GSEC 2008: February 25 – 29, 2008
Application deadline: October 31, 2007

The University of Washington's Global Social Entrepreneurship Competition (GSEC) is a business plan competition in which students from around the world find creative, commercially sustainable ways to address problems of poverty in the developing world.  Business plans are evaluated on three criteria: 1) effect on the quality of life and poverty alleviation in the developing world; 2) financial sustainability; and 3) feasibility of implementation.

GSEC business plans can cover various issues such as healthcare, education, the environment, energy, information and communication technology, social services, agriculture, and manufacturing. Social Return on Investment includes the social good of improved health. As such, two new prizes in Global Health will also be awarded this year. 

Please visit the Competition Guidelines page for detailed submissions guidelines and competition information.

The $100,000 Lemelson-MIT Award for Sustainability celebrates individuals whose inventions and innovations enhance economic opportunity and community well-being in developing and/or developed countries, while protecting and restoring the natural environment.

Deadline: Friday, November 2, 2007

Are you an entrepreneur with a bold and innovative business idea that can make a difference?

Would you like to win up to £45,000 to help develop your idea?

If so, you have until 5pm (GMT), Friday 12th October to submit your idea to the Oxford University 21st Century Challenge Competition.

We are looking for ground breaking business ideas across the following challenge tracks:
• Tomorrow's Planet: the environment
• Tomorrow's People: healthcare and medicine
• Tomorrow's Wealth: widening the benefits of wealth creation

The competition is open to individual entrepreneurs, teams, new companies, existing companies creating spin-offs, scientists and students from across the world.

Business ideas can be based on a new product, a service, operational process or business model.

See website for further details.

Join the global search for innovative ways for sports to promote social change

Join Nike and Changemakers in the global search for the most innovative solutions that use sport to unleash social potential and transform communities for the better. If you are passionate about sport, enter the collaborative competition and share your ideas.

Approximately 12 finalists will be chosen and three winners will receive cash awards of $5,000 each.

Enter by: Dec 4, 2007
Voting begins: Jan 14, 2008
Winners Announced: Jan 28, 2008

Description:
Each year, the Acumen Fund Fellows Program provides extraordinary young professionals with a unique opportunity to use their skills to effect real social change with our portfolio organizations in Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, India and Pakistan, and to build lasting relationships with other like-minded individuals. Joining us in September, fellows will spend one year working with our team and with local entrepreneurs, gaining intensive experience in price performance, logistics, distribution systems, scaling and innovative technology. Fellows will learn and apply these skills while enjoying an unusual level of responsibility both at Acumen Fund and within our portfolio organizations.

Ideal fellows include those who have already decided on a career in venture philanthropy, those who are seeking a career at the highest levels in the corporate world but want to better understand and have an impact on problems of global poverty, and budding social entrepreneurs who want to learn about managing organizations in the most demanding settings.

Apply online until noon EST on October 24, 2007.

HopeLab is looking for product ideas that will get kids moving!
 
Ruckus Nation is an online competition that challenges people to imagine innovative products that will increase physical activity among kids ages 11 to 14. HopeLab—a  non-profit organization based near San Francisco—is inviting you to participate as a contestant or judge and to help us spread the word.

People of all ages can enter their ideas to Ruckus Nation and win — win the opportunity to help kids, win recognition for their idea, and win cash prizes. HopeLab (see Pat Christen's interview) will support the development, testing and distribution of products based on the best ideas, and more than $300,000 in cash and prizes will be awarded to winning entries!

Register now here, and keep in mind these dates and deadlines:
 
September 18 – contestant and judge registration opens, entries accepted
October 15 – contestant registration closes; space is limited, so don’t delay
November 20 – final entry deadline

* Do you have an incredible new idea that could change your community, country, or world?
* Are you an entrepreneur who won't rest until your idea has been brought to life? Or a leader who has recently started an organization to do just that?

If so, apply for an Echoing Green Fellowship. You could receive up to $90,000 in seed funding and support to launch a new organization that turns your innovative idea for social change into action.

Follow in the footsteps of the founders of Teach For America, City Year, and over 400 other social change organizations and apply online by December 3, 2007 at https://apply.echoinggreen.org

Watch the video here.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and MTV announced today the Knight News Challenge "Young Creators Award," a new digital journalism grant program for young people age 25 and under anywhere in the world. 

The contest will award up to $500,000 to young creators with compelling ideas for using digitally delivered news and information to enhance physical communities – improving the lives of people where they live, work and vote.   

The new award is a component of the Knight News Challenge, an annual competition awarding $5 million for innovative ideas using digital experiments to transform community news. 

MTV will soon begin promoting the award throughout its international network – spanning more than 160 countries and nearly 500 million households – with promo spots that have been created in nine different languages, including English, Spanish, Chinese, French, Russian and more.

The Boys & Girls Clubs of America, with more than 4,000 Clubs in the United States and abroad, has also signed on to promote the opportunity to the more than 4.8 million young people it serves.  

The Young Creators Award is open to young community-minded innovators worldwide with big ideas such as: anything that informs and inspires community using bits and bytes; new ways to deliver news on emerging platforms, such as cell phone documentaries; new types of operating software for news collectors; and journalism games.  All entries require three elements: 1) use of a digital media; 2) delivery of news or information on a shared basis to 3) a geographically defined community.  Although there is a category for commercial applications, most entries are "open-source" and must share the software and knowledge created.  The number of grants awarded will be based on the size of the ideas; no idea is too large or too small.  

More information here and here.

Razoo is sponsoring a $10,000 contest that any social change organization/NGO can win by joining Razoo.com, creating a group presence and recruiting 100 people to join the group. Do that, and you're eligible for the prize.

DEADLINE: September 15th.

Civic Ventures today announced the winners of its 2007 Purpose Prize, a three-year, $9 million program that invests in social innovators over age 60. Now in its second year, The Purpose Prize is a large-scale award for those in the second half of life working on critical social issues.

The five $100,000 winners, chosen from more than 1,000 nominees around the country, were selected for their creative and effective work to tackle some of the nation’s most pressing problems. They have developed new ways to help children succeed in life through reforms to the education and foster care systems, and new methods to save lives through improvements in hospital safety, newborn care, and search-and-rescue efforts.

Ten $10,000 winners were also selected. Summaries for all winners are here.

“The Purpose Prize winners are inspired innovators who have turned their experience and passion into new ventures that meet difficult societal challenges. But they are also much more than that,” said Marc Freedman, founder and CEO of Civic Ventures, co-founder of the Purpose Prize, and author of Encore: Finding Work That Matters in the Second Half of Life (PublicAffairs Press, June 2007). “They are encouraging signs of what’s to come as baby boomers leave their midlife careers and enter a new stage of work and contribution.”

In Encore, Freedman outlines a new stage of life — and work — between the end of midlife careers and the beginning of true old age. He has coined the term “encore career” to describe work that combines continued income, new meaning and greater impact. “Prize winners,” Freedman said, “show that the new face of social innovation is one of experience, expertise and the desire to give back in dynamic new careers in the second half of life.”