The Promising Ventures Fellowship is an 18-week intensive (and fun!) accelerator designed to support growth-stage equity-driven ventures focused on making a difference in the lives of children pre-natal to age 5 and their families and caregivers. Specifically designed for executives and leaders, the Promising Ventures Fellowship provides coaching, professional learning opportunities, connections, and expert resources to help ventures boost their growth and impact. The Fellowship experience is highly customized according to each venture’s goals; there is very little standard curriculum. The country’s only accelerator focused on early childhood, our fellowship meets ventures where they are to accelerate their progress towards fostering a world where our youngest children — and their families — can thrive.
This is a FREE fellowship program with no fee or cost to participate.
The Promising Ventures Fellowship is for ventures who:
Support children and families: The Promising Ventures Fellowship is for ventures (e.g. companies, organizations, institutes) that serve children and families in the early childhood stage (prenatal through age 5).
Are equity-driven: At Promise, we prioritize working with ventures that are equity-driven. To us, that means that your venture is actively working to center equity in your mission and theory of change, internal team/board and practices, and external deployment of your programs/products/services. Ventures who meet this bar typically demonstrate a commitment to being in constant conversation with the communities they serve, a bent towards disrupting/dismantling systems of oppression, and a steadfast focus on achieving more equitable outcomes for historically oppressed children and families.
Have traction and are poised for sustainable growth: We’re excited to work with ventures with a demonstrated proof of concept that meets a clear need, that are on sound financial footing, and that are poised to deliver social impact at scale.
Operate in the US: This Fellowship is specifically for non- and for-profit ventures that support children and families in the United States. Your venture may be headquartered outside of the US and/or can operate in other countries in addition to the US, but it must operate in the US in some capacity.
Have strong participation potential: We are seeking ventures that have been in operation for at least two years and have two members from their leadership team committed to fellowship participation, one of whom is the CEO/ED/President or executive team member. Leaders should expect to dedicate approximately 2-6 hours per week to fellowship-related work (programming or asynchronous goal advancement activities). Because the Fellowship is customized to your venture’s individual goals, most of your time spent on the Fellowship should feel closely aligned with and supportive of your top priorities.
You can find more information about our selection criteria and priorities in this document or in the FAQs.
Personalized coaching and support on your impact model, business model (including work on your product, team/organization, go-to-market, and more), and strategic goals from Promise’s team of experienced entrepreneurs and executives
A supportive community of like-minded peers at the helm of similarly high potential/impact ventures in the early childhood space
Facilitated peer-to-peer workshopping of a pressing organizational or leadership challenge you are facing
Connections and access to the ECD field’s key leaders and stakeholders, including a guaranteed spot in a future Show+Tell event
Ongoing support and community after the program ends!
Promise Fellowship Program Numbers At-a-Glance!
NPS = Net Promoter Score
Meet Our Alumni
“Because of [the Promising Ventures] Fellowship, we’re seeing how to offer our virtual platform to our TA partners. We now have better products and are on a faster timeline.”
“The Promise team is mission-driven with a strong focus on execution. I love the team’s culture of continuous feedback on how to best support entrepreneurs like myself. They have provided support across topics ranging from policy issues to sales negotiations. They are exactly the type of partner I would hope for as we scale our venture. I feel fortunate to have such a strong team in my corner.”
“While there were many valuable aspects of being a Promising Fellow, perhaps the most helpful was having the opportunity to listen to and learn from other fellows. Through discussion and collaboration, we were able to acquire and apply new ideas, and thus, continue to grow! And it was evident that we were also able to make valuable contributions to other teams. By working together, we were able to take positive steps forward.”