girls.
Prize: Up to $25K
Eligibility: All applicants should be incorporated, non-profit organizations with a valid charitable number from Canada Revenue Agency, or First Nations Bands designated as qualified donees.
Eileen Fisher Grants for Women Entrepreneurs
EILEEN FISHER supports innovative, women-owned companies that are beyond the start-up phase and ready to expand their businesses and their potential for positive social and environmental impact.
Prize: $100K for up to 10 recipients
Eligibility: Majority women-owned and women-led, in operation for a minimum of three years at time of application and able to provide accompanying financials, revenues not exceeding $1 million in year prior to application, business founded on creating environmental and social change and organizations must be for-profit
Mama Cash
http://www.mamacash.org
Mama Cash is the first international women’s fund in the world. They provide funding to women’s rights initiatives around the globe that challenge the root causes of injustice. These orgs educate, advocate, break down sexist stereotypes and build cultures of peace, justice and respect. Provide core grants
Prize:
Eligibility: Emerging, small orgs that are not formally registered and that are based in all countries except the U.S and Canada or those in the Global North that are implementing programs in the Global South.
Open Meadows Foundation
Open Meadows Foundation is a grant-making organization seeking projects that promote gender/racial/economic justice. The projects must be led by and benefit women and girls. Open Meadows Foundation funds projects that do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender identity and expression, sexual identity and expression, age or ability.
Grants: Up to $2000
Eligibility:
Third Wave Fund
Third Wave is a feminist, activist fund led by young women of color and queer and trans people under the age of 35. They work to ensure that marginalized young folks have the tools they need to be change agents, and that they have a seat at the table within philanthropy. Third Wave Fund makes grants to youth-led gender justice organizations, with a focus on feminist, queer, and trans groups led by people of color and low-income communities. They help build groups from the ground up with funding, training, and relationship-building with other funders.
Prize: varies
Eligibility:
capacity-building
Dasra India
As a leading strategic philanthropy foundation, Dasra actively shapes the process of social change by forming powerful partnerships with funders and social enterprises. Since the last 15 years, Dasra has been working towards building a ‘thriving ecosystem’ that enables knowledge creation, capacity building, strategic funding and collaboration in order to touch and transform the lives of 800 million Indians.
Dasra identifies the most effective social organizations and equips them with skills, frameworks, know-how and networks so they can impact more lives, faster. Organizations enter Dasra’s portfolio at a stage when they are poised to scale their impact. Over a period of 3-5 years, Dasra partners with these organization to sustain a growth trajectory leading to sector leadership. They work closely with their teams to plan and implement a growth strategy, forge partnerships, build second-line leadership, institutionalize key processes and evaluate impact.
Award: Varies
Eligibility: Social impact leaders in India
Next Step City
The Challenge lasts five months and takes each selected company through an intensive development program. The program is individually designed to help transform and mature each startup, making it possible for entrepreneurs to unleash their full business potential.
Prize: EUR $250,000
Eligibility: Startups working within the fields of next-generation energy and digital products and services
Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation
The DRK foundation finds exceptional leaders/organizations through a selective process. They fund these leaders/organizations through a well-crafted model that emphasizes unrestricted, multi-year funding and provides ongoing support.
Prize: $300K
Eligibility: Experienced, dedicated social entrepreneurs with a developed idea for a non-profit organization with a legal presence in the United States. Must be early-stage with with no more than 1-3 years of operations and be national or global in reach and issue.
Startup Chile & S Factory
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Start-up Chile looks for globally-minded, early stage entrepreneurs who want to start their business in Chile. Your project must be globally-oriented and easy to scale. They accept both projects that are just a mere idea and projects that are already launched/incorporated, but all projects must be under two years old. It is crucial that the founder of each startup participating in the program is willing to live in Chile for 7 months. And the S Factory is a new program powered by Start-Up Chile, specifically for female founders in the concept stage or with a prototype less than six months in development. The program assigns a 1-year resident visa, comfortable workspace and networking, inspiration and financial support.
Prize: Start-up Chile – $40K, S Factory – $15K
Eligibility: Anyone from anywhere with a plan to grow an impactful global business from Chile
investments/crowdfunding
KIND
Every month, KIND Causes supports individuals and organizations working to make the world a little kinder with $10,000. To be eligible, your cause proposal must be designed to be completed within six months of winning and within a $10,000 budget.
Prize: $10K
Eligibility: KIND Causes is open to anyone with a socially-impactful idea and must be 18 years or older and a resident of the US or Canada (excluding Quebec).
Pipeline Fellowship
The Pipeline Fellowship is an angel investing bootcamp for women. Women are trained as investors and learn to create capital specifically for women social entrepreneurs. At they end of their fellowship, there is a signature pitch summit, which is an opportunity for invited women social entrepreneurs to present their for-profit social ventures for a chance to secure funding.
Prize: Around $50K
Eligibility: Woman co-owner and/or co-founder of a for-profit legal structure with a social and/or environmental mission in the U.S.
The Jump Fund
The Jump Fund’s mission is to invest women’s capital in female-led companies with growth potential in order to generate a strong financial return and elevate the role of women in business. Their vision is to establish Chattanooga and the Southeast as the nation’s best place for a woman to invest in or start a business.
Investment Amount:
Eligibility: Female-led for-profit businesses based in the Southeastern part of the United States
Mulago Foundation
Mulago funds early-stage organizations taking proven solutions to scale. They operate like a philanthropic venture fund where impact serves as an analog for profit, and cost-per-impact sits in for return on investment. Their focus is on the basic needs of the very poor, most of whom live in rural settings. Specific priorities include: livelihoods – mostly smallholder agriculture, health – primary healthcare and behavior change, conservation – where it benefits the poor, energy – home cooking, lighting, and power, education – mostly primary, amplifier – solutions to make organizations more effective.
Prize: Unrestricted funding
Eligibility: High-impact, early-stage, for-profit or non-profit organizations that measure impact
Socialab
With offices in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Uruguay, Socialab funds and supports sustainable, disruptive and early-stage ventures through sponsored competitions by corporate partners.
Prize: Varies per competition
Eligibility: Projects that help communities in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Uruguay