Deadline: 30-Jun-22
Miller Center is seeking applications for its Accelerator programs or entrepreneurs working on women’s economic empowerment and/or climate resilience because of your outsized impact on eliminating poverty.
If you lead a mission-driven social enterprise looking to scale a proven impact model, you’ve come to the right place! Miller Center’s Silicon Valley-based, globally recognized accelerator programs help leaders develop pathways to scale and prepare for next-level investment.
With proven curricula and accompanied by their outstanding executive mentors and leadership coaches, together all shall uncover and address gaps and opportunities in your business, and develop an action plan so you can achieve your vision for organizational growth.
The Miller Center Accelerator is designed for high-potential social enterprises with proven traction, working on women’s economic empowerment, climate resilience, or the intersection of both. This 6-month accelerator program combines mentorship with structured curriculum to help social entrepreneurs address gaps in their impact model, business model, and growth strategies, and ultimately move them along the path toward growth, significant scale, and investment.
Focus Areas
- Impact Model: Problem statement. Theory of change. Beneficial outcomes. Solution validation. Customer adoption and usage rates.
- Business Model: Unit economics, average selling price (ASP), gross/contribution margin. Revenue and expense drivers. Breakeven point, profit and loss (P&L), and cash flow. Baseline business growth rate.
- Marketing & Sales Strategy: Target market, opportunity size, local market dynamics, value proposition, and channel. Sales efficacy/efficiency. Product differentiation, competitive barriers, market expansion.
- Growth Plan & Financial Forecast: Strategic initiatives. Critical technology, capacity requirements. Projected efficiency/efficacy of results.
- Scalable Operations: Key measures/key performance indicators (KPIs) and reporting results. Quality and reliability metrics. Capacity requirements, automation. Organizational structure.
- Fundraising Strategy & Plan: Funding amount. Type of Capital. Use of Funds. Investor ROI and impact ROI. Due Diligence Folder.
Details
- Climate Resilience: Social enterprises address the needs of those living in poverty who suffer disproportionately from climate change. Their climate resilience focus areas fall into one of the following three categories:
- Energy — providing access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy
- Water — ensuring availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation
- Climate-Smart Agriculture — implementing sustainable food production systems and resilient agricultural practices to increase productivity and production
- Women’s Economic Empowerment: Social enterprises that have a focus on women’s economic empowerment can be identified through one or more of the following areas (ideally all four):
- Social Enterprise Leaders: The primary participant identifies as female and is a founder, CEO, or other top-level leader with decision-making authority.
- Employees: The business model intentionally creates more jobs for women within the enterprise.
- Value Chain Contributors: The organization creates increasing business opportunities for women along its value chain (e.g., using a village sales agent model that is more amenable to women villagers’ lifestyles or buying products made by women).
- Customers: Predominantly female customers by design. In this case, “customers” refers to those who are positively impacted by the enterprise.
Requirements
Application Requirements
- A senior leader (e.g., CEO, Executive Director, Managing Director)
- Fluent in English
- Has consistent and reliable access to internet connectivity
- Has the availability to participate in the program’s 6-month duration, requiring an average of 4-6 hours/week
Organization Requirements
- Committed to creating positive benefits for people living in poverty, addressing one or more of the UN Sustainable Development Goals
- Is a social enterprise that is intentional about supporting women’s economic empowerment, climate resilience, or the intersection of both?
- Committed to scaling its solution far beyond current operations
- Has been operational for at least a year and is delivering products/services to customers
- Has at least $20,000 USD (or local currency equivalent) in annual earned income and is not entirely dependent on contributions or grants
- Has at least 3 paid, full-time employees (or equivalent)
- Has at least 3-months of cash runway.
For more information, visit https://www.millersocent.org/programs/our-accelerators/#applyanchor