- Austin Habitat for Humanity is looking to dramatically harness the economic engine of their nationally-acclaimed ReStore model to increase their capacity to meet affordable housing demands. Over its 20+ year history, this unique approach to recycling and re-selling donated building materials has not only funded their affordable housing programs but also saved over 15 million pounds of constructions materials from our landfills.
- Explore Austin is seeking to franchise their signature adventure experience mentoring model for low-income students. This six-year program helps build life-skills and character strengths such as grit, curiosity and optimism to improve academic performance and break the generational cycles of poverty.
- Multicultural Refugee Coalition is ready to scale their Open Arms Social Enterprise. Open Arms provides living wages and skill development to refugee women through textile manufacturing for both local and international corporations such as IKEA, Purpose Boutique, Raven and Lily, and Blue Avocado.
- Society of St. Vincent de Paul: Diocesan Council of Austin wants to transform their distribution model by transitioning their physical retail store to “pop up” mobile vans. These vans will make clothing distribution to their clients more accessible while at the same time increase sales to paying customers through a mobile vintage clothing outlet.
- WeViva* is working to bring its community-based fitness and nutrition program for low income, high-risk adults into the workplace. By expanding the culturally appropriate, bilingual offerings to hourly waged workers at their place of employment, WeViva seeks to remove the barriers this community faces to improving the lifelong health of themselves and their families.
Over the next five months our Social Venture Partners and Greenlights consulting team will help these organizations develop an investor ready business plan to solicit the capital they need to dramatically grow or scale their projects. By breaking the silos between business and nonprofit, we hope to redefine what philanthropy looks like in Austin. As Austin strives to become a social innovation capital, forward-thinking projects from our nonprofit community will be a key factor to achieving that goal.Interested in the future of social innovation, both at a local and national level? Join us at Mission Driven on September 10-11, 2015 and be a part of Philanthropitch International featuring winners from Austin and nine other nonprofit pitch events.*WeViva will participate in the 2015 Accelerator replacing H.A.N.D. while they undergo an Executive Director transition.