Deadline: 28-Apr-23
Applications are now open for the J.M.K. Innovation Prize to identify, support, and elevate innovators who are spearheading transformative early-stage projects in the fields of the environment, heritage conservation, and social justice.
The JM Kaplan Fund promotes social, environmental and cultural causes transformative through innovative giving. Established in 1945 by philanthropist and businessman Jacob Merrill Kaplan, the Fund has been committed to innovation since its inception visionary Over its 74-year history, the Fund has dedicated $250 million to advance start-ups related to civil liberties, human rights, the arts, and the conservation and enhancement of the man-made and natural worlds. The JMK Innovation Award continues the Fund’s legacy of catalytic giving, which spans the United States to provide support to entrepreneurs in the stages initials with twenty-first century solutions to urgent social and environmental challenges.
About the Prize
- In a time of increasingly convergent social and environmental challenges, their need for ambitious new ideas could not be clearer. They know that transforming the future of their climate and society will require new voices and models for change-making. They also know that leaders of budding movements and solutions are hard at work in the gaps between and beyond the reach of traditional funding streams. Time and again, through hardship and against systemic forces, they’ve seen innovators defy conventions and reach across established disciplines to forge new paths to social impact. They created the J.M.K. Innovation Prize to support and elevate them.
- Since 2015, over four biennial cycles, they’ve called on change-makers across the country to submit projects with transformative potential. To date, they’ve supported 40 wildly creative social and environmental initiatives, ranging from Catholic sisters engaged in land reparations to rural entrepreneurs converting mining runoff into pigments for high-quality paints. Leveraging a legacy of catalytic grant-making at the J.M. Kaplan Fund, the Prize seeks out visionary nonprofit and mission-driven for-profit organizations that work within, across, or in a manner related to one or more of the Fund’s three program areas:
- The Environment: Slowing the pace of climate change and mitigating climate impacts.
- Heritage Conservation: Conserving the places that communities care about most.
- Social Justice: Strengthening democracy and reforming the criminal justice and immigration systems.
Prize Details
- In 2023, they will award up to ten prizes, each including a cash prize of $150,000 over three years, plus $25,000 in technical assistance funds, for a total prize of $175,000. Awardees also receive guidance through the Fund and its network of resources, which provide tools and training to turn innovative ideas into social change with significant life impacts.
Prize Process
- Applications are open to individuals or teams representing nonprofit or mission-driven for-profit organizations. The Prize will be awarded to projects or ideas that:
- Represent a game-changing answer to a clearly identified need;
- Innovate within one or more of the Fund’s three program areas;
- Demonstrate the potential to develop an actionable pilot or prototype with Prize funding; and
- Hold out the promise to benefit multiple individuals, communities, or sectors through a clearly articulated theory of change.
- Following review of first-round submissions, select applicants will be invited to submit a more detailed second-round application in late spring. Finalists will present their ideas to the trustees of the J.M. Kaplan Fund in the fall, with awardees formally announced in November 2023.
- Beyond naming up to ten awardees, the Fund is eager to help connect Prize applicants – and their many promising initiatives – with resources and opportunities. As part of this effort, the Fund will make its database of applications to the 2023 Prize available to funders who may seek to tap into innovative individuals working within their own communities or program areas.
For more information, visit JM Kaplan Fund.