Who should apply to the Promising Ventures Fellowship? +

We are seeking social entrepreneurs working in the U.S. early childhood space. We define early childhood as prenatal to age 5, inclusive of the adults who care for children and influence their environments. That can include parents, caregivers, educators, pediatricians, social workers, advocates, and more. We are looking for entrepreneurs who have high social impact and growth potential to reach the most disadvantaged children and families in the US.

We invite applications from: ventures focused on early education, early health, social services, child care, parental support / education, supportive technology, or any other adjacent field ventures at any stage (idea, early, growth, mature) on a path to scaled impact nonprofit organizations and for-profit companies

We highly value diversity and encourage people of all backgrounds to apply. In particular, we encourage applications from women, people of color, LGBT individuals, and others from historically underrepresented communities.

What are your selection criteria for the Promising Ventures Fellowship? +

• Social impact potential: We are looking for ventures that purposefully seek to positively influence the lives of children and families facing the greatest adversity, and that are driven to deeply understand and increase the effectiveness of their products and services for those populations.
• Growth potential: We are looking for ventures that have the potential (now or in the future) to scale their solutions to reach the millions of children facing the greatest adversity in the U.S. and / or their families and caregivers.
• Program fit: We will select ventures that have the vision, the team, and the stability to allow them to focus on and make meaningful strides on high priority social impact and growth goals during the Fellowship program (with Promise’s help). We expect key team members to be committed full-time to their venture.

How will you take into consideration the impact of COVID-19 on ventures? +

We know everyone’s world is impacted by COVID and we recognize ventures face unique challenges including existential threats, delay and distraction of customers, funding uncertainty, and perhaps new opportunities. We don’t expect you to shy away from those challenges and opportunities in your application. We are looking for uniquely promising innovations in response to these challenges/opportunities, which we can help you refine, extend and sustain - and which can serve as inspiring examples for leaders in the field. Promise has a value of “meeting ventures where they are” and we are prepared to support you in navigating whatever has come your way as a result of the COVID pandemic.

What happens during the Fellowship Program? +

In the first week, we’ll first partner with you to further understand your biggest social impact and growth goals (that you articulated in your application).

Throughout the rest of the program, you’ll aggressively pursue those two goals with our full support. You shouldn’t think of this as extra work, rather the opposite, as it should fit naturally within existing priorities (or will help sharpen them).

The Promise team will spend 1-2 hours per week with you, working shoulder-to-shoulder to support you.

Over the course of 14 weeks, specifically, you can expect:

• 4 coaching sessions with two Promise senior advisors for strategic thought partnership, expert support, and leadership mentoring to nurture and build your capacity as an entrepreneur and leader. In these meetings you will receive support on your goals, track progress and secure the connections and resources you need.
• 4 small peer group adaptive challenge experiences for leadership and team-building competency development with each venture sharing a timely adaptive blocker for peer leaders to workshop possible approaches.
• 3 coaching sessions with experts from the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University (HCDC). You will receive bespoke advising and consultation on impact goal execution.
• Up to 3 coaching sessions with a senior leader from Sesame Workshop focused on leadership development and specific subject-matter topics you identify as needs
• Monthly cohort huddles for group learning experiences with outside experts and deep-dive peer support around specific challenges.
• Strategic introductions to experts, funders, practitioners, and other potential partners.
• Ongoing learning, sharing, and community building with peers and the Promise team in a private Slack forum.
• All program components will be conducted virtually over Zoom, and you will experience a touchpoint with the program typically every week between September 3, 2020 - December 18, 2020. A few key dates include:
  • Program Kickoff: September 3
  • Virtual convening: September 22 & 23
  • Cohort Event #1: October 14
  • Cohort Event #2: November 18
  • Cohort Event #3: December 9
  • Fellowship Show+Tell: January 27, 2021

What types of goals will Fellowship teams work on? +

We will ask each venture to define and focus on two high priority goals: 1) a social impact goal and 2) a growth goal. Ideally, these are goals that are already highly prioritized for you and your venture. Here are some examples of each:

Example social impact goals:

• Design, prototype, and /or pilot an adaptation of your product for a population facing great adversity
• Design, prototype, and /or pilot an adaptation of your product to increase alignment with the science of ECD, especially in response to the pandemic
• Strengthen your impact value proposition and close a sale to a new, impact-focused customer - especially a customer put most at risk during the pandemic
• Design an impact measurement and evaluation framework and begin data collection - perhaps comparing impact outputs and outcomes pre-COVID to those resulting from your recent program or adaptations.

