[February 07, 2014] |
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Blackstone Charitable Foundation Announces Second Annual Organizational Grant Recipients
NEW YORK --(Business Wire)--
The Blackstone Charitable Foundation today announced that it has awarded
grants totaling $1.6 million to seventeen non-profit organizations.
The grants were made through the Blackstone Organizational Grants
Program, an annual program targeting organizations that focus on
fostering entrepreneurship and innovation, now in its second year.
Through this program, The Blackstone Charitable Foundation is helping
innovative organizations pilot, expand or replicate projects or programs
that will catalyze the growth of successful businesses, industries, and
communities in their regions.
"We are proud to be able to provide this year's grant recipients with
the resources they need to expand the reach of their programs both
within their regions and beyond," said Amy Stursberg, Executive Director
of the Blackstone Charitable Foundation. "As we continue to focus on
building a robust network of entrepreneurial activity across the nation
and globally, we are pleased to extend funding to this year's
recipients, who have shown immense potential and innovation in the area
of entrepreneurship."
The grantees were selected through a Request for Proposals (RFP) process
established by the Blackstone Charitable Foundation as part of its
five-year, $50 million Entrepreneurship Initiative. Over five hundred
organizations submitted proposals, of which the top seventeen were
selected to receive grants. This year's funding was granted to eleven
new organizations and six organizations from last year's pool of
winners. The reach of the grantees' programming extends across eleven
U.S. states, Washington, D.C., South America, the Middle East and North
Africa. The seventeen organizations were selected by a committee of
Blackstone employees and subsequently approved by the board of the
Blackstone Charitable Foundation.
The grant recipients are:
Continuing Organizational Grant Recipients
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The Idea Village, Inc. (New Orleans, LA), $70,000 - Our funding
will allow The Idea Village, an organization that identifies,
supports, and retains talent in New Orleans, to further scale the
services and resources it provides during its Entrepreneurship Season
by updating its website and creating an online community for the New
Orleans entrepreneurial ecosystem.
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Launch Tennessee (Nashville, TN), $100,000 - Our funding will
allow Launch Tennessee, an organization that promotes
entrepreneurship, fosters the commercialization of technologies, and
raises the profile of the state, to pilot a program that will recruit
"specialists" from universities to provide support to existing
accelerator teams in critical areas such as coding, application
development, and market research.
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Moneythink (Chicago, IL), $50,000 - Our funding will allow
Moneythink, an organization that trains college volunteers to mentor
youth in low-income communities, to scale its entrepreneurship program
to Los Angeles and New England by hiring a Chief Innovation Officer to
expand its technology system.
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One Hen, Inc. (Boston, MA), $100,000 - Our funding will allow
One Hen, an organization that teaches entrepreneurship to elementary
schoo children, to strengthen its online student entrepreneurial
community by building the open source Blackstone Charitable Foundation
Youth Entrepreneurship Resource Library on its new website.
-
Tumml (San Francisco, CA (News - Alert)), $80,000 - Our funding will
provide Tumml, an urban impact accelerator supporting early stage
companies developing innovative consumer products and services, with
resources to expand their website, create research and reports, and
host events and a conference for leaders in the urban impact space.
-
Venture for America (New York, NY), $100,000 - Our funding
will allow Venture for America (VFA), an organization that recruits
fellows to work for two years at emerging start-ups in lower-cost
cities, to build the VFA Accelerator, a business plan development
curriculum and training for its 2012 and 2013 fellows.
New Organizational Grant Recipients
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The Aspen Institute (Washington, DC), $125,000 - Our funding
will allow the Aspen Institute's Partners for a New Beginning, a
program that advances economic opportunity in the Middle East and
North Africa in the areas of entrepreneurship, education and
innovation, to host a week-long delegation in New York City and San
Francisco/Silicon Valley in October 2014 that will bring together
seasoned US and Middle Eastern and North African entrepreneurs.
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BioSTL (St. Louis, MO), $100,000 - Our funding will allow
BioSTL, an organization that seeks to advance regional prosperity in
St. Louis, to expand the scope of its Bioscience Inclusion Initiative
by identifying high-potential women and minority bioscience
entrepreneurs and providing a systematic pathway for them to create
viable high-growth ventures.
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Businesses United in Investing, Lending, and Development (BUILD;
Redwood City, CA), $100,000 - Our funding will allow BUILD, an
organization that teaches entrepreneurship to propel high-risk
students to college success, to launch the Blackstone School-Based
Innovation Incubator program at two schools in Washington, DC to pilot
this program to expand entrepreneurship opportunities for
disadvantaged students.
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Centre for Social Innovation (CSI (News - Alert); New York, NY), $100,000 - Our
funding will allow the Centre for Social Innovation, a workspace that
supports a board range of start-up activities for social
entrepreneurs, to replicate their successful Toronto program in New
York City and connect entrepreneurs to subject matter experts across a
wide range of topics and professionals service areas.
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Launch NY (Buffalo, NY), $125,000 - Our funding will allow
Launch NY, a collaboration of major economic development organizations
in upstate New York that support high-growth, high-impact companies,
to develop the Launch NY Entrepreneur Institute, a program that will
strengthen the entrepreneurial ecosystem by expanding the reach of
resources and services available in upstate New York.
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Nonprofit Enterprise and Self-Sustainability Team (NESsT; San
Francisco, CA), $150,000 - Our funding will allow NESsT, an
organization that supports enterprises serving vulnerable communities
to replicate its successful University Social Entrepreneurship Program
in Peru to Brazil. This program will incubate a pipeline of
high-impact social businesses in partnership with universities and
their student entrepreneurs.
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Points of Light (Atlanta, GA), $100,000 - Our funding will
allow Points of Light's Civic Accelerator ("CivicX"), a national
program that inspires, equips and mobilizes entrepreneurs, to pilot a
regionally-focused accelerator in Atlanta, Georgia.
-
Rice University (Houston, TX), $50,000 - Our funding will allow
the Rice University Startup Accelerator, OwlSpark, to launch the
National University Accelerator Network, which will connect
university-based accelerators, share best practices, link
university-based startups and mentor and investor networks across the
country.
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Telluride Venture Accelerator (Telluride, CO), $100,000 - Our
funding will allow the Telluride Foundation's Telluride Venture
Accelerator (TVA), a program that invests human and financial capital
in innovative enterprises in the Telluride area, to scale the program
to include more companies and expand its mentor network.
-
UP Global (Seattle, WA), $100,000 - Our funding will allow UP
Global's Startup Weekend, a global organization dedicated to providing
resources and programs to entrepreneurs, to support "Promoting Women
in Entrepreneurship" events, activities, and a marketing campaign
across the country.
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University of California Hastings: Startup Legal Garage (San
Francisco, CA), $100,000 - Our funding will allow UC Hasting
College's Institute for Innovation Law to create a program that will
allow law students to provide free legal support and services to
technology entrepreneurs in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, focusing
on traditionally underserved minority and female technology
entrepreneurs.
About The Blackstone Charitable Foundation
The Blackstone Charitable Foundation was founded at the time of The
Blackstone Group's Initial Public Offering in 2007 with substantial
commitments from the Firm's employees. Influenced by the enterprising
heritage of the firm and its founders, The Blackstone Charitable
Foundation is directing its resources and applying the intellectual
capital of the firm to foster entrepreneurship in areas hardest hit by
the global economic crisis. Through its investment expertise across
several asset classes and geographies, Blackstone has a unique
perspective on the global economy and a heightened understanding of how
entrepreneurial activity is often the crucial catalyst in the growth of
successful businesses, industries and communities. (For more
information, see www.blackstone.com/CharitableFoundation.htm)
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