Deadline: 14-May-23
Can you design a new business or NGO that delivers a proven poverty intervention at scale? Submit your design for a new organization that solves one of the Distribution Challenges.
The world has already invented products and services to end poverty. Yet they have found many proven interventions with large delivery gaps. Millions of people still don’t have access to basic poverty-fighting tools. D-Prize seeds new ventures that distribute proven poverty interventions.
D-Prize Challenges
- Health
- Self-injectable contraceptive challenge: Can you distribute a self-injectable contraceptive, Sayana® Press, to underserved women through a private health network?
- Oxygen Challenge: Can you develop a team of technicians to service and repair existing oxygen concentrators to improve access to medical oxygen?
- Patient identification challenge: Can you develop a way to identify patients needing treatment for either obstetric fistula, cervical cancer, club foot, or cataracts, then connect them with existing treatment services in your area?
- Maternal health challenge: Can you train birth attendants to administer misoprostol to prevent maternal deaths from postpartum hemorrhaging?
- Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision Challenge: Can you identify candidates for Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision (VMMC) and connect those that opt in to existing health facilities to reduce the risk of HIV acquisition?
- Prevention of mother-to-child transmission challenge: Can you counsel and motivate HIV-positive pregnant women to adhere to their ART regimen, and thus prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission?
- Child Immunization Challenge: Can you direct caregivers to bring their infants to health facilities for routine immunizations that would otherwise not occur?
- Sugar Daddy Awareness Challenge: Can you teach “sugar daddy awareness” to 8th grade classes to reduce unwanted teen pregnancies and HIV infections?
- Water
- Clean Access to Water Challenge: Can you sell ceramic water filters to people in areas without access to clean water?
- Education
- Teaching at The Right Level Challenge: Can you teach basic reading and mathematics skills to primary school students in a resource-limited classroom?
- Agriculture
- Quality inputs challenge: Can you provide smallholder farmers high-quality inputs and training proven to increase their harvests?
- Post-harvest support challenge: Can you provide smallholder farmers post-harvest loans and storage technology proven to increase their incomes?
- Propose your own agriculture challenge: D-Prize is specifically interested in distributing proven agriculture interventions to smallholder farmers. If you know of a highly-effective intervention that is backed by credible evidence, they want to hear what it is and see your plan to increase its distribution.
- Propose your own livestock challenge: D-Prize is interested in distributing proven livestock interventions to smallholder farmers. If you know of a highly-effective intervention backed by credible evidence, they want to hear what it is and see your plan to increase its distribution.
- Livelihoods
- Poverty graduation challenge: Can you provide business coaching, capital, and social support to lift people out of ultra-poverty?
- Propose your own financial inclusion challenge: D-Prize is specifically interested in distributing proven financial inclusion interventions to those in need. If you know of a highly-effective intervention backed by credible evidence, they want to hear what it is and see your plan to increase its distribution.
- Energy
- Solar lamp challenge: Can you sell pico solar lamps to rural or slum-dwelling households without regular access to electricity?
- Public services
- Government transparency challenge: Can you monitor and report data to reduce corruption and improve public service?
- Road safety challenge: Can you reduce road fatalities by mobilizing the public with a proven public transportation safety campaign?
- Custom
- Propose your own challenge: D-Prize is specifically interested in distributing proven poverty interventions to those in need. If you know of a highly-effective intervention that is backed by credible evidence, they want to hear what it is and see your plan to increase its distribution.
Prize Details
- They will award the most promising teams with up to $20,000 USD to launch their new organization wherever extreme poverty exists.
- The average D-Prize award size is $15,000.
Eligibility Criteria
- D-Prize is for aspiring entrepreneurs from anywhere in the world, of any age, and any background. The majority of the awardees have not launched nor raised any funding.
- They will consider funding existing organizations only if you are distributing an existing intervention and you have a need for high-risk capital that cannot be supported by your current donors or revenue.
- Existing organizations applying to D-Prize should have operated for no more than 18 months and raised no more than $30,000 in outside funding.
- They apologize, but at this time they are only able to evaluate applications submitted in English. However, your English does not need to be perfect to apply, and grammar and vocabulary errors will not be penalized. They only want to understand your idea.
- You should have enormous ambition, and can imagine yourself as a successful entrepreneur. You are ready to launch your new venture, and if a pilot proves successful you are excited to grow it into a world changing organization.
- If you are still a student or have existing commitments, you should have a clear idea how to transition into a full-time founder.
- D-Prize is exclusively interested in ventures that will scale distribution of an already proven poverty intervention in the developing world. They do not fund prototypes of promising new interventions.
Evaluation Process
- Round 1: Submit your concept note and resume(s). They receive 2000+ submissions per competition.
- Round 2: Top 5% of entrepreneurs are invited to answer short written questions. You will have two weeks to draft and submit.
- Final Round: Top entrepreneurs interview via phone and email. The top 1% will receive up to $20,000 to launch.
- Launch: You will spend the next three months using your talent to start a venture that can grow and help millions of people.
For more information, visit D-Prize.