Example growth goals:

• Increase weekly user growth from X% to Y%
• Create high quality, sustainable program that reaches XX children annually
• Reach profitability / sustainability by closing $Z in sales
• Prove a repeatable partnership model by securing three new partnership deals
• Develop a plan for scaling operations to new strategic markets / user segments
• Create new product offerings that can expand reach with current partners beyond two years

What do you mean when you talk about social impact in ECD? +

ECD social impact is the positive change that you make against a problem that exists for young children and their families which is preventing them from reaching their best potential. We regularly emphasize three dimensions of impact:

• A target population that is most acutely affected or uniquely disadvantaged by the problem you’re solving
• The specific outcomes achieved that result from your product / service / intervention, and the magnitude of their change compared to the current status quo
• The reach of those outcomes both in quantity and intensity for the target populations identified

We will meet you where you are on the problem you’re trying to solve and connect you with support and tools to better define, measure, improve, and grow your social impact.

As a mission-driven organization, we care deeply about finding organizations that can serve the most children and families facing greatest adversity with the potential to address the pressing and persistent problems across ECD (e.g., improving prenatal / postpartum health, decreasing sources of stress in families’ lives, reducing adverse childhood experiences, interrupting multigenerational poverty, increasing access to high quality early care and education, strengthening core life skills, increasing caregiver / educator training, achieving school readiness, etc.).

Who from my team can participate in the program? +

We invite up to two senior team members to participate in all programming, and participation from at least one founder, CEO, or Executive Director is strongly encouraged. Ideally, these two leaders are equally engaged and can leverage each other on goal achievement. In our experience, the presence of the most senior leader increases the ambition of the fellowship goals and the speed at which they are accomplished. However, if a venture has a strong case for how two other senior leaders will better serve the completion of the impact and growth goals, we are open to it.

Do I need to travel to participate in the program? +

No. The 2020 program will be entirely virtual. Last year we held an in-person convening, but given the COVID-19 pandemic and uncertainty of social gatherings, this year’s fellowship program will be entirely virtual. Our programming in 2019 was delivered virtually (with the exception of the in-person kickoff), so we are confident that we can deliver a high quality, engaging program virtually.

Does the Fellowship include funding? +

Fellowship ventures will not receive funding from Promise or our partners. However, the Fellowship will conclude with the opportunity to participate in a virtual demo event--part of our Show+Tell Series--with hundreds of investors, funders, partners, customers and other ECD field stakeholders. This is an excellent opportunity to make connections that may lead to funding.

How much does the Fellowship cost for ventures? +

Promise is backed by generous partners who enable us to offer the Fellowship programming to accepted ventures at no cost.

What are the participation expectations for Fellows? +

Fellows are expected to participate in all aspects of the Fellowship programming. The more you put in, the more you and your peers will get out of the experience. Beyond engagement in fellowship events, coaching sessions and the Show+Tell, we do ask ventures to share data on their venture’s goal progress both during and after the fellowship, and to complete a few surveys to help us assess the impact of our program.

When does the application open and close? +

The application opens on Monday June 29, 2020 at 8:00am Pacific Time and closes Thursday, July 30, 2020 at 11:59 pm Pacific Time

How many teams will be chosen? +

8-10 teams

When will you announce decisions? +

We will announce decisions by August 24, 2020.

When does the program start and end? +

The Fellowship will run from September 3 to December 18, 2020. We will also have a Show+Tell event featuring Fellowship ventures on January 27, 2021.

What happens after the Fellowship? +

All Fellows automatically become members of the Promise Venture Network (if you weren’t one already!). As such, throughout and after the Fellowship, you will have full access to the full range of programming and support offered exclusively to the Network.

In addition, we expect that as an Promising Ventures Fellowship Alumni class, you’ll come away with a very close, tight-knit cohort of peers on whom you can regularly rely for support, connections, and help, in addition to relationships with the Promise Venture Studio Team, The Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University and Sesame Workshop.