Social Venture Partners Minnesota is proud to announce the four finalists for the Social Entrepreneur’s Cup awards. The Social Entrepreneur’s Cup is a competition to find and recognize Minnesota’s most innovative and effective social entrepreneurs and the organizations they lead. The four finalists compete cash awards and services as part of the Engaged Philanthropy Conference that takes place on Thursday, June 17 at the Graves 601 Hotel in Minneapolis.
The Social Entrepreneur’s Cup finalists represent a spectrum of social issues including education, health, poverty, and sustainable energy. The finalists have inspiring visions of innovation and hope to share with the world. The 2010 Social Entrepreneur’s Cup finalists are:
Urban and rural poor across the world are increasingly falling victim to unplanned urban and industrial growth; exposure to toxic wastes and pollution, water, and airborne diseases, inadequate power, are common problems. In the absence of government or private mechanisms to effectively address these problems, there is an urgent need for a platform, wherein talent form across disciplines, in academia and industry, may focus on these problems through an effective structure of collaboration and action.
The Acara Institute brings together a collection of talents, minds, and resources – represented by diverse teams and individuals from academia and industry – to collaboratively launch viable businesses to address societal change while teaching social entrepreneurship to aspiring students. Through its 2010 programs, Acara is educating 300 students in 20 Universities in the U.S., India, and Uganda on commercialization of businesses addressing water, energy, and nutritional needs of third world populations. After the students have created viable business plans through the Acara Challenge and curriculum, Acara continues to work with promising student companies to launch their businesses and ensure profitability for long-term impact.
Roughly 1.6 billion people in the developing world do not have access to electricity. The lighting many of these people use includes expensive, dangerous and unhealthy kerosene lanterns or candle light. Bright New Ideas designs, manufactures, and distributes affordable solar-LED lamp systems for people around the world without access to electricity. They have innovative lamp solutions that can be built on-site, stimulating local industry. Bright New Ideas deliver their lamp solutions to people in need through a social-entrepreneurship model, using nonprofit organizations working in the local communities to distribute their lamps.
Fifty-four million people in America live with a disability, making it the nation’s largest minority group. Mind Body Solutions delivers a mind-body approach to those living with trauma, loss, and disability, as well as to their caregivers, with the goal of transforming the disability and rehabilitation experience.
Mind Body Solutions empowers individuals living with disabilities, and their caregivers by offering adaptive yoga instruction in the Twin Cities and training yoga teachers from across the country in adaptive yoga techniques. Mind Body Solutions teaches caregivers and rehabilitation professionals to integrate practical mind-body techniques into existing practices for both themselves and for whom they care.
Springboard for the Arts provides programs that help artists access high quality, affordable health care. Artists are vital to the economy, culture, and vitality of our region. The arts contributes over a billion dollars in economic impact in Minnesota alone and contribute to their communities by sparking dialogue, engaging young people, beautifying our surroundings, providing a way of understanding cultures different from our own. Unfortunately, artists often go without the health care that would improve their quality of their lives.
Springboard’s Artists’ Access to Healthcare program applies the creative process to a complicated system to help uninsured and underinsured artists get access to the care they need.
On the day of the conference each of the finalists will make live presentations before the judges and conference attendees. The grand prizewinner will receive $20,000 as a general operating grant and 40 hours of consulting services from Social Venture Partners as well as a new web site designed by the Nerdery. The second place winner receives $5,000 and 20 hours of consulting services from Social Venture Partners. The other competitors win a $1,500 honorable mention award. Sandra Vargas, President and CEO of the Minneapolis Foundation, and Steve Bloom, CEO of Pragmatek Consulting Group and Social Venture Partners Chair, will present the winners their awards at the concluding ceremony and reception.
Judges for the competition are: Judy Alnes, Executive Director, MAP for Nonprofits; Kate Barr, Executive Director, Non-Profits Assistance Fund; Terry Barrerio, Director, Donald McNeely Center for Entrepreneurship, St. John’s University; Jason Edens, Founder and Executive Director, Rural Renewable Energy Alliance and the 2009 Social Entrepreneur’s Cup winner; Trista Harris, Executive Director, Headwaters Foundation for Social Justice; Sean Kershaw, President, Citizens League; Connie Rutledge, Associate Director of Carlson Ventures Enterprise, University of Minnesota; Melissa Middleton Stone, Director, Public and Nonprofit Leadership Center, Hubert H. Humphrey Institute, University of Minnesota; and Jeff Tollefson, Executive Director, Genesys Works.
About Social Venture Partners Minnesota
Social Venture Partners Minnesota is a venture philanthropy organization that leverages the money and expertise of its members to promote philanthropy and improve the lives of children and youth in Minnesota. Our members are successful entrepreneurs, corporate executives, and professionals skilled at growing organizations with a heart for making a better world. We are business entrepreneurs working alongside social entrepreneurs to create social change and transformation.
Social Venture Partners follows the venture capital model of patient, long-term investment combined with hands-on assistance to transform the social entrepreneur’s vision into reality. We invest financial capital, social capital, and intellectual capital in the nonprofit innovators we support. Social Venture Partner members gain satisfaction from giving of their talents, as well as their money, forming personal relationships with the non-profit staff they work with and the children served by the non-profit. Through our youth program, SVP Teens, we equip and empower the next generation of philanthropists.
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