$200K for early stage ventures growing their impact in their communities

The Early Stage Venture Award

The Early Stage Venture (ESV) Award offers $200,000 in unrestricted funding and customized capacity building for proximate-led, early-stage ventures that have done some work to validate their field demand. With Promise support, awardees will refine their offerings, conduct additional testing, and position themselves for increased impact over the course of a year.

About the Early Stage Venture Award

2025 Early Stage Venture Award Recipients

For our pilot year, we’ve selected two award recipients from across the country who have ideas for transformational impact. Awardees are proximate to their communities as a part of our commitment to empowering those with firsthand understanding of the aspirations of and opportunities for children, parents, and families within their communities. Our inaugural cohort of award recipients also brings deep community connections, a strong equity focus, and an entrepreneurial mindset. Their ventures demonstrate high impact potential, with committed teams and visions for sustainable growth.

  • The BEE Collective

    👤 Led by Adrienne Troy-Frazier, Co-Founder & Director

    The Beloved Early Education and Care Collective / Tricounty Play Collaborative operates three interconnected programs in South Carolina that provide free doula services to over 60 Black families annually, support a worker-owned cooperative for BIPOC doulas and educators, and run an Afrocentric Saturday school for young children. Together, these programs create a comprehensive support ecosystem for Black families through culturally responsive care, education, and cooperative economics.

    📍South Carolina

    Learn More

  • Our House Baltimore

    👤 Led by Maureen Nicol, Ed.D., Founder & Owner

    Our House Baltimore is an intimate sliding-scale play space and cafe offering culturally affirming programming and open play for children and their caregivers. Owned by Maureen Nicol, Ed.D.–a mom who created the space she wanted her own child to enjoy–Our House serves as a safe haven where children engage in play-based learning while caregivers take time for themselves.

    📍Baltimore, MD

    Learn More

What Awardees Receive

Support from the Promise Sandbox Award includes a variety of resources to help recipients effectively pilot their idea over the course of a year. This award includes:

  • The Promise Fund was developed in acknowledgement that no-strings funding isn’t as common as it should be for early stage entrepreneurs. The $200K in grant dollars for this award are unrestricted to be used at award recipients’ discretion for the pursuit of realizing important strategic goals and growing their impact.

  • In addition to providing catalytic funding, the Early Stage Venture Award will empower awardees to co-create their ideal support experience following our Comprehensive "5Cs" support framework: Community, Connections, Coaching, Customized Learning, and Collaboration. 

    Awardees will collectively determine which technical training and workshops best serve their needs while building a community of practice to address the unique challenges of early entrepreneurship. Award recipients participate in two convenings. Beyond the convenings, the group will establish its own meeting structure and rhythm and will also have flexible access to mentors, coaches, and valuable connections according to their self-determined needs.

    Convening lodging, travel and food is covered by Promise.

  • Promise has stewarded two main communities: the Early Childhood Leaders of Color Collaborative (EC LOC), a space where we unite BIPOC and proximate innovators to drive personal sustainability and collective power and the Promise Venture Network (PVN), a community for leaders interested in growing their ventures’ growth and impact. Promise also has a history of connecting ventures to sources of capital, customers and potential partners in order to facilitate the field’s most equitable marketplace of capital to ventures. Early Stage Venture Recipients will be able to tap into the both power of our diverse networks and our connections in order to drive their progress forward! 

In this section, you’ll find answers to frequently asked questions. If you have a specific question and you can’t find the answer below, please don’t hesitate to email our team at team@promisestudio.org.

  • In 2025, we selected two ventures for this award, with an expectation of expanding to more awardees in future years. Our intention is to learn from this process, gathering feedback from awardees and applicants to shape the future of the Promise Fund. In addition, we aim to build a stronger case for increased investment in proximate social entrepreneurship by sharing insights with other funders and highlighting the incredible leaders and organizations driving this work.

  • Over the course of the grant year, Promise Fund Early Stage Venture Awardees receive $200,000 in unrestricted funding alongside program supports grounded in our “5Cs” framework: 

    • Community: Connect with peer leaders and mentors

    • Connections: Expand your network and potential partnerships

    • Coaching: Access to expert guidance

    • Customized Learning: Tailored workshops and support

    • Collaboration: Co-create solutions with our dedicated team

  • We define early stage ventures as those whose ideas have solidified as a result of testing or piloting in their communities, who have some data to validate their hypotheses for impact. They have a vision for long-term sustainability or growth but need support to scale their efforts from where they are to their next major milestone. This award is designed to support ventures for whom $200,000 of unrestricted funding, and the support of a champion, would be truly catalytic, unlocking exciting new potential for learning or growth.

  • Promise Venture Studio has two primary goals for the pilot offering of the Early Stage Venture Award:

    • Supporting the work of excellent early-stage, proximate-led ventures in the early childhood field.

    • Making a compelling case to funders and the field for deeper investment in early stage proximate social entrepreneurship in early childhood development.

  • For this pilot year, Promise conducted a limited nomination process, prioritizing ventures already in our network and beginning with nominations from our team. We hope to offer this award again next year with a broader nomination pool. Keep an eye on this page for information on future cycles of this award.

Frequently Asked Questions

Stay in Touch!

The Promise Fund is new and evolving! To receive updates about the Early Stage Venture Award and award recipients, please fill out the form below.

Complete the Interest Form