LIVE UNITED Social Innovation Prize presented by Ernst & Young
What's next for the Social Innovation Prize?
Submission for this year's LIVE UNITED SOCIAL INNOVATION PRIZE competition closed July 8, 2009.
These are the next steps for 2009-10:
July--Judges select finalists
Early August--Finalists will be contacted.
August--Interviews, coaching and polishing:
- A mentorship workshop will be held at the beginning of the month.
- Clear sets of expectations and deliverables will be defined for the finalists.
- This part of the process includes interviewing, checking references, refining message, and making a short video to introduce innovation to the community.
Early September--Finalists are announced to the community in conjunction with Metro United Way's Campaign Kickoff. A website is opened for community voting by credit card pledge.
November--Announce winners and award prizes in conjunction with Metro United Way's Campaign Celebration.
December--Convene winners and finalists to launch Community of Social Innovation. Assess needs for support, learning, incubation.
January through June--Conduct monthly meetings of Community of Social Innovation with mentoring/education activities selected by participants.
Introduction
Everyone deserves opportunities to have a good life: a quality education that leads to a stable job, enough income to support a family through retirement, and good health. That’s why Metro United Way’s work is focused on the building blocks for a good life:
- Education– Helping Children and Youth Achieve Their Potential
- Income– Promoting Financial Stability and Independence
- Health– Improving People’s Health
Advancing the common good is less about helping one person at a time and more about changing systems to help all of us. We are all connected and interdependent. We all win when a child succeeds in school, when families are financially stable, when people are healthy.
To be successful, our community needs to think differently about our approaches. We need to harness the wide-ranging talents of our best social pioneers—encouraging them to innovate and pursue their visions. As in the business sector, there is no shortage of innovators, but there is not yet enough systematic support available to social innovators.
Metro United Way encourages and supports the work of pragmatic visionaries who achieve sustainable social change through a new invention, a different approach, a more rigorous application of known technologies or strategies, or a combination of these.
Purpose
To attract social innovations and to highlight the benefits of innovative approaches to solving social problems, Metro United Way is creating the LIVE UNITED Social Innovation Prize.
Prizes
A total of four prizes will be awarded. Three $5000 prizes will be awarded: one for the best solution in each of the areas of education, income and health. A grand prize of $10,000 will be awarded for a solution that produces results in two or more of these areas.
The LIVE UNITED Social Innovation Prize is for expenses directly related to the implementation of the solution, and will help attract funding and other resources and support.
Finalists will be offered nurturing and support to incubate their solutions. Each finalist will be connected to a “wisdom council” of mentors and advisors with whom the finalist may meet regularly. The wisdom council will be empowered to connect the finalists with additional resources for advice, training, and support.
For many of the social entrepreneurs who participate in the competition, the wisdom council and additional connection to resources will be more valuable than the prize.
Judging
Judging will be done in two phases. Initial screening and selection of finalists will be done by a panel of volunteers who have indicated their willingness to serve on wisdom councils.
Finalists will be posted on Metro United Way’s website and assigned to education, income, health or combination categories. Visitors to the website will have the opportunity to donate by credit card to one or more finalist. To encourage broad participation, minimum donation will be kept as small as is feasible.
The winners would be determined by the highest total donations in each category. All finalists will receive the amount donated to their solutions.
Volunteering and Communications
To volunteer for tasks related to the Social Innovation Prize or to recieve more communications about the Social Innovation Prize, please complete this form.